RIP Jules Feiffer
I hadn’t thought of Feiffer in many years, but as a teenager I was a huge fan. I had several of his books of cartoons, and they were wonderful. He turned his satirical eye and his whimsical pen on the liberals of his day, gently and incisively mocking them, although I assume he was a liberal too.
I especially loved the leotard-clad Dancer, who namelessly and hopefully danced her interpretive dances to Spring, to Love, to whatever. I found this one – not necessarily his best, but at least it’s of the character:
Feiffer had reached the formidable age of 95 when he died. I know next to nothing about his later works, but it sounds like he kept pretty busy:
Meanwhile, back at the Voice, Feiffer still wasn’t drawing a paycheck — and wouldn’t for his first two decades there, even as collections like 1958’s Sick, Sick, Sick and 1965’s The Unexpurgated Memoirs of Bernard Mergendeiler made his style immediately recognizable across the country. Those collections introduced Feiffer to adult readers, but for the younger set he was the magical artist behind 1961’s The Phantom Tollbooth. More than 30 years after illustrating Norton Juster’s cult kids’ book, Feiffer returned to the genre as an author, with books like 1993’s The Man in the Ceiling (eventually adapted into a musical with Tony Award-winning producer Jeffrey Seller) and his 2010 re-teaming with Juster, The Odious Ogre. Recent years saw him return to razor-edged grownup satire in 2014’s Kill My Mother and 2016’s Cousin Joseph. His most recent book was a graphic novel for kids published in Sept. 2024, called Amazing Grapes.
Here’s one that’s still timely; I don’t know when it was published:
RIP.
I don’t recall ever doing a deep dive on his work, or intentionally seeking it out, but I was always entertained when I stumbled onto it. I vaguely remember being 13, or so, and finding something in a magazine and recognizing the artwork as similar to “The Phantom Tollbooth” and noticing the artist’s attribution in the magazine was the same as the Tollbooth illustrator’s name. I then sought out other works by Feiffer in the library and also liked what I found.
But I’d forget he was out there until stumbling onto something new by him, and really enjoying it. It was pure chance, but it was fun encountering Feiffer anew every decade, or so, like a surprise. Didn’t he also illustrate “Harrison Bergeron?*”
*ChatGPT says no. Maybe I’m just confusing Feiffer’s style with the drawings Vonnegut would sometimes include in his own works.
I never thought about it until re-looking at Feiffer’s dancer illustration thanks to neo’s post, but it looks a lot like how Schultz drew Snoopy dancing. Was Schultz doing an homage to Feiffer?