Jules Feiffer, award-winning political cartoonist and writer, dies at 95
Jules Feiffer, the Pulitzer prize-winning artist and writer, has died at the age of 95.
His wife, JZ Holden, confirmed his death to the Washington Post. He died of congestive heart failure at his upstate New York home on 17 January.
Feiffer was known for his weekly comic strip in the Village Voice called Feiffer. It was a fixture throughout the late 1950s until 1997 and syndication meant it appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, Esquire and the Observer.
“I didn’t set out to be a political cartoonist, but when I started work in 1956, it was after two years in the army,” he told the Nation in 2024. “The entire thinking class – or the young thinking class that I knew around my age group – were very cautious about ever expressing their opinions one way or another. People were afraid of getting into trouble or saying out loud what they really thought. And what I really thought was: “What kind of bullshit is this, and what can I do about it?”
The Guardian’s Duncan Campbell wrote that Feiffer “articulated the voice of perplexed liberal America”.
He was awarded the Pulitzer prize in 1986 for editorial cartooning. He also wrote the script for the Oscar-winning animated short Munro and was given a lifetime achievement award by the Writers Guild of America in 2010.
In 1961, Feiffer illustrated the children’s novel The Phantom Tollbooth, written by his friend Norton Juster. It has sold more than 5m copies and has been adapted into a film, play and opera. After its released in the UK in 1962, The Times Literary Supplement’s Siriol Hugh-Jones wrote that it was “illustrated by every grown-up’s favourite child-like pictures with the built-in sad sophistication”.
Last year, Feiffer also released a new graphic novel called Amazing Grapes, which was called “wondrous” in a New York Times review.
His other books included 1957’s Passionella, 1958’s Sick, Sick, Sick: A Guide to Non-Confident Living and 1977’s Ackroyd. He also wrote an autobiography, Backing into Forward: A Memoir, in 2010.
As a playwright, Feiffer’s credits included Grown Ups and the dark satire Little Murders, which he later adapted as a film for Alan Arkin’s directorial debut. He also wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols’s Carnal Knowledge and Robert Altman’s Popeye.
Feiffer spoke about his macular degeneration recently and how it was affecting his work. “The illusion is that I see as good as I’ve ever seen, which is not true, but it’s the illusion,” he said. “And I proceed with each drawing from page to page with complete confidence that it will turn out exactly as I want, which is not always the case. Failure is a big part of my process.”
He had also spoken about his next book which was titled My License to Fail.
When asked last year about his thoughts on where society is headed, he said: “I think it’s an endless fight, and it goes on. Endless fights go on endlessly.”
