Hello Friends and Family,
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Jules Feiffer |
Now that I'm retired, one opportunity that has opened up is the freedom to attend cultural and intellectual events during the evening. When I was working, attending an activity in the evening would mean getting home late and getting to bed late which impacted my next morning — since I usually got up at 5:00 AM in order to work out and yet get to work on time. And with Arizona State University in nearby Tempe, I missed many interesting events. |
He is most famous for his cartoons, both political and non-political, which ran for some 42 years in the Village Voice but were syndicated and re-printed in many newspapers. He is 77 years old and although he looks like a 77-year-old man, his mind seems as sharp as a 20-year-old. He began cartooning at age six. In those days, he told us, the Sunday Funnies were large, richly drawn works of art and literature. A cartoon strip such as Flash Gordon would fill an entire newspaper page. Even in the daily paper, a single cartoon strip ran all the way across the page. So young Jules mimicked that style — and fell in love with the medium. He was desperate to be a cartoonist and got a job as an assistant to Will Eisner who was the cartoonist behind The Spirit. He wasn't very proficient at inking or backgrounds so he was a gofer. Of course, he got to know Will Eisner and eventually criticized one of his stories. Feiffer told us that he loved that comic and felt that Eisner was not living up to his previously established high standard. Eisner told young Feiffer that if he thought he could do better then to write a storyline for Eisner's review. It turned out that Eisner liked Feiffer's story, published it, then turned over the writing to Feiffer. |
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At the end of the lecture, he took questions — one of which was about his creative process. He said that when he sits down to draw a cartoon or write a story, he really doesn't know how it is going to turn out. He starts writing and drawing — and it sort of writes itself. I really identified with that because I feel the same way about creating my little Life After HP essays. I have a general idea of a topic and start writing and adding pictures — and before I know it, it is complete. |
But Feiffer may be selling himself short — because he shared with us a cartoon he had published recently. It refers to some Democrats' infatuation with Barack Obama, the junior senator from Illinois. The words can be sung to the tune Maria from West Side Story. What can I say, the man is sharp and his satiric wit is as strong as ever. And to think that I have been missing these opportunities — because of work. No more. |
Life is good.
Aloha,
B. David
P. S., All photos and text © B. David Cathell Photography, Inc. — www.bdavidcathell.com