Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: A Norm Nathan show from March 1096 is what the vault of silliness has for us today. Let's call this one a jewel with jewels. Norm's guest was Jules Pfeiffer, cartoonist, author and playwright. His new children's book was a barrel of laughs, a veil of tears, kind of like the show. Norm and Jules get along famously, and it's an of you that will leave a smile on your face, even though it gets a tad political, which Norm acknowledges. They take calls from Eddie from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, John in Boston and Michael from Pennsylvania. Post interview and from a small sampling of the following hour, we hear from Pete talking Jazz and Rhode island broadcaster Jim Mendez chonce with a checklist of items for Norm to attend to and a forlorn Miriam and Sharon with the bone to pick. That seamlessly turns into a call from Kathy. Episode 179, a jewel with jewels, draws its way to your ears in three.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Two and one has been a very familiar cartoonist for a lot of years, writing about, well, the part that I like, that he writes about and does sketches on are the neuroses of human beings. And I think he's got us all pegged beautifully. He's also written plays and books. Novels. He's written plays. And you are an incredibly talented, multi talented kind of man, Jules Pfeiffer. It's a great thrill for me to be talking with you.
[00:01:35] Speaker C: Well, thank you very much.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: I just finished the new book. You have the children's book. Jules Pfeiffer, a barrel of laughs, a veil of tears, and it's unlike any other children's book I've ever looked at.
I really enjoyed it quite a good deal, and I know that you've got some very nice comments on that. I'm not sure. Is that the first children's book that you've written?
[00:02:00] Speaker C: No, I wrote my first three years ago, which was called a man in the ceiling, and it was more directly autobiographical content and more of a realistic book. A barrel of laughs is a sort of fairy tale, but kind of a wacky fairy tale.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: It's kind of a wacky fairy tale in the sense also that the narrator, among other things, the narrator, talks directly to the reader in a couple of things. Like there's a couple of sections like that where you take time off from writing and figuratively speaking, just to talk directly to the reader. And at one point you say the next of the last chapter. I've given this chapter that title because lots of times when I'm near the end of a book I'm reading, I can't help but wonder how many pages I have to go. So anyway, just so you tell the reader this, the next of the last chapter. I've never seen a book quite like that because I found it great. I wondered if this is not like Mad magazine, which appeals to readers on two levels. Number one is the adult who sees in it all kinds of political implications and all that kind of stuff, and the child who sees in it simply as kind of a fun comic book thing. Your book sort of reminds me a little bit of that.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: Well, except that there's no politics in this that I could find. Did you find any?
[00:03:29] Speaker B: Well, no, I guess maybe not.
What I found in it, I guess, was a lot of what I get a kick out of you for.
I'm trying to think of how to phrase it.
You make a great psychologist. I think you understand people's emotions and all of that. And a lot of the stuff that you have drawn deals with that, and a lot of it in the book deals with that, too.
[00:03:54] Speaker C: Yeah, it does, but it deals with it in another direction over the years. And I'll have been doing the cartoon, the Pfeiffer cartoon, 40 years come October that deals directly, confrontationally and satirically with people, with politics, with relationships, with whatever is on my mind.
And when I do my kids work, I don't want to be confrontational, I don't want to be combative. I don't want to point out what's wrong with kids because, my God, kids are in enough trouble as it is basically what these books try to do. And this is, as I said, the second is be supportive of young people who I don't think get nearly enough support in a world that is leaving support for anybody behind because it's bad politics. So what I'm trying to do.
[00:04:50] Speaker D: Is.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: Be to kids when I write what other writers were to me when I was a kid. That bolstered me when I was living in the Bronx and felt alone and isolated and needed some help. And I opened a book by accident and, my God, I would start to feel better and laugh and at the same time learn things. And I'm trying to return the favor.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Okay.
I just thoroughly enjoyed the.
I can hardly wait to give the book or lend it to a child.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: No lend. No lend. Give by.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: Give by. That's right. Give by.
How can an author make any kind of money? I got to lend books.
I know it's.
You already get kind of violent when the word lend is put out.
[00:05:38] Speaker C: That's when I stopped being ironic.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: I know and I thought you're going to. I thought you were going to hit me right off the head with that line.
I'll never use the word land in your presence ever again. Jules Pfeiffer. I saw a play of yours a few years ago, the little murderers, which played here in Boston. I thought it was just great. The thing that amazes me is the different areas that you do business on. Cartooning and plays and novels and kids books and all kinds of things.
You're my role model.
I can't understand how people, anybody can have talent along all of those lines.
[00:06:17] Speaker C: Well, actually, it should be reversed because actually what I really always wanted was my own radio show.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Stop.
Don't try to cotton up to me, fella.
[00:06:29] Speaker C: Well, I didn't want to do the commercials, but I like the idea of talking to people for a living and having them talk back. But not too much.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: And not take too much issue with what you're saying. I feel exactly the same way. You're 66.
I hate to say this, but you're in the same age bracket as I am.
[00:06:50] Speaker C: Well, I'm a year past the age bracket you just mentioned.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: Oh, you're 67.
[00:06:55] Speaker C: I was 67 in January.
[00:06:57] Speaker B: Well, I'm 70, so don't.
[00:06:58] Speaker C: Are you really?
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Don't flaunt me with it.
[00:07:01] Speaker C: God, you're an old guy, aren't you?
[00:07:02] Speaker B: I really am. It's a wonder I'm still working here. Well, I hate to give my age because I have a feeling somebody in Westinghouse, the company owns this station in half the world, and a lot of its washing machines, I think, will come in and start grabbing me by the nape of the neck and pulling me out of.
What right have you got to be among our employees?
[00:07:22] Speaker C: Well, you're owned by Westinghouse and my publishing house is owned by Rupert Murdoch.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: Really?
