A review by rabbithero
Backing Into Forward by Jules Feiffer
3.0
I feel in love with Jules Feiffer at the age of 10, when I read the Phantom Tollbooth for the first time. A huge part of who I became is because of his influence. Around 2003 or so I got to meet him, very briefly, at a comicon where I was selling and he was guest of honor. I worked up the courage to introduce myself, and handed off a pile of my self-published zines. He tossed them aside absently, almost coldly, and ushered me along. I was crushed.
Since then, I spoke of him in couched terms, so extreme was my disillusionment. I'd comment on how unpleasant he was, but how his art still was meaningful to me, as though those things in tandem proved I had secret insight, and not wounded youthful pride. But as I think back on that encounter, I realized something: a contribution I made to a book called Spark Generators, was solicited from, and by a big name publisher. They were were looking for comics where people were going to talk about their influences, with Jeff Smith included, under a Will Eisner cover. And I was to be included?
How did they even know I exist?
I did my strip on Jules Feiffer.
I mention all this because this memoir reminds me of that experience, of the coldness I perceived, and its perhaps-not-actual truth. This memoir is the work of a fallible man, who is a little self-involved, a little name-droppy, with huge-ass mother issues, and too high an opinion of himself. But that's sort of the point. That which I saw as coldness could have been an bad lunch, or an aggravating issue with his over-bearing mother. He could have gotten me published in Spark Generators, and thought nothing more of it. I'll never know.
But in reading this, I see him not as this legendary guy who's "actually a total asshole" (as I would describe him in my anst-ridden, know-it-all youth, more for show than for anything else), but instead as Jules Feiffer, a good-natured derp, though persnickety, stuck in his ways and proud of his pedigree, whose kind of an name-dropping asshole just like the rest of us.
A memoir, like its author and its reader, flawed.
Since then, I spoke of him in couched terms, so extreme was my disillusionment. I'd comment on how unpleasant he was, but how his art still was meaningful to me, as though those things in tandem proved I had secret insight, and not wounded youthful pride. But as I think back on that encounter, I realized something: a contribution I made to a book called Spark Generators, was solicited from, and by a big name publisher. They were were looking for comics where people were going to talk about their influences, with Jeff Smith included, under a Will Eisner cover. And I was to be included?
How did they even know I exist?
I did my strip on Jules Feiffer.
I mention all this because this memoir reminds me of that experience, of the coldness I perceived, and its perhaps-not-actual truth. This memoir is the work of a fallible man, who is a little self-involved, a little name-droppy, with huge-ass mother issues, and too high an opinion of himself. But that's sort of the point. That which I saw as coldness could have been an bad lunch, or an aggravating issue with his over-bearing mother. He could have gotten me published in Spark Generators, and thought nothing more of it. I'll never know.
But in reading this, I see him not as this legendary guy who's "actually a total asshole" (as I would describe him in my anst-ridden, know-it-all youth, more for show than for anything else), but instead as Jules Feiffer, a good-natured derp, though persnickety, stuck in his ways and proud of his pedigree, whose kind of an name-dropping asshole just like the rest of us.
A memoir, like its author and its reader, flawed.