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Editors: How long have you three known one another?
Jules Feiffer: Too long.
Edward Sorel: Jesus, thirty, forty years? forty-five? fifty years?
JF: Oh, more than that. Since the fifties. So its fifty years. So this being 2003... I met Ed through Warren Miller, a wonderful writer who was also left-wing.
Eds: And how did you meet David?
JF: I met David because I was in the army in 51 to 53, stationed at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey with Harvey Dinnerstein. Harvey was a painter living in Brooklyn, had gone to Music and Art, was a longtime friend of Daves, and a number of artists, whom I came to know, really, through Harveya whole circle, all of whom had studied at the High School of Music and Art. When it was time for me to pick a high school (I was the best artist in P.S. 77). I knew that, basically, if I went to Music and Art, Id be destroyed by the competition. I couldnt stand up to it. But I knew I could fight my way through James Monroe, the high school blocks from where I lived, and kind of fake my way through and get out alive. So thats what I did. It was all out of fear and insecurity. Years later, when I met the artists who would have been there at the same time, I knew that I had made the right decision. My ego could not have held up under that level of talent. Its very important when youre young and vulnerable, and cant figure out who you are and what you are, to make strategic decisions based on the salvaging of ego. And mine was to withdraw.
Eds: Did you all grow up in the city here?
David Levine: Brooklyn.
ES: Bronx.
JF: Bronx.
ES: I, on the other hand, went to Music and Art and was always in the lowest tenth of my class. And I cant say I developed a sense of inferiority because I came to high school with a sense of inferiority. (Laughter) And its never left.
Eds: So did you meet David at Music and Art?
DL: No, we met at Horizon Publications. Somebody mentioned that you were there. You were bringing in some work, and we were both being talked down to by Irwin Leska. And I saw this magnificent display, four or five pages of statues in caricature and
ES: How dare he talk down to you!
JF: So thats where you met, at Horizon.
ES: I dont remember this at all.
DL: Well, because you didnt care.
ES: Yes, he was just somebody else who talked down to me. (Laughter)
Eds: And was there a social world that you then entered and saw one another in?
JF: Well, we were different social worlds.
ES: Jules made it big early.
JF: Early by you, but I was twenty-eight.
Eds: Thats early.
DL: And I remember the harrowing kinds of things they were putting you through to change the strip. Every week there was a new thing they demanded of you, and then finally you didnt recognize the strip, practically.
JF: No, not the Voice.
DL: This is before the Voice. This was when you were doing a strip which had to do with somebody getting a grant to prove that the world was indeed flat.
JF: Oh, my God. You remember that?
DL: Yeah, I thought it was a great strip.
JF: I was desperate. Everything else having failed, I drew up an idea for a syndicated strip which would be on the level of sophistication of a Peanuts or in the tradition of Crockett Johnsons Barnaby, which all of us venerated. In the 1950s, the Cold War and Cold War repression were very much in place. There had been witch-hunts through the New York City school system and other school systems, postal workers, others in civil service. One had to be very careful in those years of signing petitions, showing up at demonstrations. It really didnt matter if you were a Party member or even a fellow traveler. If you signed the wrong petition, it could lead to trouble on your job.
ES: I remember at Cooper Unionthis was 1948 and 1951there were a lot of petitions going around. And the artists, of course, signed all the petitions. It was different for the engineers. The engineers were on the fifth floor, the artists were on the sixth floor. And the engineers who had to work for the large corporations werent going to sign anything. The artists could afford to be brave.
JF: I dont know whether you saw yourself as an illustrator at that time or what your ambitions were, but in my case I was looking for work in the commercial world, trying to sell in syndication. Also, I held a series of jobs in little art studios where everybody but me seemed to be right-wing. I was warned one day by somebody who was my friend to stop bringing the New York Post to the office. The New York Post was then a liberal paper. And I had to stop bringing the paper to the office, just as I didnt dare read I. F. Stones Weekly on the subway. That was the sensibility at the time. I was full of fear about politics. I think perhaps I mainly stayed on the left because thats the only place I knew to meet girls.
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