[00:07:29] Speaker C: So Walt Disney may end up buying us all.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Well, we're just tossing this off lightly. But that's a fear. Fewer and fewer companies seem to be owning more and more of the world. And I'm not sure I like all of that. My wife worked for the Boston Herald up to the time of her death a few years ago, and they own the Boston that is Rupert Murdoch. But if it weren't for Rupert Murdoch, that paper would be dead by now. So in a way, you can give him credit for some things.
[00:08:00] Speaker C: Well, it's my second go around with Rudett Murdoch because some years ago he bought the village Voice and found that nobody would listen to him, so he sold it. And I don't think it was really making enough money for him and he cared that much about it. But in any case, for two or three years I was in his employee, although we never did make actual contact with each other.
[00:08:21] Speaker B: Okay, I want to ask you very heavy, deep philosophical questions because I think that you're very much attuned into all the things that are happening in the world. Maybe I'm giving you more credit than you deserve.
[00:08:40] Speaker C: No, not at all.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Okay. I was going to say, if so, break my nose or hit me across the face or something like that. But what's your feeling now about politics and all the things that are going on? I don't want to get too political, but I'm kind of curious as to what you feel about the way the world is right at the moment. What a broad, stupid question that was. I'll just sit back while you're squirting away out of that one.
[00:09:04] Speaker C: Well, I think I'm parroting somebody I may have heard, or maybe I dreamed this a few days ago. A few weeks ago. But in regard to the upcoming election, November, paraphrasing Churchill, who said, democracy is the worst system except for all the others.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: And to that this other person replied, clinton is the worst candidate except for all the others.
And that's where I'm left now.
[00:09:34] Speaker B: Where do you live now? Do you live in New York?
[00:09:36] Speaker C: I live in New York. That's where I'm speaking from now. And it's four in the morning here. What time is it there?
[00:09:41] Speaker B: It's 07:00 in the evening, two weeks from next Thursday. Okay. We're way ahead of the entire universe. You know how New England is and that kind of stuff.
Is there some area that you have not hit that you would like to? Because I can't imagine that you've done so many things in so many areas.
[00:10:01] Speaker C: No, there are always areas I haven't hit, but usually the areas I haven't hit are the ones that I'm not much interested in, even though I should be. For example, there's a lot of interesting stuff coming out about the economy. I mean, I love these stories which shows that when the stock market goes down, it's because employment goes up.
[00:10:26] Speaker B: Isn't that enough to make you want to throw up?
[00:10:28] Speaker C: Well, and in fact.
But these are not issues I handle well, although actually I have just done a cartoon on it. But it doesn't come easily to me because anything dealing with economics, anything dealing with the market, anything dealing with money, anything for that matter, dealing with my own finances, I'm pretty much a disaster at so I can't nail it down the way I can other areas, and there are areas like that before I do cartoons, I prefer to feel passionate about a subject, and yet there are also the subjects out there about which I feel no passion that deserve comment.
And sometimes I let them go by and other times I force myself to pay attention to them. And at times it works and other times I'm rather sorry about it.
[00:11:20] Speaker B: You have, I think, a tremendous insight into.
This is going to sound like a text for some first year psychology student in college, but you really do, you have great insight into the frailties of human nature and all of that.
How did this come about?
How do they say you're an observer of the american scene or did you take a lot of psychology courses in college?
[00:11:47] Speaker C: I didn't go to college.
[00:11:50] Speaker D: But I.
[00:11:51] Speaker C: Read, but mostly fiction. But if you read Tolstoy, if you read Dostoevsky, if you read all of those Russians and Chekhov that people used to read and don't read as much anymore, my God, do you get psychology? Do you learn about people? Do you learn what to look for?
And then reading little Freud helps and reading some other analytic literature. When I was a kid, Eric from was very fashionable back in the 50s. Remember him?
[00:12:19] Speaker B: Yes, I do.
[00:12:20] Speaker C: He's not mentioned much anymore.
But you pick up stuff and not having gone to school, I was free to pick up as I chose. So it was kind of a smorgasbord of information and some of which stuck and some of which has disappeared and some of which I formalized into certain knowledge often which is wrong, but nobody catches me on it most of the time.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: When you're doing one of your great cartoons strips on dealing with kind of, again, the frailties of human nature. God, I said that again. I shouldn't have even said it the first time. It's such a cliche.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: Yeah, I've never repeated myself.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: But how do you go about doing that? What's it like for picking a subject to how you finish the cartoon?
[00:13:15] Speaker C: Well, you know what it's closest to. Since I never know until I sit down to work what I'm going to do. I know that I've got to do something. I know a deadline is approaching and anybody who works on deadlines knows that a kind of adrenaline takes over which forces you to think and forces you to operate and forces you to function, even though 2 hours earlier and certainly a day or so earlier you couldn't do anything.
And then I do what improvisers do, I give myself a line, an opening line. I give myself a subject, and then I kind of improvise with a pen and move along, not knowing where it's going and let it go in any direction it wants to. And if it's going to pick up steam, I will know it within a minute and a half or so. And if it's a dead end, I will know that, too. And then I move on elsewhere. But you do enough of this, and after a few minutes, you start getting into shape. It's kind of like exercise, and you start focusing in, and the brain starts operating. And sooner or later, you discover what was really on your mind, because it is a matter of plunging into your unconscious and dragging out what's in there and often doing it with your conscious, resisting like crazy. And you have to find it without a deadline.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: I guess it's the deadline that really pushes a lot of creative people into doing things. Otherwise, I just want you to kind of stare, lie there, and look at the clouds passing by.
[00:14:58] Speaker C: If I didn't, you mentioned all these other things I do, and I do them and I love them, but if I didn't have a weekly comic strip to do, I don't think I'd get out of bed because it wouldn't be a good reason.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Even though you've written all these plays and novels and all of that. It's the comic strip that's the engine that.
[00:15:20] Speaker C: It's the energizer. It's that tv battery that goes bumble. Still going, still going, still going. It's what makes me work, and also it's what leads to interest in these other things, because often what a play will be or what a book will be. Not the kids books, but other books will be, is something that I might have covered in cartoons but didn't cover well enough or long enough or in detail enough. And I'm interested in the subject, but I didn't know that until I did the cartoon. And then something starts plugging away at me, and I want to do something in broader form, because the cartoon, well, it's a wonderful form of expression for me, and I love it.
