Big Think Interview With Jules Feiffer | Big Think

Big Think Interview With Jules Feiffer

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Jules Feiffer:

Jules Feiffer is an award-winning cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter and children’s book author, and illustrator. From his Village Voice editorial cartoons to his plays and screenplays (including "Little Murders" and "Carnal Knowledge"), Feiffer has been one of America's most prominent satirists for over fifty years. The first cartoonist commissioned by The New York Times to create comic strips for their Op-Ed page, Feiffer has since shifted his focus towards writing and illustrating books for children and young adults.

He won a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award for his cartoons; an Obie for his plays; an Academy Award for the animation of his cartoon satire, Munro; and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Writers Guild of America and the National Cartoonist Society. Feiffer has taught at the Yale School of Drama, Northwestern University, Dartmouth, and presently at Stony Brook Southampton College. He has been honored with major retrospectives at the New York Historical Society, the Library of Congress, and The School of Visual Arts. His memoir, "Backing into Forward," was published in March 2010,

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: As you wrote your memoirs, which moment in yourrnlife was most fun to look back on?

Jules Feiffer: Well, look, I’m 81 years old. It’s got to be more than one. And it’s harder to define what funrnwas. I mean, there’s fun inrnprivate life, which is all sorts of things, including making out and sex. But this is a book that centersrnprimarily on career, although it does involve some of that other stuff. In terms of career, it was getting tornthe Village Voice and getting printed for the first time because I had beenrntrying, without success; to get into print for something like 4 ½ nearly fivernyears and nobody would touch me. rnSo, that of course was very exciting. And then after that, discovering that I was going to writernfor the theater and the trajectory that moved me into that area and how thatrndeveloped, and also how the excitement and euphoria that went with writing myrnfirst play.

Question: Which moment in your life was most challenging tornwrite about?

Jules Feiffer: Oh well, when you do this kind of work,rneverything is challenging, but probably the most challenging thing is gettingrnup in the morning and getting on with it because it’s so easy to stay in bedrnand not get on with it.

Question: How did you persist through rejection to get yourrnstart at The Village Voice?

Jules Feiffer: Well I had been trying to sell my stuff,rnwhich were books of satire, cartoon satire, which now would be called graphicrnnovels or graphic novellas, there was no such term at that time. And I wasn’t interested in labels. There were things I wanted to talkrnabout and write about in a satiric form and cartoons. This was at the height of the Cold War, the height of a formrnof domestic suppression where, in the days of Joe McCarthy, Senator JoernMcCarthy, and the Eisenhower Administration, liberals and left-wing people inrngeneral were basically driven from the debate. They had no place in the national dialogue, or if they did,rnthey were very, very cautious and careful about it and I had nothing to berncautious or careful about because my elders were afraid of losing theirrnjobs. I didn’t have a job. They were afraid of losing theirrnreputations. I didn’t have arnreputation. I had zilch. So, I had the freedom, whichrnunemployment gives you, and that was to behave as badly as I believed I shouldrnunder the circumstances. And therncircumstances were quite awful.

At the time, liberals didn’t understand that they had FirstrnAmendment rights. So, I was doingrncartoons in this narrative cartoon form about subject surrounding that and as Irnwas turned down by editor after editor at each publishing house, I began tornnotice on their desks this new newspaper called The Village Voice, which I thenrnwent and picked up and thought, well my god, these editors that were turning merndown all, whom tell me how much they like my stuff, but they don’t know how tornmarket it because nobody knows who I am. rnIf I got into this paper, they would know who I am. And when editors say, “nobody knows,”rnwhat they really mean is, “I don’t know.” rnAnd once they got to know I thought something might happen, and that’srnexactly what happened. I went tornthe Voice, I showed them my work, they loved it, they put it in the paper, itrngot on the editor’s desk, the editor’s say, “oh my god, he’s famous,” and theyrnpublish me.

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