Celebrated cartoonist Harry Bliss has been drawing for The New Yorker since 1997. He’s published more than 25 books for children and collaborated on two books with comedian and actor Steve Martin. His syndicated comic, Bliss, appears in newspapers across the U.S. and Canada. Bliss is also a well-known lover of dogs, and four-legged friends feature heavily in his work.
His latest book, a graphic memoir called You Can Never Die about his own upbringing and his relationship with his beloved dog, Penny, was released this week. Bliss lives in Cornish, New Hampshire, and joined Vermont Edition from New York City.
The following transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mikaela Lefrak: Your parents, as you write in the book, used corporal punishment. And it seems like you grew up in this time and place where kids, especially boys, were just always beating up on each other. You were getting beat up, you beat up other people. Do you remember feeling afraid often as a kid?
Harry Bliss: [Laughs]
Mikaela Lefrak: I didn't mean that as a funny question, but I'm glad it came off that way.
Harry Bliss: Well, you have to laugh. I gotta laugh at it. No, my entire childhood was fear. My fear was my childhood. I was in constant fear of being punched in the arm. My only escape was drawing. That was an escape for me. There was a sense of control. If you sit down and you're at a piece of paper and you're making up this world, you have complete control over that. And the rest of my life, I really didn't have that kind of control. Listen, it wasn't horrible. It was the '70s. You know, that's just the way it was. You know, it was in the drinking water.
Mikaela Lefrak: Well, I loved learning about the those kind of two sides of you and your upbringing. This, you know, the constant beating up and battling and arm punching, then there was also this version of Harry that was staying up all night, drawing your own feet in order to perfect the look of them. And that's so, I don't know, delicate and soft and artistic.
Harry Bliss: Well, I did have various epiphanies, and one of them was in Jesuit school. I spent a year in Jesuit school in Rochester, and that was the first time I experienced, you know, genuine empathy. Following that, I became less angry and more observant. So those things, certain experiences I had, they made me kinder.
Mikaela Lefrak: You wrote in the book and recently on Instagram too, about having a baby with your girlfriend when you were both very young, giving that child up for adoption, then reconnecting with her later in life, and all the joy that that has brought you. I was reading through some of those comments on Instagram just before we spoke, and was just so struck by the how, time and again, we see this on Vermont Edition all the time, how honesty begets honesty, and how all these people were sharing their own stories with you from all their different experiences with adoption. I wonder what it was like to put that fact of your life out in the world and get those responses.
Harry Bliss: It's kind of beautiful. I loved hearing all those responses. And I think that's one of the nice aspects, I should say, about social media. Sometimes it can suck and be a real problem. But again, it's all about having an intimacy with your audience.
Before I wrote about that in the book, I spoke with my daughter, my biological daughter, Valerie, and she's great. She reached out to me when she was 18, I think. As soon as I got the email that said, "Did you give a baby girl up for adoption in 1986?," I knew that, I knew it.
Shortly thereafter, I went down to meet her mom and her aunt, and we had dinner together, and it was very emotional and but again, it was really beautiful. We've been close, and now I have a grandson, Sebastian, who's beautiful and hilarious. She sends me videos of him, and I make little videos of this little sheep puppet.
But it was a really difficult, obviously. Giving a baby up for adoption is extremely difficult, and I hadn't really revisited that much. I still probably could do more revisiting of that, but I'll save that for a psychoanalyst.
Mikaela Lefrak: Alright, so this is the portion of our interview, Harry, where I'm gonna help you land some product placement deals. I liked reading in your memoir how partial you are to Moleskine and you talk about your favorite fountain pens at one point. I would love to hear a little bit more about your tools of the trade. And if there are any things like these Montblanc fountain pens that you can't live without.
Harry Bliss: Well, I'm here in the studio at WNYC, and I'm holding a Montblanc Meisterstück with a solid gold nib on it.
Mikaela Lefrak: Solid gold!
Harry Bliss: Yeah, it's a beautiful gold nib. It's probably a $1,500 pen that an old girlfriend gave me, who went on to really hate me, so I know she hates that she gave this pen to me.
Mikaela Lefrak: Wow. Well, if anyone's looking to mug somebody today, we've got your guy.
Harry Bliss: [Laughs] You know, you can find great fountain pens on eBay. You want to make sure you get the right ink for your fountain pen. I do like Moleskine. The paper is a little thin for me, to be honest, but I am pretty particular. That's a great question. I'm very particular about the graphite I use, the type of lead holders I use, the type of rapidographs—
Mikaela Lefrak: The what?
Harry Bliss: It's a rapidograph. Come on, Mikaela, get with the program. [Both laugh] I like a real toothy paper, a Strathmore toothy sketchbook paper, acid free paper. And sometimes I can't work when it's too humid, the air is too humid, because the graphite doesn't adhere to the paper the way I like.
Mikaela Lefrak: Huh!
Harry Bliss: Yeah. It's, you know—
Mikaela Lefrak: Well, it's good you're here in New England for most of the year.
Harry Bliss: Exactly, it's true.
This episode of Vermont Edition also included a conversation with Johnson poet Sarah Audsley as part of Vermont Edition's April series for National Poetry Month.
Broadcast live on Wednesday, April 30, 2025, at noon; rebroadcast at 7 p.m.
Have questions, comments or tips? Send us a message or check us out on Instagram.
