I first read Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita on a balcony of the Hotel Metropole in Saigon on three summer evenings in 1971. The tropical air was heavy and full of the smells of cordite and motorcycle exhaust and rotting fish and wood-fire stoves, and the horizon flared ambiguously, perhaps from heat lightning, perhaps from bombs. Later each night, as was my custom, I would wander out into the steamy back alleys of the city, where no one ever seemed to sleep, and crouch in doorways with the people and listen to the stories of their culture and their ancestors and their ongoing lives. Bulgakov taught me to hear something in those stories that I had not yet clearly heard. One could call it, in terms that would soon thereafter gain wide currency, "magical realism." The deadpan mix of the fantastic and the realistic was at the heart of the Vietnamese mythos. It is at the heart of the present zeitgeist. And it was not invented by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, as wonderful as his One Hundred Years of Solitude is. Garcia Marquez's landmark work of magical realism was predated by nearly three decades by Bulgakov's brilliant masterpiece of a novel. That summer in Saigon a vodka-swilling, talking black cat, a coven of beautiful naked witches, Pontius Pilate, and a whole cast of benighted writers of Stalinist Moscow and Satan himself all took up permanent residence in my creative unconscious. Their presence, perhaps more than anything else from the realm of literature, has helped shape the work I am most proud of. I'm often asked for a list of favorite authors. Here is my advice. Read Bulgakov. Look around you at the new century. He will show you things you need to see.

*An Amazon Best Book of 2020 So Far* Everyone's favorite dog is back in the much-anticipated follow-up to Bark, George from celebrated author-illustrator Jules Feiffer. When George's mother asks her pup to add one plus one, two plus two, and three plus three, George would rather eat, go for a walk, and take a nap. But soon George finds himself in a colorful dream about...numbers! Can George count his way out? Featuring laugh-out-loud humor and expressive and bold illustrations from acclaimed author-illustrator and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Jules Feiffer, this imaginative follow-up to Bark, George is the perfect read-aloud for children ready to learn their numbers.

The legendary Jules Feiffer presents his first noir graphic novel. Spiced with the deft humour for which Feiffer is renowned, Kill My Mother centres on five formidable women linked fatefully and fatally by a has-been, hard-drinking private detective. Featuring a fighter turned tap dancer, a small-time thug who dreams of being a hit man, a name-dropping cab driver, a communist off-licence owner and a film star with a mind-boggling secret, this band of old enemies congregates on a Pacific island to settle scores. Combining Feiffer's skills to draw us into this seductively menacing world, bluesy, fast-moving and funny, Kill My Mother is a noir-graphic novel like the films they don't make anymore.

Illustrated in black-and-white. This ingenious fantasy centers around Milo, a bored ten-year-old who comes home to find a large toy tollbooth sitting in his room. Joining forces with a watchdog named Tock, Milo drives through the tollbooth's gates and begins a memorable journey. He meets such characters as the foolish, yet lovable Humbug, the Mathemagician, and the not-so-wicked "Which," Faintly Macabre, who gives Milo the "impossible" mission of returning two princesses to the Kingdom of Wisdom.

Jules Feiffer delivers the tour de force of his illustrious career in this epic finale. In The Ghost Script, he plunges us into the blowzy, boozy world of Blacklist Hollywood, circa 1953: witch hunts, Reds, pinkos, starlets and a mysterious, orchid-growing mastermind, the renamed "Cousin Joseph", running a back-channel clearing house for victims of the entertainment world's purge. Stumbling his way through this maze is private eye Archie Goldman, a tough-talking good guy, always a step or two behind, in this story of plots, counterplots and goon violence. In this satiric assault on America's past and present, Feiffer shows how the arc of history evolves from starry dreams to thwarted and sold-out dreams.