You can't, in six or eight panels, get into enough depth or detail to cover some of the things that I feel I need to cover. And so I have to find other forms to do that.
[00:16:16] Speaker B: Most of your education has been in the area of cartooning. You said you never went to comics.
[00:16:24] Speaker C: Well, I didn't get any education in cartooning either. I mean, formal education, except the best kind. I went to work for one of the great cartoonists of our time, a man named Will Eisner, when I was 16 years old. And he did a. At that time, this is in the mid forty s, nineteen forty six, to be exact. He did a supplement to Sunday newspapers in the form of a comic book, and it was called the Spirit, and has since become a legend among those who follow the form.
But I knew Eisner, will Eisner is his name, who created the feature and did the cartoon. I knew how good he was and how innovative he was and how he was one of my idols at the time, Milton Knife, who did Terry and the pirates being another one.
[00:17:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:17:16] Speaker C: And I would have considered it a great stroke of fortune to have come in contact with either one, much less working for them. And Eisner actually gave me a job because I was a groupie. I mean, he didn't like my work. He thought I had no talent at all. But nobody knew more about his stuff than I did. And most of the people in his office didn't have enough respect for him, so he hired me strictly as a fan.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Now, did he really tell you he thought you had no talent?
[00:17:47] Speaker C: Yeah, well, he didn't say I had no talent, but the samples I showed him he thought were useless.
And I think he was being kind.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: In one of the biographical sketches, I was just looking at it now.
It said you wrote scripts for him until you were drafted into the army at what you claim was a slight increase in pay.
[00:18:09] Speaker C: Yeah, that's not hyperbole.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: What about other satirical cartoonists through the years? One I'm thinking of, who came out of this area, who's out of Cambridge, was Al Capp, who did little Abner. Later on, he became, I thought, a very unhappy, wretched kind of right wing man. But when he was writing little Abner, a lot of his things were quite satirical. He wrote. I remember one cartoon strip that he did at one point about a young kid or somebody being. Going to Congress and proposing things like intelligent tests for senators, and cold campaign started up like, intelligence tests are illegal.
I forget senators should not take intelligence tests. This is subversive. That kind of. He did a lot of that kind of thing. Were you a fan of his at all or a fan of other cartoonists who did satirical?
[00:19:10] Speaker C: Cap, when I was a kid was a great hero of mine, and Little Abner was something I copied and followed. But Cap, a lot of people don't know, also wrote another strip. He didn't illustrate it, but there was a strip back in the late 30s that ran into the guess. But Cap wrote it, I guess, for the first seven or eight years. Collabian slats. Do you remember that one?
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Oh, yes, I do. I'd forgotten about that.
[00:19:35] Speaker C: And it was illustrated by a brilliant illustrator, magazine illustrator named Marie Bern Van Buren. And it was a marriage of two talents, wed so perfectly that one would have thought, as I did, that Van Buren had to have written that cartoon because the drawings matched the text, the script, the storyline, so beautifully.
And cap, in case of Abby and Slatz, wrote a sort of Preston Sturgis strip about small people in a small town, and did it beautifully and with great sensitivity and generally not satirically, as La Labna was. But I was a great fan of Abner satire until Cap shifted positions sometime around the McCarthy period and moved further and further to the right. And if you can call it, made. I think he moved further and further into. Well, I don't know what you'd call it.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: I'd call it fascism is what I'd call it.
[00:20:35] Speaker C: I wouldn't call it fascism so much as insanity. I mean, a kind of nutty right wing, because it wasn't based on anything.
And in the meantime, I grew up and became what I became, and he and I got to know each other and even developed a kind of something between a friendship and acquaintanceship. But I liked him, even though I didn't like what he stood for. And when little murders, my first play was at the Wilbur Theater in Boston in triumph for New York, it was just about to close. And Cap, if you recall, had a weekly television talk show at the time in Boston, and they taped it. And, in fact, the time that they requested me to be on would have been when my show was over. So there was no point in me going on. But in addition, when the producer called me, I said, look, I've been doing this show and I haven't read a paper in a couple of months, and al and I disagree very much politically now, and I'm not going to go on and get clobbered by. And so then I got a call from Al's daughter a day later requesting me, and I told her the same thing. And then Al called, and I don't know if you knew Al or ever spoke to him, but he had this kind of gaffor, which was very ingratiating, although it was never connected to a sense of humor, a little like Jimmy Carter's smile.
And he ha. You love comics, and I love comics. You come on and we'll talk about.
Well, you know, I couldn't very well turn down Al Capp, who had meant so much to me, whatever I thought of as politics.
Now, at that time, the year is 1967.
So I went on the show with some misgiving, but at the same time very flattered by them. And I'm standing in the wings, and the producer or the associate producer says, you'll go on. Right after Al's editorial alarm went off my head, I said, editorial? He said, yeah, he does this every week.
And Al goes on and he starts talking about an event that had taken place not recently, but actually three or four months earlier. It was a meeting in town hall, New York, the first meeting of anti Vietnam protesters in the arts, artists and intellectuals who had come together and to speak out against the war in Vietnam. And this was still early days in opposition to the war.
And this is old news, and there was absolutely no reason for Al to talk about this except that I was one of the sponsors, organizers of this meeting, and had spoken there. And Al talked about how these anti Americans had all spouted their pro communist nonsense, and one cop who was there for security purposes couldn't stand it any longer and started singing God bless America. And there was an outburst of applause from the audience, who couldn't stand mean, so on and so on. They mean stuff that never happened.
