At 95, legendary cartoonist Jules Feiffer continues to amaze, both in the sense of astonish and perplex. His colorful new graphic novel Amazing Grapes, almost 300 pages, is said to be for middle-grade youngsters, ages 8-12, but I wonder about the appropriateness. A spinoff reference to the 18th-century hymn “Amazing Grace,” written by a repentant former slaver who found God and redemption, Feiffer’s title hardly reflects the hymn’s key lines, that the speaker once “was lost but now is found.”
Feiffer characters have typically been adults, more lost than found --neurotic, urban, nervous, on edge. An iconic shaky-line ink drawing from the 60s featured a disheveled young woman hanging onto a subway pole with the text “Mother loved me but she died.” Mother was always an ambivalent figure for Feiffer. Long dead, she still is, in Amazing Grapes.
The structure isn’t easy to follow because there is none other than random adventure by way of encounters with threatening creatures. Aside from Mommy, key figures include two of her three children – Pearlie and Curly - and a two-headed swan, sometimes referred to as a duck. Its two heads don’t agree. A third sibling, Shirley, the oldest child, is not carried off but does have absurd relationships, including a fiancé who keeps changing his name. Another major presence is the children’s guide dog, Kelly, who announces he’s actually a cat, and cannot guide. Minor presences lurk in page corners offering irrelevant remarks. One creature, the FEARY Queen, pops in and out. The children and Mommy seem to be on a “mission” but no one seems to know what it is.
Parents and fantasy animals can be scary, unreliable, aloof. Pearlie and Curly miss Mommy, a word that screams in bold colored letters across full pages. “Aargh” is another word writ large, the menacing sound of masses of murderous monsters. Childhood here seems more nightmare than dreams, “Mommy” at the heart of it all, imagines herself at times as an “Empress” and when the children wonder when and how they’ll see her again, she advises them just to sing “Amazing Grapes.”
Given a full-page review in the Children’s section of The New York Times Amazing Grapes is a remarkable visual accomplishment from a multitalented artist - playwright, novelist, screenwriter, Oscar winner, Comic Book Hall of Famer, art teacher and major voice of The Village Voice for over 40 years. Now suffering from macular degeneration, Jules Feiffer is determined to come to terms with his past fractured family life – a Memoir is in the works -- but he’s also out to demonstrate now his abiding love of the world of Imagination. And who knows -- maybe there’s a precocious soon-to-be psychotherapist out there among those potential middle school readers.