Comedy / 2m, 4f, 1f child / 2 Ints. An acerbic comedy by the famed cartoonist and author of KNOCK KNOCK and LITTLE MURDERS. It's about a middle-aged journalist who has, at last, grown up - only to find he's trapped in a world of emotional infants. "A laceratingly funny play about the strangest of human syndromes - the love that kills rather than comforts. Feiffer's vision seems merciless, but its mercy is the fierce comic clarity with which he exposes every conceivable permutation of smooth-tongued cruelty ...Feiffer constructs a fiendishly complex machine of reciprocal irritation in which Jake (the journalist), his parents, his wife and his sister carp, cavil, harass, hector and finally attack one another with relentless trivia and dedonate deeply buried resentments like emotional land mines ...This farce is Feiffer's exclusive specialty, and it's never been more harrowingly hilarious." - Newsweek. "Savagely funny." - N. Y. Times. "A compelling, devastating evening of theatre ...the first adult play of the season." - Women's Wear Daily.

Jules Feiffer

Full Length, Black Comedy

Characters: 6 male, 2 female

Interior Set

Depressed New Yorker Alfred Chamberlain is engaged to perky, can-do Patsy Newquist. As their wedding day grows near, Alfred finds himself embroiled in an urban nightmare not the least of which is his fiance's family, the possiblity of marriage without Faith, muggings and a sniper's bullet.

"Jules Feiffer, a satirical sharpshooter with a deadly aim, stares balefully at the meaningless violence in American life, and opens fire on it in Little Murders. Devastatingly lethal in some of its coldly savage comic assaults."-New York Post

"Fantastically funny."-The New York Times

Cousin Joseph introduces Detective Sam Hannigan, head of the Bay City's Red Squad and patriarch of the Hannigan family featured in Kill My Mother. Our story opens in the Great Depression when Big Sam sees himself as a truth-seeking patriot defending the American way against left-wing unionism. At the same time, he makes secret trips on behalf of Cousin Joseph, a man he has never laid eyes on, to pay off Hollywood producers to ensure that they make only upbeat films. Step by step, the secret of his unseen mentor's duplicity is revealed to him. Feiffer builds on his conversion to cinematic noir, bowing to heroes Will Eisner and Milton Caniff but creating a masterpiece that illuminates Hollywood and its role in producing the bipolar nation America has become.

Will Eisner (1917-2005) is universally considered the master of comics storytelling and is best known for his iconic comic strip The Spirit and for his seminal work A Contract With God. Considered the first significant graphic novel, upon publication in 1978 it ushered in a new kind of personal, non-super-hero genre of comics storytelling. Since then, Eisner went on to write and illustrate over twenty award-winning graphic novels. Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel by noted historian Paul Levitz celebrates Eisner by including not only unpublished and rare art, photographs, letters and sketches from the archives, but original interviews with creators such as Jules Feiffer, Art Spiegelman, Scott McCloud, Jeff Smith and Neil Gaiman, all of whom knew and were inspired by Eisner and have offered their support to help publicise this long-awaited tribute to a comics legend.

Adding to a legendary career that includes a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, Obie Awards, and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the National Cartoonist Society and the Writers Guild of America, Jules Feiffer now presents his first noir graphic novel. Kill My Mother is a loving homage to the pulp-inspired films and comic strips of his youth. Channeling Eisner's The Spirit, along with the likes of Hammett, Chandler, Cain, John Huston, and Billy Wilder, and spiced with the deft humor for which Feiffer is renowned, Kill My Mother centers on five formidable women from two unrelated families, linked fatefully and fatally by a has-been, hard-drinking private detective.

As our story begins, we meet Annie Hannigan, an out-of-control teenager, jitterbugging in the 1930s. Annie dreams of offing her mother, Elsie, whom she blames for abandoning her for a job soon after her husband, a cop, is shot and killed. Now, employed by her husband s best friend an over-the-hill and perpetually soused private eye Elsie finds herself covering up his missteps as she is drawn into a case of a mysterious client, who leads her into a decade-long drama of deception and dual identities sprawling from the Depression era to World War II Hollywood and the jungles of the South Pacific.

Along with three femme fatales, an obsessed daughter, and a loner heroine, Kill My Mother features a fighter turned tap dancer, a small-time thug who dreams of being a hit man, a name-dropping cab driver, a communist liquor store owner, and a hunky movie star with a mind-boggling secret. Culminating in a U.S.O. tour on a war-torn Pacific island, this disparate band of old enemies congregate to settle scores.

