What's So Funny?
A Cartoonist's Memoir
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From a longtime New Yorker staff cartoonist, an evocative family memoir, a love letter to New York City, and a delightful exploration of the origins of creativity—richly interleaved with the author’s witty, beloved cartoons
A wry and brilliantly observed portrait of the budding young cartoonist and his Upper West Side Jewish family in the age of JFK and Sputnik. Sipress, a dreamer and obsessive drawer, goes hazy when it comes to the ceaselessly imparted lessons-on-life from his father, the meticulous, upwardly mobile proprietor of Revere Jewelers, and in the face of the angsty expectations of his migraine-prone mother. With self-deprecation, wit, and artistry, Sipress paints his hapless place in his indelibly dysfunctional family, from the time he was tricked by his unreliable older sister into rocketing his pet turtle out his twelfth-floor bedroom window, to the moment he walks away from a Harvard PhD program in Russian history to begin his journey as a professional cartoonist. In What’s So Funny?—reminiscent of the masterly, humane recall of Roger Angell and the brainy humor of Roz Chast—Sipress's cartoons appear with spot-on precision, inducing delightful Aha moments in answer to the perennial question aimed at cartoonists: Where do you get your ideas?
A Dysfunctional Family Portrait: From a migraine-prone mother and a meticulous jeweler father to an unreliable older sister who helps rocket the family turtle out a twelfth-floor window.From Harvard to The New Yorker: Follow Sipress’s journey as he walks away from a Harvard PhD program in Russian history to pursue his dream of becoming a professional cartoonist for America’s most celebrated magazine.A Father-Son Story: Navigate the complex, funny, and poignant relationship with a father who imparts ceaseless lessons on life, love, and the meaning of money from behind the counter of his jewelry shop.Mid-Century New York: A vivid love letter to an Upper West Side childhood in the age of JFK and Sputnik, filled with the sights, sounds, and anxieties of a bygone era in New York City.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
New Yorker cartoonist Sipress (It's a Cat's Life) draws on his gift for evoking the predicaments of human nature to tell beguiling stories about his life and career. Born in 1947 to Russian Jewish immigrants, he relates how he took to drawing as a precocious boy in New York City, cutting out and pasting his own cartoons into his parents' copies of the New Yorker by the time he was in fourth grade. Steered by the high expectations of his hardworking father and doting mother, he graduated from Williams College and spent two years as a grad student at Harvard before dropping out to pursue his dream of being a cartoonist for the New Yorker—eventually making his first sale to the magazine in October 1997. While Sipress hoped this would satisfy his "lifelong quest" to convince his father that he was "a success," his father died two months later ("truly bad timing on part"). Weaving in his impeccable wit and wry cartoons, Sipress illustrates his relentless pursuit to produce work that "express what everyone is thinking and feeling," all while offering amusing insights into his creative process: "I draw and write about what makes me mad... and above all, what makes me anxious." The result is a delightful jaunt through an inspiring artist's mind.
