Foxtrot, Marie Kondo, and the eternal return

Yesterday I found a 2002 Foxtrot strip in a stack of clippings. The strip is a beautiful joke on the conventions that underlie visual representation. I should post a picture, I thought, and scrap the clipping. I mean, the clipping brings joy, but it would continue to do so as a blog post, right? And lo, I discovered that the strip is still available online. I wouldn’t even need to take a photo. So I started writing a post titled “Foxtrot and representation”, bringing in E.H. Gombrich’s Art and Illusion and the New Yorker cartoon by Alain that starts off the book, a 1955 joke on the conventions that underlie visual representation. And then I wondered, Have I posted anything else from Foxtrot ?

Yes. In 2013 I made a post about this same Foxtrot strip, with the same title, “Foxtrot and representation.” The only difference: this time around I cited Art and Illusion. In the 2013 post, the Gombrich connection is clear from the link to a reproduction of the cartoon.

The eternal return — an idea I somehow picked up on as a freshman in college — is real. But the life-changing magic of tidying up poses a challenge. Because I don’t think I’ll be rediscovering this clipped strip again, at least not in my house.

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