And I stood there livid, being but more angry at myself than I was at Al, because I thought I'd been sandbagged and I should have known it and I shouldn't have gone on. It was my fault. And trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do, I could walk off, walk out of the studio, but the show was being taped, and Al would cream me if I had walked out, and then there would be nobody to respond to him. So I knew I had to go on. And in those years, and perhaps now, I don't know, I haven't been tested recently, but in those years when I would lose my temper, I would also lose my voice. So I go out in this fit of fury and start to talk back to Al, and I'm speaking in this falsetto, which must have been close to high, was only dogs could understand what I was saying, and I was brilliant in my response, but nobody could understand what I was saying, including me.
And finally I calmed down enough for us to get into a real Donnybrook with each other.
And my fear that Al would cream me because I hadn't read a paper in a long time was misplaced because Al apparently had never read a newspaper or if he had it didn't really inform him. And what he did was a lot of McCarthyite leaping around. You'd nail him.
He'd make one charge. I'd actually know how to respond to it. And rather than rebut what I said, he'd leap onto something else. And we danced around that way, and that was the show. And when I went off, I went off very angry. He was very happy to have had me. He had a good time.
Although when I met him about six months later at LaGuardia airport, just bumped into him.
He let me know what he thought of me. He said I was a self hating jew.
Yeah. I think what he meant was I was a cap hating.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Yeah.
It's kind of ironic, I suppose, because I was always an LCAP fan with little Abner, and suddenly I felt he betrayed me. He spouted all this crap later in his life, and I thought, what happened to them? Did a liberal woman reject his sexual advances or what changes a guy like that so drastically? Maybe he wasn't changed. Maybe he was always like that.
[00:26:19] Speaker C: Well, I've got a story to tell you, which is kind of interesting.
I ran into him once again at an airport. I kept running into cap at airports, and he had just come up. This is during the Kennedy years, and he was very, very upset and very angry. He'd gone down a hickory hill where Bobby Kennedy lived. And the Kennedys, if you recall, used to invite all sorts of people to the attorney general's house to speak to groups and lecture them. Al was there to talk about humor and satire. And he said, his story to me was that he had been shown the back door, the servants entrance, brought in through the back, hadn't been given any dinner, put on stage to give his talk, took questions, and then, without being given a bite to eat, got sent back to the airport. And he was livid.
And for many, many years, I thought that's what changed him and moved him away from whatever Kennedy liberalism there was at the time, and Kennedy certainly wasn't. I mean, John F. Kennedy was not nearly as liberal as his two brothers were, as it turned out. But that was my assumption for a long time, until a year or two ago, I was at dinner with Arthur Schlazinger, and I told him this story, and he said, that story simply isn't true. I was the one who set up that dinner. I invited her. We got treated royally.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: Is that right?
[00:27:51] Speaker C: So I don't know what the story is.
[00:27:54] Speaker B: Let me just take a break for a few commercials. We'll get back to the commercials in just a moment. But first, anyway, we're talking with Jules Pfeiffer, who's socially oriented comic. They're not comic strips. I know somehow that doesn't seem to quite fit what we're talking about.
Drawings and all that just have been a pleasure to read through the years. And he's also done plays and books, novels. And his newest book is called a Barrel of laughs, a veil of tears, which is just a fun book for kids, but it's also a great book for adults as well. I've enjoyed it a lot, and apparently a lot of critics have enjoyed. I was looking at the New York Times review of it, which places it right up there and published by Harper Collins, which is no slouch as a book publishing place. So I would suspect that this must be at just about every bookstore in the entire universe. A Barrel of laughs, a veil of tears by Jules Pfeiffer. A very unusual book in that it features, well, it's unusual for a number of reasons, but it also features, of course, the text by Jules Pfeiffer and the drawings by Jules Pfeiffer as well. You have won Pulitzer Prize. You have won Circle of these critic Circle award, award for the Little Murders, which I saw back in 67, as you mentioned, playing at the Wilbur Theater here in Boston, which I just love. It's hard for me to imagine somebody whose talents reach out to so many different areas. Do you have a specific kind of schedule that you follow?
When do you decide, this is really so stupid. I'm going to say it anyway. What the heck? Because I'm interested in your answer.
When you're going to write a play or I know the strip has got a deadline, so you got to do that. And when you decide, I think I'll write a book now, or what kind of a schedule you have for your life along the many areas that you cover.
[00:29:57] Speaker C: I'm a thoroughly disorganized, undisciplined, unstructured human being and always have been.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: That's hard to imagine. If you were structured, would you write less than what you do?
[00:30:11] Speaker C: It's compulsion that drives me because I used to read the Paris Review magazine, this literary quarterly used to and still does, for that matter, have interviews with great writers of the month, and they'd all get up at seven in the morning or six in the morning.
[00:30:34] Speaker B: And.
[00:30:34] Speaker C: Work an hour before breakfast and then take a walk around the lake with a dog and then come have breakfast with a wife and then answer mail for a while and then go back and write and some more. And then meet with some Nobel laureates for lunch and on and on and on. And I used to figure out how anybody could work that way.
This is what real writers, real artists, real people did. But, my God, I would get up and I would never know from minute to minute what I was going to do. And also, I've got a family, and I'm very involved with the life of my family.
[00:31:14] Speaker D: And.
[00:31:15] Speaker C: And there's a kid to get to school and another kid to follow around the house and do whatever that kid wants.
It's just life that gets in the way of one's work.
As a matter of fact, one of my lines with my editor, my children's book editor is he will call invariably at dinner time or whenever it is that's inconvenient. I'll say, michael, you must forgive me, but every once in a while, children must get in the way of children's books.
[00:31:56] Speaker B: That's funny. Would you be willing to talk to people who are calling and who would like to talk to you?
[00:32:00] Speaker C: Oh, sure. Love it.
[00:32:01] Speaker B: Okay, the phone numbers six one seven is our area code of Boston. Phone numbers two, 5410 30. We're talking with Jules Pfeiffer, who's done everything in this entire world and in the way of books and plays and cartoon strips and investigating human behavior and all the kinds of things that make the rest of us look like dorks. So if you'd like to talk to my hero, Jules Pfeiffer, do give us a call. Two, 5410 30. Area code is six one seven. Eddie is on the line from Portsmouth. That's Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I assume is that we are ed. Okay, you're on the line with Jules Pfeiffer.
