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January 25, 2023

Almanac of Story Tellers: Jules Feiffer

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, in podcasts, and in books

Today is a story of January 26th

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    It is the 26th day of the year, leaving 339 days remaining in 2023.
   
    On this day in 1929, the cartoonist and author Jules Feiffer was born in New York.


    He is a whirlwind of story telling -- whether in drawings of pen and ink, in animated films, in movie screenplays, in graphic novels, writing scripts for the theater, or books for children, or for adults.

    But, perhaps, he is best known as a political cartoonist for one of the original underground newspapers, The Village Voice, but he stature became so renowned that he was syndicated across the country, and eventually became a monthly cartoonist for that old grey lady, The New York Times.

    For the most part, Feiffer's cartoons are as literary as they are artistic. They contain multi-panel drawings, often of a single figure, with dense lines of monologue. Any change in the figure's expression is subtle, and in correlation with the script.

    One common drawing is a woman, who would dance for the topic of the day. Sometimes it would be a political figure -- Richard Nixon was a hapless target -- with a satirical, often cynical, comment or position.

    One of his most famous cartoons was Good Bobby, Bad Bobby, in which Robert Kennedy would attempt to justify his often contrasting positions and actions in his public life.

    He has written some 35 books, plays, and movie scripts. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons in 1986. He also won an Academy Award for Munro, a short animated film that tells the story of a four-year-old boy who is somehow drafted into the army, and no one notices his age until he starts crying. 

    The cartoonist said it was a way to vent his rage at the obtuse way the military reacts to criticism, even of obvious wrongs.

    Feiffer lives in New York.

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