All The Answers
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5.0 • 6 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A 2019 EISNER AWARD NOMINEE FOR BEST REALITY-BASED WORK
A NPR BEST BOOK OF 2018
A VULTURE BEST COMIC OF 2018
A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2018
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018
A NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF 2018
WINNER OF THE PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 2018 GRAPHIC NOVEL CRITICS POLL
In this moving graphic memoir, Eisner Award-winning writer and artist Michael Kupperman traces the life of his reclusive father—the once-world-famous Joel Kupperman, Quiz Kid. That his father is slipping into dementia—seems to embrace it, really—means that the past he would never talk about might be erased forever.
Joel Kupperman became one of the most famous children in America during World War II as one of the young geniuses on the series Quiz Kids. With the uncanny ability to perform complex math problems in his head, Joel endeared himself to audiences across the country and became a national obsession. Following a childhood spent in the public eye, only to then fall victim to the same public’s derision, Joel deliberately spent the remainder of his life removed from the world at large.
With wit and heart, Michael Kupperman presents a fascinating account of mid-century radio and early television history, the pro-Jewish propaganda entertainment used to counteract anti-Semitism, and the early age of modern celebrity culture.
All the Answers is both a powerful father-son story and an engaging portrayal of what identity came to mean at this turning point in American history, and shows how the biggest stages in the world can overcome even the greatest of players.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An artist races to uncover and understand his father's unusual childhood before his memories are lost to the onset of dementia in this striking and tragic memoir. Self-presenting as a neurotic mess, Eisner Award winning Kupperman (Tales Designed to Thrizzle) dives into the (for him) unknown story of how his father Joel, a math whiz turned philosophy professor and author, had once been "manufactured" as the marquee child star of the hit World War II era radio show Quiz Kids. The show made Joel a star, but it was also a traumatic experience that turned him into an emotionally distant man and an uncommunicative parent. The narrative pivots between Kupperman's reconstruction of stranger-than-fiction moments unearthed from his father's repressed memory including the time Joel, a Jewish child on a show developed in part to combat anti-Semitism, met with rabid anti-Semite Henry Ford and his present-day attempts to get the story straight in the shadow of Joel's encroaching illness. Kupperman's varied angles, thick line work, staring seriocomic facial stylings, and sharp prose help turn an already incredible story into an electrifyingly fast-paced, yet intimate memoir about family secrets and the price children can pay for their parents' ambitions.