[00:32:42] Speaker E: Yes, Jules, I'm a bit concerned about Gary Trudeau's political cartoons. What do you think of them?
[00:32:49] Speaker C: You're concerned about them? Yeah, I'm pretty upset about have. Because of what I'm doing. I haven't really had a chance to keep up with them recently. What's going on?
[00:33:00] Speaker E: Well, he's slamming, in the cartoon side of way, certain candidates for the presidency.
[00:33:10] Speaker C: Well, what's wrong with that?
[00:33:12] Speaker E: What's wrong with it? Slamming him?
[00:33:14] Speaker B: Yeah, what is wrong with that?
[00:33:17] Speaker C: As long as he's slamming the guys I like to be slammed, I don't mind at all.
[00:33:21] Speaker E: Well, he's making them out to be black sheep.
Very unfair. And personal attacks. Personal attacks.
[00:33:32] Speaker C: Well, you know, I can't comment on it because I haven't seen it, but I think that.
[00:33:36] Speaker E: Check it out.
[00:33:37] Speaker C: I think one of the jobs of an editorial cartoonist, or satiric cartoonist is to be unfair and irresponsible.
The editorial pages are supposed to be responsible, and look how unhelpful they are.
[00:33:50] Speaker E: These are among other cartoons which of course, the children read and look at. But I'm particularly concerned about them.
Certainly a bad role model.
[00:34:02] Speaker B: Why do you think children will be soiled by looking at a Dunesbury cartoon stripper? Because it's right next to it.
[00:34:09] Speaker C: Eddie, I've got to take exception to what you're saying.
In the last few years, since I've been writing books for children, looking at the literature for kids that was written 50, 6100 years ago, it's generally on such a higher level in terms of what we expect of kids. The language is tougher, it's more literate, it demands more of kids. And while there's certainly some wonderful work being written for children today, a lot of it generally, in most of the work, kids are spoken down to. And I think that we've got to start raising the level of what we expect of kids and what we say to them, because they will rise to the occasion. Instead, what we've done is dumb up our television or dumb down our television, dumb down our books, dumb down our culture in general.
And it's rather disconcerting to see what passes for argument and debate these days.
[00:35:11] Speaker E: Well, you don't want children calling each other names and downgrading each other. You're talking about raising the level of respect and effect, and that's just contrary to what he's been doing.
[00:35:24] Speaker C: Well, I really can't comment on what Gary's been doing because I haven't seen it.
[00:35:28] Speaker E: Check it out. Because apparently you want to see the level of respect and attitude improved on a part of children. I'm happy you're in that mode because we need it so badly.
But in his case, this is why I'm concerned.
[00:35:49] Speaker C: Yeah, well, I wish I knew what you were talking about so I could meet you.
[00:35:55] Speaker E: Those are an assignment.
[00:35:57] Speaker C: Oh, my God.
At this hour?
[00:36:00] Speaker E: Contest with him.
[00:36:02] Speaker C: You know what?
[00:36:04] Speaker F: You want to raise the level he's done.
[00:36:06] Speaker C: Well, you know what? Trudeau is hardly the major problem in our times when we have a papucannon.
[00:36:16] Speaker E: Interesting you should say that, because he's his chief target.
[00:36:20] Speaker C: Well.
And you think he's being unfair to Pap Buchanan?
[00:36:24] Speaker E: Well, he's being unfair to the children.
[00:36:26] Speaker B: What do you think? Eddie, let me.
Eddie, hold on a minute. Let me ask you a question. When you tune into radio and talk shows, does it bother you that almost everyone is a conservative? Shows that the liberal position is almost never portrayed on radio talk shows? Does that not bother you? Or is it because you're conservative and you just assume the other side not ever be seen or heard?
[00:36:51] Speaker E: Well, we're talking about cartoons, which is.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: Well, okay.
[00:36:57] Speaker C: Can I ask Eddie a question?
[00:36:59] Speaker B: No, I've already hung up on Eddie. I'm sorry. I shouldn't do that. But he's rambling on and I just don't.
[00:37:06] Speaker C: Let me ask you something. Or have you noticed this? I started listening to rush limbo for the first time in a while during the Buchanan business. And are you aware of the fact that he and the other right wing radio guys are in, up in arms against Buchanan?
[00:37:21] Speaker B: I know that Buchanan is not popular in his own party in the. No, I haven't, I can't bear to hear.
[00:37:28] Speaker C: But it's fascinating that people who you might think would be for him are against him and they claim it's principal grounds. My suspicion is they think, why him and not me?
[00:37:40] Speaker B: Maybe that could be. I guess maybe. So let's go to John, who's in Boston. I think he wants to talk on the other side of the Doomsbury issue. John, are you familiar with Jules Pfeiffer's cartoons also? Okay.
[00:37:52] Speaker D: And just in this point of defending Doomsbury, and I've been watching it the past couple of weeks, and he has done what few politicians should have been doing and haven't been doing. And that's more than implying that Patrick Buchanan is a Nazi. And there are Deutschland u barales references in Dunesbury's cartoons and like, really raising to the level of Thomas nast of the century before. So I think it's well done as Dunesbury can go to excess. But I don't know. This other person must be a staunch Buchanan supporter. Can't appreciate the humor in it, of course, but there have been too many political pundits and reporters who are too friendly with Patrick Buchanan.
[00:38:43] Speaker C: But even among his friends, one of the jokes I remember hearing four years ago in the McLaughlin group when Buchan ran was, I forget which one of them, but said of his colleagues, of his peers on that show, said, pat's problem with World War II is he thinks the wrong side won.
[00:39:04] Speaker D: That's right.
After he won New Hampshire, he's going to invade Poland.
[00:39:10] Speaker B: That's offense. I haven't heard that line.
