Out of Line

"You'll be a dentist," says Dad. "Why?" I ask. "Because you'll be called doctor and you won't be called out at night." "I'm not sticking my hands down anyone's mouth. Yech!" DOV FEDLER was a laatlammetjie, born and bred in Johannesburg in 1940 just as Hitler was getting into his stride. A third child was not on his parents' 'want-list'. It was hard enough supporting two much older children and a printing business struggling to exist. When Dov was about three his mother had a 'nervous breakdown' which is when he remembers seeing his first pencil and knowing precisely what it was that he wanted to do with his life. There are no coincidences in Dov's life. He believes that a hand of destiny has steered his path. Many dramatic encounters (not with aliens or spirits, but with everyday people) have shaped him and he wouldn't have missed any of it. Dov's story is intensely personal and honest, with a powerful combination of humour, emotion and community history. OUT OF LINE attempts to do a few short things. It is an autobiography but it is also an attempt to capture a particular history of a specific generation; that of the Jewish baby boomers who descended from mainly Lithuanian stock. Dov has been a leading South African cartoonist for more than 45 years, and his earliest dream was to work for Walt Disney. He has always known his career was somewhere in drawing. He got to visit Disney World and could not wait to leave. He has never been to Europe or Brakpan and is a pure product of Johannesburg. The last on his wish list was to become a political cartoonist.