January 26: Jules Feiffer

Cartoonist, novelist and playwright Jules Feiffer was born in New York on this date in 1929. He became interested in cartooning and illustration at a very young age and by 16 was working with Will Eisner on “The Spirit.” Feiffer’s own Pulitzer Prize-winning eponymous column ran in the Village Voice weekly for 42 years, featuring snippets of anxious monologue, revealing dialogue, self-analysis and rapturous proclamations from an ever-changing cast of urban characters who commented on current events and the overall human condition. Feiffer has written also two novels and several books for children, as well as the plays and/or screenplays Little Murders, Carnal Knowledge, Popeye, and A Bad Friend, among other works.

“I used to think I was poor. Then they told me I wasn’t poor, I was needy. Then they told me it was self-defeating to think of myself as needy. I was deprived. (Oh not deprived but rather underprivileged.) Then they told me that underprivileged was overused. I was disadvantaged. I still don’t have a dime. But I have a great vocabulary.” —Jules Feiffer