[00:39:14] Speaker D: One final thing. You were talking about Al Capp, and I remember his television show in the. He did one funny thing that stayed with me for years. And how people will give to anything. He had three or four very beautiful women outside the Boston Public Library with canisters collecting for the poor, fat, corpulent children of gross Point, Michigan. How much money he collected. Obviously a lot of money at the.
[00:39:43] Speaker C: Cap. One of the arguments he and I had on the air was that he thought the poverty program was a sham, that there really was no poverty problem in the United States. He really was on top of things. He and Eddie would have seen eye to eye on some things, I'm sure.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate the call. Take care. Bye bye. It's kind of funny because here on this station we have two conservative talk shows. One runs from seven to midnight, the other runs from midnight to five the rest of the week. And every now and then I'll say something liberal.
This is unusual for me to get into politics now because normally I think people ought to giggle and laugh during the night and not take themselves too seriously. So we don't get into politics. But every now and then I'll say a liberal thing. And the outrage from people who say, well, you don't allow the other side to speak. I mean, they speak for hours on end. This liberal side hardly gets any airing at all. So anyway, let's go to Michael in Pennsylvania. Michael, you're on the air with Jules Pfeiffer.
[00:40:46] Speaker D: Hey, Norman.
[00:40:47] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:47] Speaker D: First of all, I'm a time fan. I've been on your program three, four times. I'm the guy who writes plays, et cetera. We talked a number of times.
[00:40:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:56] Speaker D: What a delightful idea to have Jules sliper on your program. Thank you.
[00:41:00] Speaker B: Well, I've been a fan of his for a very long time, and I'm delighted that he was willing to come on the thing.
[00:41:05] Speaker D: Of course, he doesn't know. Maybe he's long forgot because he talked about being the village Voice for 40 years when he started, more or less. And the thing is, I had a poem, a long poem, so forth, which was in the Village Voice also between his cartoon way back then when I was at university still. And also Norman Naylor was writing columns like the White Negro.
[00:41:30] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:41:31] Speaker D: Can you talk about that period, so forth, and your relationship with Norman Nader? Because between you two guys, you really expanded my mind in terms of.
[00:41:44] Speaker C: Mailer was one of the backers of the voice, financial backers of the voice. The paper wouldn't have gotten off the ground without him.
The voice was put together by three men, essentially Ed Fancher, who was a psychotherapist, Dan Wolfe, who was Ed played the role of publisher, and Dan Wolfe was the editor, and Norman was one of the backers and wrote a column for them, not from the beginning, but pretty soon after the beginning. And it became such an item of controversy. Norman actually started the column because he didn't like the direction the paper was taking. He thought it was far too conservative and fussy and stayed, and he wanted to push it in a radical direction, meaning a maler direction. He wasn't talking about marxist radicalism or any other kind of radicalism, but his own kind of hipster radicalism at the time.
And he did a column, I think, called the hip in the square, which was sort of a guidelines for what later became the book advertisements for myself. And a lot of it was brilliant, and all of it was exciting. And as with everything by mail, he was just as happy that you disagree with him as agree with him, and he gave you cause to do both.
But I didn't know him, and I didn't meet him until sometime later. My first wife, who I didn't meet, who I didn't know until 58 or so, introduced me to him. She was a friend of his, but so I didn't know Mailer in those early years.
[00:43:29] Speaker D: Well, the thing is, that's something we assume sometime that because people are published together in the same magazine or newspaper, so forth, they assume that you have a private relationship together. But sometimes you send your stuff and so forth. And I was delighted to be published between. In fact, I'd like to get that page from the Village Voice. I understand they're having contemporary problem right now, so forth. They're going from a different publisher and all that kind of.
[00:43:53] Speaker C: Well, many of those columns, perhaps all of them have been published by mailer in various volumes.
[00:43:58] Speaker D: Yeah, there's the White Negro one, which I think was one of his.
[00:44:02] Speaker C: Yeah, the Whitewood Negro was a long essay, I think, that originally ran in partisan review, unless I'mistaken. And it was much too long for the village.
[00:44:13] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
But one of the things that, getting back to sort of cooperating, what Norman was saying about your work is how you have insights into the american psyche, and maybe it's urban thing, primarily, so forth and not really rural and what have you. But your understanding, so forth, with great insight and also humor, your dance character, which I always love, this sort of dance to spring type of thing, which is very much part of that. Hello.
[00:44:49] Speaker C: Yeah, well, when I was beginning in the middle 50s, what I brought to the cartoon was the sense that nobody was representing my generation in the area. Of humor or anything else or social comment up to that time, except for somebody who I hadn't heard of at the time, Mortzall, who had already begun on the west coast in San Francisco. But I didn't know about him at the time.
I didn't know that anybody was commenting on issues that were important to the generation I belonged to, which was the young, educated, post korean war generation.
And still at that time, the humor was basically bob hopes and red Skeltons and belonged to the older generation, which was fine for them, but had nothing to do with us. And until Nichols and may really came along on omnibus and then subsequent shows, one never saw a boy and a girl, a young man and a young woman having anything to do with each other that suggested they might have a sexual relationship. I mean, it was astonishing when you saw Mike and Elaine for the first time playing teenagers in the backseat of a car and they were talking about doing the real thing. Now, today, of course, that's all over tv, and there's much too much of it. But at the time, it's hard to remember the sexual repressiveness of the moment.
It was extraordinary.
[00:46:21] Speaker B: I'm going to have to take a break now. And then the news. Could I ask you, Jules, and maybe I'm posing on you, could you stick around for another hour with us?
[00:46:29] Speaker C: Do you?
I've got a daughter I've got to send off to school in the morning and another daughter who's got a segment on a tv show that's on in the morning. I've got to tape that.
[00:46:46] Speaker B: Okay. I'll tell you what. Let's do it again one other night, if you wouldn't mind, because I'd love to have you back again.
[00:46:51] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: And there are an awful lot of other people who want to talk to you, including me, but I really appreciate you taking the time to be with us tonight.
