The award-winning cartoonist, playwright, and author delivers a witty, illustrated rendition of his life, from his childhood as a wimpy kid in the Bronx to his legendary career in the arts.  A gifted storyteller who has delighted readers and theater audiences for decades, Jules Feiffer now turns his talents to the tale of his own life.  Plagued by learning problems, a controlling mother, and a debilitating sense of fear, Feiffer embarked on his first cartoon apprenticeship at the age of seventeen, emboldened only by a passion for success and an aptitude for failure. He vividly recalls those transformative years working under the legendary Will Eisner, and later, after he was drafted into the army, his evolution from “smart-ass kid into an enraged satirist.” Backing into Forward also traces Feiffer's love life, from a doomed hitchhiking trip to reclaim his high-school sweetheart to losing his virginity in Greenwich Village, and his road to marriage and fatherhood.  At the center of this journey is Feiffer's prolific creativity. In dazzling detail, he recounts the birth of his subversive graphic novella Munro , his entrée into New York's literary salons, collaborations with film greats Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, and Jack Nicholson, and other major turning points. Brimming with wry punch lines, slices of Americana, and pithy social commentary, Backing into Forward charts Feiffer's rise as an unlikely and incisive provocateur during the conformist fifties and the Vietnam and Civil Rights sixties and seventies. What critics seemed to appreciate most about Backing into Forward was its disregard for convention. Feiffer relates pathetic tales from his childhood without reservations or unnecessary dramatization; he frankly admits his lack of feeling for his parents and moves along. He states his youthful desire for fame but then discusses notable characters from the 1960s and 1970s as if they were just people from the neighborhood (which, in many cases, they were). This honest, but ambling, style annoyed the critics who wanted a more substantial account of Feiffer's life, but by and large, all were charmed by his lack of pretension or regard for what anyone else thinks his memoir (or life) should be. *Starred Review* Feiffer is masterful at self-analyzing the skinny Jewish kid from the Bronx who grew up during the Depression, whose sister was a Communist, and whose distant cousin Roy Cohn was a Red-baiter, while he himself was full of insecurities but fortunate enough to “luck into the zeitgeist.” Part of his fortune was a talent for drawing, which saved him from local bullies and an overbearing mother, offering him a venue for revealing himself. Now in his 80s, Feiffer looks back on a life and career of misdirection. His formative years were spent with legendary cartoonist Will Eisner and a society of “comic strip roustabouts.” Service in the army made a satirist of him as he began to develop a wonderfully subversive tilt of mind. Living in Greenwich Village, he suffered years of rejection before landing at the Village Voice in its infancy, where he worked for eight years with no pay but lots of exposure. With verve and, at times, speaking directly to the reader, Feiffer recalls life and work with Mike Nichols, Al Hirschfeld, Alan Arkin, Jack Nicholson, and others. He offers social commentary and memorable moments from career and family life as he moved from cartooning to screen and playwriting, to authoring children’s books, all the while maintaining a wry perspective that shows in the cartoons interspersed throughout this wonderful memoir. --Vanessa Bush National Jewish Book Award Finalist! "Resonant, self-­lacerating and frequently hilarious . . . . The voice in Backing Into Forward is not spry, not pretty energetic for an old person, but youthful, full of insouciance, vanity and playfulness. While other accomplished men bronze their success or dip it in amber, Feiffer treats his own as one big, wonderful caper.”  — The New York Times Book Review “[ Backing Into Forward ] succeeds in sounding like the best of Mr. Feiffer’s cartoons: funny, acerbic, subversive, fiercely attuned to the absurdities in his own life and in the country at large.” — Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “Writing with wit, angst,  honesty, and self-insights, Feiffer shares a vast and complex interior emotional landscape. Intimate and entertaining, his autobiography is a revelatory evocation of fear, ambition, dread, failure, rage, and, eventually, success.” — Publishers Weekly , starred review “Feiffer is a fantastic raconteur, a thoroughly engaging narrator of his life, whether recollecting 1950s Greenwich Village and Brooklyn, his false starts at love and sex, his failed first marriage, his (happy) remarriage or parenthood. However entertaining his anecdotes are, nothing is more absorbing than the passages in which Feiffer talks about his struggles and triumphs as an artist. It's fascinating to read about hi