Kaplan, Bruce Eric 1964(?)–

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Kaplan, Bruce Eric 1964(?)–

PERSONAL: Born c. 1964.

ADDRESSES: Home—Los Angeles, CA. Agent—Camille McDuffie, Goldberg McDuffie Communicaions, Inc., 444 Madison Ave., Ste. 3300, New York, NY 10022.

CAREER: Writer and cartoonist. Home Box Office, Six Feet Under, executive producer; also worked as a writer for television series, including Seinfeld and Six Feet Under.

WRITINGS:

No One You Know: A Collection of Cartoons, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1999.

The Cat That Changed My Life: Fifty Cats Talk Candidly about How They Became Who They Are, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2002.

This Is a Bad Time: A Collection of Cartoons, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2004.

Every Person on the Planet: An Only Somewhat Anxiety-Filled Tale for the Holidays, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to periodicals, including Boston Globe, LA Weekly, and the New Yorker.

SIDELIGHTS: Bruce Eric Kaplan is known to many simply as "BEK." That is the name he signs on the cartoons he has published in the New Yorker since 1991. In addition to cartooning for that and other periodicals, he has also been a writer for such television series as Seinfeld and Six Feet Under. A reviewer for the Financial Express summarized Kaplan as someone who "specializes in anxious moments, adultlike children, and child-like adults."

It is this ability that many reviewers praised after reading his 2006 publication, Every Person on the Planet: An Only Somewhat Anxiety-Filled Tale for the Holidays. Complete with illustrations, this book presents the situation of a New York couple having a party and inviting every person in the world to attend (and most actually doing so). Robert Ito, writing in Los Angeles, found that Every Person on the Planet "read like [Kaplan's] cartoons … but with the luxury of a longer format." Entertainment Weekly writer Jessica Shaw also praised the work, calling it "brilliantly droll." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly was "delighted by this charming, humorous book," further claiming that Kaplan's "talent for visual understatement" allows for the story to read "like a children's storybook written for adults."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Entertainment Weekly, June 11, 1999, Jessica Shaw, review of No One You Know: A Collection of Cartoons, p. 60; September 16, 2005, Jessica Shaw, review of Every Person on the Planet: An Only Somewhat Anxiety-Filled Tale for the Holidays, p. 89.

Financial Express, February 23, 2006, "Book Invites World to Party."

Los Angeles, December, 2005, Robert Ito, review of Every Person on the Planet, p. 148.

Newsweek, April 5, 2004, Bret Begun, "Cartoons Having a Bad Time," p. 9.

People, January 9, 2006, Sue Corbett, Maria Speidel, and Natalie Danford, review of Every Person on the Planet, p. 41.

Publishers Weekly, October 31, 2005, review of Every Person on the Planet, p. 39.