THE WORLD OF GEORGE PRICE A 55-Year Retrospective <i> (Harper & Row: $12.95) </i>

George Price has been one of the New Yorker’s premier cartoonists since 1931, and his angular, almost Cubist drawings are immediately recognizable. Price delights in filling his cartoons with kitsch bric-a-brac (hydra-like pole lamps, wicker planters shaped like frogs, chairs made of deer antlers), which he uses to create a three-dimensional environment for his characters: Each line suggests the space that surrounds it. But most readers are less likely to notice the artist’s considerable graphic skill than his off-the-wall sense of humor. Most of his cartoons juxtapose dumpy, pedestrian people and incongruous turns of phrase: A pot-bellied little man announces to his slatternly wife, “I’ll be in the den, contemplating the bust of Homer.” A hilarious anthology.