Jules Feiffer died on January 17, 2025 at the age of 95.  Perhaps best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning cartoons, he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2004 largely based on his work in The Village Voice which ran for 40 years and was syndicated to more than 100 newspapers.  Feiffer also wrote more than 35 books, plays, and screenplays.  He won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 1961 with “Munro”, and he had retrospective shows of his work at the New York Historical Society and the Library of Congress which honored him for his “remarkable legacy from 1946 to the present, as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, adult and children’s book author, illustrator, and art instructor.”

Feiffer’s work in all these media is basically satirical turning a cynical eye towards modern society’s holy cows such as NYC’s Upper East Side liberals.  His best known play, “Little Murders” was produced in 1967 and was a flop, closing after seven performances.  It was eventually adapted into a movie in 1971 starring Eliott Gould and Marcia Rudd with walk-ons by Alan Arkin, Donald Sutherland, and Lou Jacobi, and won an Obie Award when it had a Broadway revival.

In contrast, “Knock, Knock” which ran for six months on Broadway in 1976 was an immediate hit and was nominated for a Tony for Best Play.  It’s a whacky story featuring two 50ish guys who have lived alone in a cabin in the woods for more than 25 years, in a definite nod to Thoreau.  They bicker endlessly but are the center of each other’s lives until they are visited by a genie equivalent and eventually by Joan of Arc.  The zaniness builds and builds and though it made me laugh out loud at several points, its slapstick humor eventually got a bit boring.  I think Feiffer was trying to make fun of both the emptiness of contemporary society as well as its desperate attempts to find solutions in the mystical worlds of faith, dreams, and visions.  Judd Hirsch was in the original cast as Wiseman the genie-equivalent, and he must have been very funny.

We bought an original hand-drawn Feiffer cartoon at a benefit many years ago.  It portrays a group of Hollywood directors brainstorming about a VietNam protest film featuring Elliott Gould and Jane Fonda.  It remains funny and timely all these years later on a wall in Cambridge.  I’ve also spent hours reading his illustrated version of “The Phantom Toll Booth” to my grandchildren.

Feiffer was a many of many talents who lived a rich and full life with three marriages, three children, and a faith that combined Judaism and Buddhism.  In a 2024 interview with Scott Simon, Feiffer’s response to a question about whether he was working on anything was “Of course. What a foolish question. Of course.”