[00:46:58] Speaker C: Well, I had a ball.
[00:47:00] Speaker B: Hey, thank you very much and best of luck, you. And again, the new book. I'll talk more about it.
[00:47:06] Speaker C: Spend the next hour talking about the book.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:47:10] Speaker G: Norm Nathan. He's the talk of the town. Lift you up when you're down. Norm Nathan. R. W. Busy in Boston?
[00:47:26] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll take some calls. Just a little bit.
[00:47:27] Speaker G: Here's to Sir Norman of Napoleon. Them the man with the loins, red and hot, who laughs with his many listeners, whether itchy or thirsty or not.
Alas and Alax, Sir Norman, more alack. And no lad have I when I chuckle aloud in my night bed neighbors make such an audible sigh they're sure that I have a lover giggling so much as I rest but it's just you and me dumb birthday makes three. Thanks for the laughs. You're the best.
[00:48:03] Speaker B: That's a nice thing to say. Thank you very much.
[00:48:06] Speaker G: Shannon and I would like to thank you for being so entertaining and good.
[00:48:12] Speaker B: Well, that's a nice thing, Jim Mendies. Oh, yeah, Jim used to have a great jazz show on radio. Now. Is he working on television now?
[00:48:22] Speaker G: Yeah, he's the voice of channel ten, as we call him. He's a great guy.
[00:48:26] Speaker B: Oh, he does all the station breaks and stuff.
[00:48:29] Speaker G: Right.
I found out all this because I had bought an album called burning for Buddy, which is a buddy rich tribute album about a year ago.
[00:48:38] Speaker B: And Jim wrote the notes. Did he forgot?
[00:48:40] Speaker G: No, but I was talking about it at work and he got all excited. He was telling me how he used to have a jazz show back in the. It just clicked. And I said, well, did you ever meet Norm Nathan? And he said, oh, yeah, we go way back.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: No, that's right. There were a few of us.
There were a few of us throughout the country, as a matter of fact, who had jazz shows back then. So we all kind of got to know each other at that point. And certainly people close by did. Right?
I appreciate the greetings from Jim Mendies, Pete. And I thank you for channel ten is. What is that?
[00:49:15] Speaker G: W NBC?
[00:49:17] Speaker B: Wjar W-J-A-R. Okay, great.
[00:49:21] Speaker C: Oh, it's great to talk to you, Norm.
[00:49:22] Speaker B: Good to talk to you, Pete. Thanks for the information.
[00:49:24] Speaker G: Okay, bye bye bye.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: Jim Mendes. I'm trying to think. This is awful.
There was another guy who I really loved also who did a jazz show down at Providence. I wish somebody providence would call and tell me.
I feel awful that his name has slipped away from me. He became quite ill last time I saw him. He was in a wheelchair at the Newport jazz festival. And I'm not even sure he's alive now. But he and Jim Mendes were the two voices introduced.
[00:49:59] Speaker F: Rather a publisher who does those coffee table books. And he was extremely successful in only a short period of three years, you said. And also you mentioned a literary agent with a name similar to yours. A lady, I believe.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: Yes. Her last name was Nathan. The same as mine.
[00:50:20] Speaker F: Yes. And I hope you'd send those to me. The name and address for those people. I'd be grateful if you did. And that covers one item. Another.
[00:50:33] Speaker B: Okay, well, if you would give Steve Adams, who is our producer, if you give him your full name and address, I sort of know what it is but just to be sure, I'll mail it to you. I don't have the information with me at this moment.
[00:50:48] Speaker F: Well, no, not my.
[00:50:49] Speaker C: On the telephone.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: I have seven rooms at home, which are complete with all kinds of file cabinets and all that stuff.
[00:50:56] Speaker F: I know you have a secretary.
[00:50:58] Speaker B: That's right. I have a whole battery of secretaries. And I have 17 parts of the.
[00:51:03] Speaker F: Garage which contain all this. You're very prompt, and you write very well. It's brief, but it's to the point, and that's the way it should be. And now the other items are. Did you ever run your all radio program out in West Roxborough, Chester, Hill area?
[00:51:24] Speaker B: I don't know. I've done it for about four or five years now, so we've been almost everywhere. I would assume there, too, but offhand, I don't remember. I don't remember, Charles.
[00:51:34] Speaker F: We have a lovely library here, hall. And of course, we have a large high school. And then we have a place for the blind here on Center street. So you have three.
[00:51:46] Speaker B: Oh, I know the place for the blind. I've spoken there. That's Boston Guild for the blind, or.
No, I've talked here a couple of. Not the old time radio stuff, just kind of impromptu stuff and just meeting people there.
[00:52:00] Speaker F: Well, you see, if you do ever show this way, I get a chance to meet you, because I don't get around very well these days.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: Don't get around much anymore, I think, is the title of your song.
[00:52:13] Speaker F: But in any event, I'd be looking forward if that happens. And one final question, and I'm just curious, and it's none of my damn business, but I thought I'd ask you anyway.
[00:52:26] Speaker B: Ask me anyway, John. Say, that's perfectly all. Know it's okay.
[00:52:31] Speaker F: As such, as beyond your radio program and also the fact you're legend on our show through the mouth.
[00:52:41] Speaker B: I am. I'm a legend, and it's really a tough title to carry around.
[00:52:45] Speaker F: But what else do you do besides take care of the animals?
[00:52:49] Speaker D: What do you like to do?
[00:52:51] Speaker B: I like to read a lot. Well, I mean, between the program and between talking little speeches and the animals and fooling around. I fool around a lot. I like that. Sometimes I like to just lie on the sofa and stare at the ceiling and have fantasies plopping through my mind. I do a lot of that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I've got nothing really spectacular little.
[00:53:15] Speaker F: Garden or anything, now that we're going.
[00:53:17] Speaker D: To look forward to.
[00:53:18] Speaker B: Well, I used to have a garden. I used to chop wood and split wood and all that kind of stuff. I haven't done too much of that in recent years.
