Feiffer, Jules

Related Category: American Literature: Biographies

(fī´fər), 1927–, American cartoonist and writer, b. New York City. He began publishing a cartoon strip in the Village Voice in 1956, maintaining his association with the paper until 1997; his strip continued until 2000 in several Sunday papers. Satirizing a world dominated by the atomic bomb and psychoanalysis, the comic strips were especially concerned with the breakdown of communication between government and citizen, black and white, and man and woman. Among his cartoon collections are Sick, Sick, Sick (1958), Feiffer's Album (1963), Jules Feiffer's America (1982), and Feiffer's Children (1986). He received an Academy Award for the animated cartoon Munro in 1961 and the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1986. Feiffer's best-known play is the black comedy Little Murders (1967); others include The Explainers (1961), a musical; Grown Ups (1981); and A Bad Friend (2003). He has also written two novels, Harry: The Rat with Women (1963) and Ackroyd (1977); screenplays, including those for Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Popeye (1980); and a number of children's books, including The Man in the Ceiling (1993), I Lost My Bear (1998), I'm Not Bobby! (2001), and A Room with a Zoo (2005).