Jules Feiffer

The award-winning cartoonist, playwright, and author delivers a witty, illustrated rendition of his life, from his childhood as a wimpy kid in the Bronx to his legendary career in the arts. A gifted storyteller who has delighted readers and theater audiences for decades, Jules Feiffer now turns his talents to the tale of his own life. Plagued by learning problems, a controlling mother, and a debilitating sense of fear, Feiffer embarked on his first cartoon apprenticeship at the age of seventeen, emboldened only by a passion for success and an aptitude for failure. He vividly recalls those transformative years working under the legendary Will Eisner, and later, after he was drafted into the army, his evolution from "smart-ass kid into an enraged satirist." Backing into Forward also traces Feiffer's love life, from a doomed hitchhiking trip to reclaim his high-school sweetheart to losing his virginity in Greenwich Village, and his road to marriage and fatherhood. At the center of this journey is Feiffer's prolific creativity. In dazzling detail, he recounts the birth of his subversive graphic novella Munro, his entree into New York's literary salons, collaborations with film greats Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, and Jack Nicholson, and other major turning points. Brimming with wry punch lines, slices of Americana, and pithy social commentary, Backing into Forward charts Feiffer's rise as an unlikely and incisive provocateur during the conformist fifties and the Vietnam and Civil Rights sixties and seventies.From the Hardcover edition.

Nine-year-old Julie loves animals. So much it seems that she's assembling a zoo in her room. But, what she really wants is a dog.

"Before your very eyes, this little redhead is about to do something extremely daring. And scary. And she'll show you--she'll actually document, step-by-step--exactly how she does it. First, she takes her daddy and makes him stand very still, then, balancing herself on his shoe, she wraps her arms tightly around a leg and starts her perilous ascent to the summit"--Publisher's blurb.

A boy, looking out a window of his home, thinks about the wonderful life of the boy who lives across the street.

To escape his mother's constant calling, Bobby imagines himself as a lion, a monster, and a race car, but when he pretends to be in space and hunger strikes him, he returns home, not quite himself.

When she cannot find her favorite stuffed toy, a young girl asks her mother, father, and older sister for help.

Prince Roger is sent on a quest, the purpose of which is to turn the carefree young prince into a sober man and worthy monarch. Roger gets everything wrong--except for the meaning of life, and that he gets right.

Although not very good at sports or in his schoolwork, Jimmy can draw and dreams of being a great cartoonist; that dream seems within reach when star athlete Charley Beemer suggests they create comics together.

"Elliot is a bachelor in his late thirties whose new girlfriend, Joanna, is everything he ever wanted in a woman--intelligent, beautiful, warm, independent--and yet terrifies him for precisely that reason. A twice-divorced real estate broker who likes order in her life, she is equally scared of the precariousness of having someone matter to her. Their uncertainties come to ahead when Elliot takes her to a party to meet "the guys"--Bobby, who works for Playboy; Phil, a recovering alcoholic; and Larry, who "is not comfortable with a woman outside the confines of a divorce court." The encounter becomes an initiation ceremony crackling with witty, barbed, and devastating dialogue that strips the two lovers of all pretensions, forcing them to confront each other anew in a painful awareness of their vulnerability"--Back cover.

"A novel-in-cartoons about a guy who doesn't want to be a husband anymore, doesn't want to be a daddy anymore, doesn't want to be responsible anymore--and who becomes what he really wants to be: a two year old!"--Inside front cover.