Nicole Tersigni is a comedic writer and author of the bestselling “Men to Avoid in Art and Life,” in which she paired classical fine art with modern captions on mansplaining and struck a humorous common chord. She followed it with “Friends to Keep in Art and Life” and “Parenting Advice to Ignore in Art and Life” in the same style; in her “Cat People to Judge in Art and Life,” she turns her eye to paintings of people with their cats. The book, which is broken into sections based on the five types of cat people (the Smotherer, the Oversharer, the Pushover, the Proud Parent and the Roommate), takes entertaining jabs at cat lovers and their feline companions. “Cat People to Judge in Art and Life” was published in September, and Tersigni speaks at a virtual event Monday presented by the Somerville Public Library in partnership with the Ashland Public Library and other Massachusetts libraries. We interviewed her Friday; her words have been edited for length and clarity.
How did you come up with the idea behind “Men to Avoid,” and how did it become a book?
It was kind of a wild journey. Being on Twitter, I was trying to make little punchy jokes as often as I could, just to hone that skill. One day, I was scrolling through and I saw my friend had made a joke, and a commenter had responded, explaining her joke to her. This kind of thing had happened to me 10,000 times – it’s a very common thing that happens on the Internet and in life, and I wanted to pop off a joke about it. I Google image searched “woman surrounded by men,” because that’s how it can feel in that moment, and one of the first results was this painting of a woman holding one of her boobs in her hand. She’s surrounded by men, and they’re all looking at her, and she’s just sitting there holding her boob. I thought that was so funny and so perfect, so I took that image and I paired it with a caption that said, “Maybe if I take my tit out, they’ll stop explaining my joke back to me.” People loved it and it started to get spread around. So I did a whole thread of them, sticking with the painting theme to keep it cohesive, and it went really viral. It was shared by big accounts, celebrities, everyone was responding. An agent responded to the thread and asked if I wanted to make it into a book. That was Rachel Sussman, who’s now my agent, and I said yes, absolutely. I had been working so hard to get to that point, and then the opportunity presented itself and I was ready to go. We talked on the phone the next day, I put together a pitch document, she sent it out to various publishers, Chronicle loved it, and it was off to the races. It was a total lightning-in-a-bottle kind of moment, truly impossible to recreate.
What made you want to do a book on cat people?
After “Men to Avoid,” I wanted to do something more joyful, so I did “Friends,” which was really fun for me to write, like a love letter to my pals, and then I did a parenting book, “Parenting Advice to Ignore in Art and Life.” In talking to Chronicle about the fourth book, we all were on the same page about wanting to do something about pets, because my pets are always a very important part of my life, and that’s kind of been the theme all along: what’s important to me. We pitched a bunch of ideas, and we landed on cats because everyone I work with at Chronicle is a cat person. I’ve always been a cat person; I call my mom the “OG cat woman” in my book, I grew up around a lot of cats. I don’t currently have a cat, but I’m working on it with my husband! Anyway, it really immediately connected us all, and on top of that cats have such a personality that we felt fit the tone and theme of the series. Definitely a group idea and a group effort.
How do you go about finding paintings?
Museums all have these databases online that you can search by public domain – all the art in my books are public domain – so I set the parameters of what I’m looking for and start scrolling through paintings. I’m sure there is a more efficient process, but I literally spend hours looking at thousands and thousands of paintings, and I create a giant document of all the paintings that I think could potentially work for a joke. It’s a process, for sure.
Was it challenging to find paintings with cats?
It was so hard. I did not know how hard it would be. I really wanted to stick mostly with the Renaissance-style paintings, because they’re very clear and easy to work with, and I basically used every single cat painting I found. At one point, I had a tiger, because that’s about how hard it was to find paintings with cats. I actually tried to come up with a joke that I could use about a tiger and a cat, but I couldn’t decide on anything. I did find just enough in the end, but yes, it was a lot harder than it was finding paintings for the other books.
Do you have ideas in advance of what you want to say, or do you find the paintings first and then come up with the captions?
It’s a little bit of both. I think the funniest jokes are the ones that really play into what’s happening in the painting, like those weird, little, specific details, so I really try and start with the painting. It’s just that I also have ideas for jokes in my head that I want to try and fit in too. When I can find paintings for those little specific jokes, they tend to land the best.
This post was updated Aug. 19, 2024, to note that descriptions of the books were compiled from the publishers.
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Is it still cool to generalize about our disappointment with male humans?