Total Page : 464
Publisher : Nan A Talese
Publication Date : 2010 03 16
>> Voice of part of a generation
I grew up with Jules Feiffer though I am slightly younger and found this memoir completely engaging My first encounter with Feiffer was the paperback of Sick Sick Sick in which I encountered the story of an 11 year old who could not play baseball thought he still had time to correct the course of his life throws a ball in the air and in my memory it bonks him on the head Eleven years shot to hell It was my story exacerbated by a brother who was a GREAT baseball player and a jock dad Turns out it was Feiffer s story too sans the jock dad and brother and it is one of the riches of this book and so much for my memory the cartoon story is reproduced in the book it goes through the boy s hands and does not bonk him Feiffer spoke to me from our first encounter
As a professor of US cultural history I found the connections Feiffer had to others of similar political sensibility and artistic orientation a particularly rich story Backing into Forward ties together the Jules Feiffers Mort Sahls Lenny Bruces Mike Nichols and Elaine Mays etc of his times much as the Warren Beatty movie Reds particularly the interviews strewn throughout the film wove together the personalities of an earlier Greenwich Village era that of Eugene O Neill Mabel Dodge John Reed The Masses Max Eastman Big Bill Haywood etc Just as those progenitors faced the Palmer Raids and in some cases prison or deportation Feiffer and those with whom he identified or ceased to identify when they named names faced HUAC Joseph McCarthy and the blacklist Some things are ever thus even now Now Feiffer might have tea bags thrown at him I suppose
Those who lived through the Viet Nam War can hardly forget Feiffer s LBJ portrayals of which I would like to have heard more in Backing into Forward but his book Boom which I have used as a text in classes on the Cold War era summarizes the lunacy which gave us Mutual Assured Destruction as a strategic policy better than anything else available Was there ever a more apt acronym than MAD Feiffer acknowledges many motivations for what he attempted and accomplished two of which predominate becoming famous enough that women would rush to bed him thus making up for his lack of polish with women and changing the world He admits defeat on the latter score but seems to have become a happy husband and father by the end An engaging memoir not to be missed as with the reissues of his cartoons and graphic novels
>> The Cartoonist
The strength of this memoir lies in its beginning and middle Here the extremely talented Jules Feiffer clearly and often funnily tells of his youth angst ridden family life in the Bronx his mother was not his favorite person and eventual comical service in the Army and his early and constant drive to become a notable cartoonist Anyone with an interest in the comic strips of the mid part of the last century will enjoy the homage paid by Mr Feiffer to the then masters of this specialized but often ignored art form
A self described lefty or liberal in politics the author skates over the very real problems with communism in the 1930s and 40s when Stalin killed many a good artist along with tons of other innocents This however is his memoir and the life Mr Feiffer has led has been almost entirely in acute despair over ever present and suffocating conformists and conservatives
Meanwhile his reporting on abuses in the 1960s Vietnam and the Chicago riots lose some of their fundemtenal power when the main story he relates about the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago is on his getting Hugh Hefner out of the Playboy Mansion to the scene of the action And that one of his major actions in protesting Vietnam was helping to get a full page ad placed in Martha s Vineyard s local paper against a fellow resident of this enclave of the intellectual and political elite Nicholas Katzenbach of President Johnson s cabinet There is a reason the term limousine liberal was coined although Mr Feiffer probably never drove or rode in such a car
The end part of the memoir is of reduced general interest and is devoted to the final stages of Mr Feiffer s long and notable career and is mainly focused on his writing of children s books and of tending to beloved grandchildren
Fans of Mr Feiffer students of comics and those interested in American liberal politics/culture of the 1950s through 70s should buy and read this book
As an aside the jacket design by Michael J Windsor is perfect
>> A Raconteur s Terrific Memoir
BACKING INTO FORWARD reads like the memoir of a great raconteur who has the perfect story to capture the personalities events or issues that were in play at every important moment in his life In BIF Feiffer uses a chronological approach to discipline this raconteur s gift The effect is that his memoir which is written with both simplicity and elegance is a near effortless read Feiffer now more entertainer than provocateur has done all the heavy lifting for his readers
Feiffer organizes BIF into three sections These are Gunslinger which shows Jules growing up in the Bronx and laying the groundwork for a life as a cartoonist Famous which shows Feiffer s life and career from his emergence as the cartoonist for The Village Voice to his decision roughly 10 years later to stop psychotherapy and act like a grown up and Another Country which shows Feiffer in his new gig of screenwriter Carnal Knowledge and Popeye and author of 10 children s books
Since this is a raconteur s book a valid approach to a review is to identify a few chapters where Feiffer s stories were especially amusing or insightful While there are many terrific choices three of my favorites for each section of BIF include
o Road Movie Young Jules manages his anxieties as he hitchhikes to California
o Camp Gorgon Jules discusses the chain of command in the army as well as how he managed to hear and see Bobby Thompson s shot heard round the world
o Pony Jules explains his growing appreciation for the art of certain cartoonists as well as the irony of writing MUNRO his subversive book on the army mindset while working at an easy job in an army publications unit
o The Voice Jules describes the moment of his breakthrough at The Village Voice
o Lucking Into the Zeitgeist Jules analyzes the evolution of his style and subjects where the limitations of space backed me into introspection
o Spokesman Jules puts the essence of his reader on the page where he shows the codified communication by which my entire generation lived our lives
o Yaddo Jules discovers he has become a playwright
o Flop Why the first production of Little Murderers was a disaster
o Voiceless Feiffer lands in a better place after he loses his job and page four position at The Village Voice
Certainly the great subject of BIF is Feiffer s extraordinary career Interestingly this did not happen overnight with the publication of MUNRO his first book coming six years after its completion Those hoping to break through themselves will certainly be heartened by the story of Jules s perseverance and working smart strategy to publication
Highly recommended
