Author of the week

Cathy Guisewite

You know Cathy Guisewite’s work—in fact, you might even have rolled your eyes at it, said Rachel Syme in New York magazine. Guisewite created Cathy, the comic strip about a chronically insecure office worker that for 34 years ran daily in up to 1,400 newspapers. The character was so meek that, at first, she embarrassed her creator too: When the first strip ran in 1976, Guisewite, then a 26-year-old advertising VP, hid for most of the day in the office bathroom. “I had worked so hard to develop myself as a professional person,” she says, “and this comic strip was coming out about my most vulnerable moments.” The former Michigan sorority girl knew, though, that she could find humor in the struggles of young women to cope with society’s new expectations. “I graduated in 1972 with subscriptions to both Brides magazine and Ms. magazine. That’s why I was unhappy.”

The Guisewite who just published her first book of personal essays, Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault, is not the same Cathy. Girlish and energetic, she lives in a stylish Los Angeles home paid for by her own success. But she still has anxieties—many that now stem from trying to do right by a 26-year-old daughter while caring for a nonagenarian mother. “I had heard the term ‘sandwich generation,’” she says. “But it feels like a panini—as if I’m literally squashed flat by all there is to do.” Humor, she hopes, is still the best way she can help other women manage such worries. “My voice is never going to change the world,” she says. “My voice will help women get through the next five minutes, and I’m fine with that.” ■

April 18, 2019 THE WEEK