Word: passionella
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1959-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Holding forth from behind a table in Barnes & Noble, Feiffer autographed his books (Sick, Sick, Sick, and his latest, Passionella), speedily reproduced many of his characters on request, and generally entertained the local menagerie with his peculiar blend of a genuine inquisitive interest in humanity and a quiescent abandon with which he was endowed as a native son of the Bronx...
Asked why he thought society was "sick," Feiffer replied, "I pick up a newspaper in the morning, and it's the only logical conclusion I can come to." (He is particularly disturbed about nuclear tests, radiation fallout, etc. as is evidenced by his section in Passionella entitled "Bomb.") "All I'm doing is counting heads...
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...
...verbal effects are easier to describe and reproduce, but his skill at drawing is equally impressive--though more influenced by Robert Osborn than his dialogue and narration are by anybody I can think of. A picture of Passionella in her swimming pool, with a vast expanse of bosom floating before her, says more than a thousand "Will you mammary me" jokes about America's breast-fixation. Mr. Feiffer uses a flexible combination of text and pictures thoroughly intermixed; nobody's else is quite like it, and no quotations simply of words will get across its effect. Even people...