Word: passionella
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...pieces came out a few years ago, entitled Sick, Sick, Sick, and now Passinonella and Other Stories, a collection of four longer cartoon features, is also among us. They can be read, or rather looked through, in about a half hour apiece, and this is pretty quick considering that Passionella retails for $1.75 in paperback. But there is not much else to do except to plunk down even these enormous sums, unless you can borrow, steal, or arrange to be given the books, because Mr. Feiffer is a deft, knowledgeable and brilliantly witty cartoonist, satirist, and "observer," as they...
Sick, Sick, Sick is for the most part realistic, personal, homely; cast in monologue (interior and exterior) and dialogue; set largely in offices, coffee houses, bars, apartments. But in Passionella, the shy young men, the pony-tailed girls, the woman who sings folksongs "in the original ethnic," the man who says, "What I wouldn't give to be a conformist like all those others," are replaced by a "friendly neighborhood godmother come [by way of a television set] to bring you the answer to your most cherished dreams," and by little Munro, who was drafted into the army...
...Passionella is fantastic, allegorical, even, in one story, apocalyptic; less concerned with subtly-observed scenes from daily life among the in-group than with smashing examinations of institutions (Hollywood, the Army) and issues (the H-bomb). Both elements are present in each book, but they were better balanced in the earlier one. And the general absence of people whom Mr. Feiffer can regard with understanding affection is complemented by the lack of individuality of those there are. The small boys in Sick, Sick, Sick, and in some of Mr. Feiffer's subsequent Voice pieces have problems, and sometimes genuine pathos...