Neighbor:

Jules Feiffer - Cartoonist

By Janet Berg

Jules Feiffer, the well-known American cartoonist, author, playwright and screenwriter, has been praised with so many accolades, you could fill a book. His awards include an Oscar for Munro (animated Short Film (1961), his OBIE Award for the play Little Murders (1968), his Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning (1986), the Venice Film Festival Best Screenplay for I Want To Go Home (1989) and his accomplishments are still forthcoming.

So what is Mr. Write doing right, aside from everything? The 78-year-old with the youthful bounce in his stride, explains just that in his upcoming memoir, Backing Into Forward, where the working artist shows how he has come to believe over the years that, no matter what safe advice others have given him, no matter how he’s defied the rules and royally screwed up, he remained loyal to his gut feeling.

His creative genius has also found a quiet spot in the Hamptons by the sea, where he’s started a book for his musical, based on his first children’s novel, The Man in the Ceiling, which Walt Disney has optioned for Broadway.

When Jules is not at his Upper West Side apartment with his wife Jenny and adopted daughter, Julie, or in Martha’s Vineyard, you may also find him teaching a Truth and Humor class at Stony Brook Southampton, where students are told to write using their unconscious mind. “Truth comes first,” he says. “How we see the world. The humor is how we deal with it.”

He instructs a dozen aspiring writers to depict insightful characters, complex and full of conflict. “It’s not necessary to curse or shout. It’s hard to touch real anger. Throw good logic to the wind, like the aunt who says what everybody else is thinking.”

He has also taught at the Yale School of Drama and Northwestern University and was a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s National Arts Journalism Program.

Mr. Feiffer grew up in the Bronx during The Depression with his mother, a fashion designer, who sometimes locked herself in the attic with her work and ruled their family world, and a quiet Jewish father, whom he always thought of as a “tenant” in the house, who said very little except, “Yes dear,’” and his older sister, Mimi, and younger sister, Alice.

“When it came to the outside world, however, our mother’s fear of it was so abnormal that it became clear to us kids that we were, in a sense, in a state of free fall, completely dependent upon each other and ourselves, and in a crisis situation, we would be abandoned. This taught me a lot about parenting. So that, when I did have my own children, I could think about what my parents did, and do the opposite.”

“I was shy,” Jules said, “I still am. I had to make jokes to survive.” When Jules, picked up a pen, at the age of six, he turned it into a magical instrument, transforming clean white paper into super heroes he made up in his head. His favorite mainstream heroes were Flash Gordon, Popeye, and Terry and the Pirates. The New York boy’s dreams came true in 1949 with his first comic feature, Clifford, and since 1956, Feiffer’s editorial cartooning had been featured in the Village Voice, the first alternative newspaper, and he entertained readers for 42 years with an internationally syndicated comic strip simply named, “Feiffer.”

During the turbulent 60s, Feiffer strayed from traditional journalism and went against the mainstream as the first cartoonist to come out against the war in Vietnam, when he targeted Presidents Johnson and Richard Nixon, and didn’t hold back his views on hypocrisy and the generation gap. Feiffer’s liberal freedom of speech made satire meaningful at a time when the nation thirsted for it. His take on comedic tragedy goes back to his short animated film Munro (1961) about a four-year-old boy who is mistakenly drafted into the army and cannot persuade authorities that he doesn’t belong there.

During the end of the Korean War, years earlier in 1951, he was drafted in real life and found it difficult to adapt to all the discipline and regulations. It was during this time that the rebellious 21-year-old Feiffer met a sweet, elderly man who encouraged him to do what he always wanted — be creative.

“It was during the height of McCarthyism and I was enraged by being drafted — how dare they interrupt my career? Even though I only had an imaginary career at the time.” He laughed. This motivated Feiffer’s radical thinking.

Jules’ drawings appear to be real and effortlessly sketchy, as if he holds a feather pen loosely in his hand, giving grace to the simple delivery of his spirit. His work has appeared in Esquire, The Nation, New Yorker, the New York Times and Playboy. One of his characters, called “The Dancer,” portrays his first girlfriend, who slides across the dance floor onto his paper, seemingly jointless, a scraggly-haired woman in leotards. Feiffer had always admired Fred Astaire, who he said symbolized everything that lifted him out of the Bronx life he found depressing and demoralizing. “I knew there was a better world out there, and I too would be in black tie and tails and might not be dancing with Ginger Rogers on the deck of a ship, but when I was young, I had the illusion that anything was possible. All you had to do was work for it and be lucky.”

Feiffer has written about many topics — everyday life, politics, and social issues — and is a strong advocate of civil rights. He also became popular for his controversial film, Carnal Knowledge (1971), starring Jack Nicholson, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen and Ann-Margret on the cusp of the sexual revolution.

His black comedy, called Little Murders, deals with urban violence and was also adapted to film in 1971, starring Elliott Gould and Marcia Rodd. Other plays include the OBIE-winning White House Murder Case (1970) and Knock Knock (1976), among numerous other plays and novels.

And then, in 2000, his other side playfully emerged, as he began writing and illustrating children’s books. His books delighted his twelve-year-old daughter, who gave him the idea for one of his books, A Room With A Zoo.

She’s an animal lover, a little heroine herself, who came to the rescue of “Lily,” a one-eyed Chihuahua-mix, a few years ago. The Feiffers adopted the dog, that reflects humor and truth, like her dad’s cartoons.

“My oldest daughter, Kate, age 42, is also a children’s author, and Halley, the middle child, age 22, is a student at Wesleyan and an actor, most notable for the movie The Squid and the Whale and also a film at Sundance last year, called Stephanie Daley. My wife is Jenny Allen, a journalist, who has been doing standup comedy, monthly. Jenny is beautiful — she captivates the audience with bits of our lives, including talking about her cancer, with great style and wit.” Feiffer beamed when he spoke of his family while eating a sandwich in his college office.

When the author started writing with children in mind, he set himself free and rediscovered a child within himself, still growing, with growing pains, and all. That’s why he still has a skip in his step.