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As readers of TomDispatch may remember, my mother, Irma Selz, was a professional caricaturist who drew for many of the newspapers and magazines of her time, ranging from the New York Post and the New York Times to the New Yorker. She was a true rarity of that era (other than Helen Hokinson, who also drew for the New Yorker, but died in 1949). I can still remember photos of those years from the National Cartoonists Society, filled with men and her. And in the 1950s and early 1960s, I can also remember some of those male cartoonists coming to parties at our house and, one night, her friend Irwin Hasen (mentioned by Robert Lipsyte in todays piece) climbing the stairs to my room I was already in bed, getting ready to go to sleep and drawing his cartoon character, Dondi, a World War II Italian orphan, for me on a sheet of paper. (Im sure I still have it stashed away somewhere in my closet.)
Sadly, I dont think I ever met the remarkable Jules Feiffer, no less had him draw a cartoon strip for me. He died relatively recently and is the subject of former New York Times sportswriter, author of SportsWorld: An American Dreamland, and TomDispatch regular Robert Lipsytes remarkable in memoriam today. Once upon a time, I sure did love his cartoons, reading him regularly in the Village Voice and later in life on the op-ed page of the New York Times. He caught something of our strange moment (actually, so many moments!) and world in a way that only a cartoonist could have done and with a comic style that was unforgettably his own. He caught our world, both humorously and politically, in his own unique fashion, and I hope hell be remembered for endless years to come. Now, let Lipsyte take you into the world of Jules Feiffer as he knew him. Tom
And Never
Surrender
Its been more than nine months now since my friend, famed cartoonist Jules Feiffer, died, a week before his 96th birthday after continually warning me that the evil spirit that had descended on this country was leaving him frightened and dispirited. He was glad, he told me, that he was old and close to the end in an era he considered more dangerous than the Civil War and more treacherous than the Reconstruction era. He had, he insisted, lost both heart and hope. I found that difficult to take too seriously. After all, hadnt he survived the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, the McCarthy-era Red Scare, the nightmare of Vietnam, and the Hard Year of 1968, while being dubbed the greatest political satirist of his time?
And as it happened, he died only a few days after finishing a graphic memoir, A License to Fail, which stunned me with its insight and wit. It reminded me of the shock and awe he had evoked 60-odd years earlier with his spindly cartoons in New Yorks Village Voice harpooning the hypocrisies of the government of that era, the developing war in Vietnam of that moment, and the self-delusions of his liberal audience, which still prevail.
The difference between Juless work then and now, however, was his emotional motivation. Anger had fueled his Vietnam Era cartoons. In the age of Donald Trump, he was, he assured me, fed up.
As he told me recently, Dr. King said the arc of history bends toward the good, but I say the arc is up for grabs and can move in directions we dont dare think about. Like civil war. Like the American dream becoming the American con job.
And yet, for all his pessimism, I found Jules at 95 a beacon of hope. Amid the rising negativity and growing passivity of our increasingly endangered world, he never gave up.
To combat his macular degeneration, he taught himself to look around corners as he drew. He could barely walk a block, but somehow, he still managed to do so. His heart, lungs, and kidneys were on speed dial to the ambulance corps and he was all too frequently hospitalized. Yet he just kept coming back.
Jules was anything but modest. He readily agreed with me that he was a national treasure. As I assured him more than once, I considered him my personal reward for getting old and distinctly an inspiration to keep on going. After all, by the time we met and became dear friends, I was almost 80 and he was almost 90. He agreed I was right.
For five years, from 2017 to 2022, Jules and his wife Joan lived in my small Long Island town, Shelter Island. Jules made me breakfast almost every Sunday morning. Always scrambled eggs. He was incredibly precise about it, as much an artist when it came to those eggs as he was when it came to his acclaimed cartoons and book illustrations. He broke our eggs with a quick rap of a knife, whipped them in a bowl, slid them into a pan, and then shoveled my portion onto a plate and cooked his for another 30 seconds. As the apprentice/acolyte, I made the toast. I brought the food to the table. He always insisted on doing the dishes. Then we talked for at least two hours. Actually, Jules did most of the talking and I, most of the listening.
He said things like, Maybe my old age and fartism need to be factored in here, but to my mind Republican politicians just arent American citizens. They dont care about their constituents or the Constitution. Like the tobacco executives, they feel that killing your kids and grandkids is just the cost of doing business.
Meeting the Masses
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