[00:53:24] Speaker F: Getting a little heavy for that.
[00:53:25] Speaker B: Well, I'm getting heavy because I don't do that much of it anymore. One sort of leads to the other.
[00:53:33] Speaker F: Well, you're right.
[00:53:34] Speaker B: I have a canoe. And when the weather gets a little warmer, I canoe down the Ipswich river, perhaps singing a song or something of that type.
[00:53:41] Speaker F: I must say that you're a gift to Boston. And I hope you stay on forever.
[00:53:47] Speaker B: I hope so, Dougas. I've got nothing else to do. If I'm not here, what else will I do?
[00:53:53] Speaker F: And I still feel peachy. And I hope you do, too.
[00:53:57] Speaker B: I do. I feel very good. And I thank you very much, Chauncey.
[00:54:00] Speaker F: Good night.
[00:54:00] Speaker B: Take care. Bye bye. That's my friend Chauncey, who's a very nice man.
Okay, we're going to talk with Robin. Just a minute. We'll talk with you. Also. We'll be around just for a little bit longer. To 01:00 and after the 01:00 news, Baprali comes with you. He'll be with you the rest of the night. But if we can talk, do give me a call.
[00:54:23] Speaker D: Two.
[00:54:24] Speaker B: 5410 30, Ericotis. Six one seven.
I hate to say it because it's so erotic, it sounds almost obscene. But here's a study. There's always a study. And you wonder how they went about this study. Well, maybe it never wondered how they went about this thing. Maybe you never cared. And deep down, I don't really care either. But it says a large study released this past day, Sunday. So this is really up to date.
Suggests that women who drink coffee are much less likely to kill themselves.
Although you wonder where they come up with this. If you drink coffee, if you're a woman and you drink coffee, you're not as apt to kill yourself as a woman who does not drink coffee and who sat around thinking of this kind of a study, what would I do? Probably the coffee people. I suppose that's true, wouldn't it? It would be to their benefit.
So that women would drink coffee or more people would drink their product. But the studies author cautioned that more research is necessary. But they have studied 86,626 female nurses over a ten year period, which would seem to be a pretty conclusive survey. Appears in the issue, the Sunday issue of the American Medical Association's Archives of Internal Medicine.
That's impressive by itself, isn't it? They could say anything in that you'd believe it. Researchers found that in the group in which nurses drank two. Oh, these are nurses in which nurses drank two or three cups of coffee per day. Suicides.
This is so silly. I mean, I know suicides is not a silly topic, but the whole idea of this study is kind of silly. Suicides were 66% less frequent than in the non coffee drinking group.
Those who drank more than four cups per day were 58% less likely to commit suicide than colleagues who did not have several cups, according to the study I'm reading down here. Is this sponsored by Sanka or Chase and sandbourne or chock full of nuts? Maybe they sanction this kind of thing.
This is a quote from Dr. Ichiro Kawachi of the Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
Coffee drinkers seem to do everything that seems to put them at risk for depression and suicide, but they are highly pretano. That seems like to be just the opposite of what we're talking. I'll tell you what we'll take with a study. This is what we'll do with the study so it doesn't land in the wrong hands.
Thank you very much.
And I suppose I was about to say something of a scene. I was trying to do a takeoff on that and it's going to come out totally wrong. Let's go to see Miriam and Sharon, and then we'll go to rob in Boston and Jay and all swell folks.
[00:57:41] Speaker D: Hello.
[00:57:41] Speaker B: How are you doing, Miriam?
[00:57:42] Speaker G: I'm very disappointed in you, Norm. You're supposed to make a date with me and you never call me back.
[00:57:48] Speaker B: I didn't call you back, did I? Michelle Pfeiffer was in town on a secret mission and demanded my attention. I guess that's probably why I never got to call you back. And I apologize for that.
[00:58:00] Speaker G: I really can't compete with her.
[00:58:03] Speaker B: Yes, you can. Of course you can.
[00:58:06] Speaker G: I have blue eyes and blonde hair, good figure.
[00:58:10] Speaker B: No, I think you're sensational. Miriam, I don't ever put you.
[00:58:14] Speaker G: I agree with you.
I think because you found a work you love.
[00:58:18] Speaker B: Well, I do that, too. And I think the point is you.
[00:58:20] Speaker G: Had a family you love.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: I do. I have kids I love.
And a life I find is very giggly. Anyway, I think that helps a lot, too. Don't take yourself too seriously.
[00:58:31] Speaker G: I know.
[00:58:32] Speaker B: I'm going to feed you some coffee, Kathy, till you give in to.
[00:58:36] Speaker G: Anyway, you know, I just want to tell you, what I'm telling you, of course, is the truth. So I don't know.
[00:58:41] Speaker B: No, I appreciate that. Hey, have a great weekend. I appreciate that.
[00:58:44] Speaker G: When am I going to see you again now? Friday and Thursday. I know I feel like I see you, but I don't even know when.
[00:58:48] Speaker B: I get on the no, not until next Friday.
[00:58:51] Speaker G: I don't even know what you look like.
[00:58:52] Speaker B: I'm incredibly handsome. I'll describe myself next weekend. I'm about 7ft tall, body of well tempered steel voice, grin, crooked smile, broad shoulders, slim waist and eyes that just penetrate into your very being. I've got to get going because I'm going to run right into the news. Take care, Kathy. Thank you very much for calling.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: There's a link below for Patreon where you can support the show and help with continuing the fun, closing the vault and leaving this world a little sillier than we found it for chomse cartooning, wacky fairy tales, great interviews, staring at the ceiling and fantasizing canoeing the Ipswich river whilst singing songs, the somewhat erotic 6117 area code antisocidal women, coffee drinkers, the AMA weird medical studies, the greater Boston Guild for the blind, Jim Mendez, Jules Pfeiffer and the man with an army of assistance to help with the seven rooms of file cabinets he has loaded with important info and to manage audience requests. Norm Nathan. I'm Tony Nesbitt.
