Dream of The Rarebit Fiend - Background

Background

McCay had begun cartooning in the 1890s and had a prolific output, published in various magazines and newspapers. He became known for his ability to draw quickly, a talent he often employed during chalk talks on the vaudeville stage (alongside the likes of Harry Houdini and W. C. Fields). Prior to Dream of the Rarebit Fiend and Little Nemo, McCay had shown an interest the topic of dreams. Some of his earlier work, numbering at least 10 regular comics, had titles such as Daydreams and It Was Only a Dream. McCay's were not the first dream-themed comic strips to be published. McCay's employer, the New York Herald, had printed at least three such strips, beginning with Charles Reese's Drowsy Dick in 1902. Psychoanalysis and dream interpretation had begun to enter the public consciousness with the 1900 publication of Freud's Interpretation of Dreams.

McCay first proposed a strip in which a tobacco fiend finds himself at the North Pole, unable to secure a cigarette and a light. In the last panel the fiend awakens to find it a dream. The Herald asked him to make the cartoon into a series, but with a Welsh rarebit theme instead of tobacco, and McCay complied. The strip was published in a Herald subsidiary, the Evening Telegram; the Herald's editor required McCay to use a pseudonym for the strip work to keep it separate from his other work. McCay signed Rarebit Fiend strips as "Silas", borrowing the name of a neighbourhood garbage cart driver. After switching to William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspaper in 1911, McCay dropped the "Silas" pseudonym and signed his work in his own name.

McCay married in 1891, and the marriage was not a happy one. According to McCay biographer John Canemaker, marriage is depicted in Rarebit Fiend as "a minefield of hypocrisy, jealousy, and misunderstanding". McCay was a short man, barely five feet (150 cm) tall. He was dominated by his wife, who stood as tall as he was. Images of small, shy men dominated by their taller or fatter wives appeared frequently in Rarebit Fiend. Gigantism, with characters being overwhelmed by rapidly growing elements, was another recurring motif, perhaps as compensation on McCay's part for a sense of smallness. McCay's brother, Arthur, had been put away in a mental asylum, which may have inspired the themes of insanity which are common in the strip.

Despite the bleak view in the strip, McCay's work was so popular that he was hired by William Randolph Hearst in 1911 with a star's salary. His work was deemed by editor Arthur Brisbane to be "serious, not funny", and he was made to give up his comic strips (including Rarebit Fiend and Nemo) to work full-time illustrating editorials.