Coffee and Caricatures- Paris Style

This summer I posted about the new book coming out illustrated by my friend and fellow member of MAD’s “Usual Gang of Idiots” Rick Tulka entitled “Paris Caf?¬©: The S?¬©lect Crowd“, and how CBS did a new piece on Rick and the book. Well, the book has been out for some time and The Lovely Anna and I have been enjoying our copy.

Rick has told me many times about this caf?¬©, Le S?¬©lect, where he has spent the last decade sipping coffee and drawing the patrons, wait staff and passersby in his inimitable style. Author No??⬨¬¥l Riley Fitch and Rick decided to write a book featuring a collection of Rick’s caf?¬© sketches and detailing the history of the establishment. The Montparnasse caf?¬© has been a favorite of the creative and intellectual crowd since 1923, with noted famous frequent patrons including Hemingway, Beauvoir, Picasso, James Baldwin, and George Plimpton. The book describes Le S?¬©lect’s rich past but is also a fascinating short study of the role caf?¬©’s play in the social, cultural and intellectual life of Paris. My only complaint about the book is that is it too small… I wish it was a coffee table sized volume so Rick’s richly textured and shaded dark graphite drawings were given their proper due.

That CBS feature is now available on YouTube (isn’t everything?), and Rick is very prominently featured and interviewed in the piece. He tells me he’s had to sign a few autographs there since it ran. You can order the book through Amazon.