Backing Into Forward
Page 41
April 2009
LAST PANELS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Howard Kaminsky nudged me into this memoir and, before I had a word written, got Nan Talese involved, thereby wrenching me out of my comfortable existence as cartoonist, playwright, and children’s book author and illustrator.
Overnight I found myself transformed into an overcommitted, overanxious memoirist who thought and thought, and remembered next to nothing. However, memory returned. Narrative and structure followed, aided, as always, by my longtime friend and editor Michael di Capua who knows what I’m trying to say and tells me when I’ve failed to say it. Painlessly.
And after Michael did his job, Nan Talese and Ronit Feldman did more of the same. Thank you all for helping. Thank you all for leaving me alone, finally.
And to my old friend Harry Hamburg who over half a century ago rescued me from basic training and has come to my rescue again by putting down reminiscences so bizarre that, without Harry’s witness, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking I made them up.
And to Dana Wyles, my typist of many years, who had to transcribe my audio-tape dictation from my handwritten manuscript (I never learned to type)—and, on those occasions when she couldn’t make out what I was saying, invariably improved my language.
Onward to my children and grandchild whose presence is a daily reminder that I have a wonderful life, although I take pains in this book not to show it.
And to Jenny who got sick, got better, created a brilliant performance piece out of her illness, and, through her courage and example, permitted us all to breathe normally again and return to our labors—of which this book is one part.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jules Feiffer’s Pulitzer-winning comic strip ran for forty-years in the Village Voice and one hundred other papers. His cartoons have been collected into nineteen books and have appeared in the New York Times, the (London) Observer, The New Yorker, Esquire, Playboy, and the Nation. He is the author of a wide range of additional creative work, including the Obie Award-winning play Little Murders, the screenplay for Carnal Knowledge, and the Oscar-winning short animation Munro. Other works include the plays Knock Knock (a Tony Award nominee) and Grown Ups; the novels Harry, the Rat with Women and Ackroyd; the screenplays Popeye and I Want to Go Home (winner of the best screenplay award at the Venice Film Festival); the children’s books The Man in the Ceiling, Bark, and George; and the illustrations for The Phantom Tollbooth and Which Puppy? by his daughter Kate, and Some Things Are Scary by Florence Parry Heide. Feiffer is a professor at Stony Brook Southampton. Previously he taught at the Yale School of Drama, Northwestern University, and Dartmouth College. He has been a senior fellow in Columbia University’s National Arts Journalism Program. Feiffer is a member of the Dramatists Guild Council and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Copyright © 2010 by Jules Feiffer
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.nanatalese.com
DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc. Nan A. Talese and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Portions of this work originally appeared in Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, On Writing, and The South Hampton Review.
Excerpts from letters written by Hugh M. Hefner and Edward T. Riley copyright Playboy and used with permission.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Feiffer, Jules.
Backing into forward / Jules Feiffer.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Feiffer, Jules. 2. Authors, American—20th century—Biography.
3. Cartoonists—United States—Biography. I. Title.
PS3556.E42Z46 2010
818’.5409—dc22
[B]
2009021933
eISBN: 978-0-385-53159-7
v3.0