Cartoonist's cast of characters 
reaches far and wide
Providence Journal
December 7, 2001

Narragansett's Don Bousquet has published his 18th book of cartoons about his favorite subject Rhode Island.

* * *

NARRAGANSETT - Cartoonist Don Bousquet, with a folksy familiarity, strolls through his Bonnet Shores neighborhood like Andy Taylor used to walk the streets of Mayberry.

He stops to chat with old friends out gardening and with workers he doesn't know, who are there in the neighborhood to turn off the water at a beach house.

He says hello to everyone, even dogs, trespasses on gated properties and gazes in awe at the view from Bonnet Point one he's seen daily since moving there in 1976 shaking his head and saying, Isn't it something?

On Sunday mornings he has breakfast at the same restaurant, followed by garage deliberations with a coterie of men who sit on beach chairs in his hospital-clean workshop and solve the problems of the world or just play cards.

It is from atop this Bonnet Shores hill, in this garage workshop, that Bousquet's creative process takes off.

With a blank piece of paper, a Sharpie marker and the quiet of dawn as his tools, he shapes the obvious into the humorous, creating cartoons seen in The Providence Journal, as well as on T-shirts and truck panels.

These cartoons have evolved into 18 books of recipes for laughter his latest being Born in Rhode Island, which was just released.

At about the same time when most are starting their day, heading onto the highway or into a work space, this Narragansett resident is having his second breakfast, getting ready for The World According to Bousquet.

It was scary to think of the possibility of doing what I was doing for the rest of my life, he said, looking back to the 1970s when he commuted to Providence to work for a vocational counseling agency, leaving behind ocean and beach sand for Route 95.

It's July. What am I doing going to Providence? he recalled asking himself after working at the same job for six years.

It was one of several moments in his life when he just snapped, as he puts it, content no longer. So he came home to discuss with his wife Laura his idea of becoming a cartoonist.

I think I can do it, he told her.

That's great, she said, encouraging him to pursue his plan - she was a school librarian happy to be the main wage-earner but there was something that she wanted to share with him that day.

She told me she was pregnant, he recalled, with the first of their two sons.

In some ways, it might not seem to have been the best time to embark upon an independent career, but on the other hand, with Bousquet working from home, there wouldn't be a child care problem.

In those early weeks of drawing cartoons and sending them to publications such as The New Yorker, Bousquet said:

I failed miserably.

Pink slips came in the mail faster than Christmas catalogues. So he telephoned the editor at The New Yorker, had a pleasant conversation, and it seemed that his pink slips would be turning green soon.

Bousquet had the money all spent. The only problem was the New York publication wasn't buying.

I snapped again, he said, figuring out that he'd have to approach this idea of being an independent cartoonist from another angle.

He started sending his work to the now defunct Rhode Island Magazine, which purchased his first two pieces for $25 each. From there he approached Rudi Hempe, editor of North Kingstown's Standard Times, who liked what he saw.

Within a month, Bousquet was being paid by South County's weekly newspapers, as well as the Providence Journal-Bulletin.

In 1982, the first of his books, Beware of the Quahog, was published, and he's been making a living from his own Bonnet Shores backyard ever since.

I'm 50-tree, he mimics, a Rhode Islander born and raised who can fall in and out of the same lazy accent he pens from the lips of cartoon characters. Though meant to cause a chuckle from Point Judith to Woonsocket, some people don't chuckle at all.

Bousquet has had threats, angry letters and hostile telephone calls from people he thinks need to get a sense of humor.

It's a cartoon, for God's sake.

Bousquet, who earned a C in the art course he took when he first enrolled at the University of Rhode Island (he switched his major to anthropology), said the work doesn't come easily to him.

At 4 a.m., when that blank piece of paper is staring back and he pulls a pen from among the many in an empty mixed-nuts can, he finds inspiration in a book of old-fashioned illustrations his wife gave him as a gift in 1982.

I've looked at it every week since, he said, pointing out an antique-version of Santa and his sleigh, which served as motivation for an upcoming cartoon of Santa having a cell-phone conversation.

Bousquet wonders how that illustration took hold of his mind and took him someplace else. But he just goes wherever inspiration takes him, traveling in his imagination while seated securely in his hillside home.

I tell short stories basically, is how he describes his cartoons. Sometimes I use words, sometimes I don't. And though all the stories start out differently, Bousquet hopes they'll all have the same ending:

Laughter, with a side of the hilarious.

Don Bousquet will sign copies of Born in Rhode Island at Waldenbooks, Wakefield, Dec. 15 at 11 a.m.
     

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