In a drawing style derived from Steve Canyon and The Spirit, Feiffer combines his long-honed skills as cartoonist, playwright, and screenwriter to draw us into this seductively menacing world where streets are black with soot and rain, and base motives and betrayal are served on the rocks in bars unsafe to enter. Bluesy, fast-moving, and funny, Kill My Mother is a trip to Hammett-Chandler-Cain Land: a noir-graphic novel like the movies they don t make anymore."

Illustrated in black-and-white. We're celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary (1996) of this modern kids' classic with a special hardcover edition! This ingenious fantasy centeres around Milo, a bored ten-year-old who comes home to find a large toy tollbooth sitting in his room. Joining forces with a watchdog named Tock, Milo drives through the tollbooth's gates and begins a memorable journey. He meets such characters as the foolish, yet lovable Humbug, the Mathemagician, and the not-so-wicked "Which," Faintly Macabre, who gives Milo the "impossible" mission of returning two princesses to the Kingdom of Wisdom...  

He's bad at sports and not much better at school, but Jimmy sure can draw terrific cartoons. And his dream, like that of his Uncle Lester, who writes flop Broadway musicals'is to be recognized for what he loves doing most.

1993 Books for Youth Editors' Choices (BL)
1993 Choices: The Year's Best Books (Publishers Weekly)
Children's Books of 1993 (Library of Congress)
1994 Books for the Teen Age (NY Public Library)
100 Books for Reading and Sharing 1993 (NY Public Library)

"The Phantom Tollbooth" is a universally beloved childhood classic. In the 50 years since its original publication, millions of children have breathlessly followed Milo's adventures in the Lands Beyond.
Now Leonard Marcus, a nationally acclaimed writer on children's literature, has created a richly annotated edition of this perennial favorite. Marcus's expansive annotations include interviews with the author and illustrator, illuminating excerpts from Juster's notes and drafts, cultural and literary commentary, and Marcus's own insights on the book. "The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth" also includes an introduction that shares the fascinating background on the book's publication--Juster and Feiffer met as young neighbors in Brooklyn, New York, and thus began a fortuitious collaboration on a project that would become an instant classic--as well as its enduring place in the world of children's literature.
"The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth" is the perfect way to honor a classic and will be welcomed by young readers and fans of all ages.

Subversive, funny, and effortlessly droll, Jules Feiffer's cartoons were all over New York in the 1960s and '70s--featured in the "Village Voice," but also cut out and pinned to bulletin boards in offices and on refrigerators at home. Feiffer describes himself as "lucking into the zeitgeist," and there's some truth to the sentiment; Feiffer's brand of satire reflected Americans' ambivalence about the Vietnam War, changing social mores, and much more.
Feiffer's memoir, "Backing into Forward," like his cartoons, is sharply perceptive with a distinctive bite of mordant humor. Beginning with his childhood in Brooklyn, Feiffer paints a picture of a troubled kid with an overbearing mother and a host of crippling anxieties. From there, he discusses his apprenticeship with his hero, Will Eisner, and his time serving in the military during the Korean War, which saw him both feigning a breakdown and penning a cartoon narrative called "Munro" that solidified his distinctive aesthetic as an artist. While Feiffer's voice grounds the book, the sheer scope of his artistic accomplishment, from his cartoons turning up in the "New Yorker," "Playboy," and the "Nation" to his plays and film scripts, is remarkable and keeps the narrative bouncing along at a speedy clip. A compelling combination of a natural sense of humor and a ruthless dedication to authenticity, "Backing into Forward" is full of wit and verve, often moving but never sentimental.
"Jules Feiffer's original and neurotic voice. . . . reinvented comics in the 1950s and made possible what's now called the 'graphic novel.' His engaging new memoir is told in that same witty and perceptive New York cadence, mellowed and laced with wisdom. He's an inspiration."--Art Spiegelman