"David Sipress's engaging, illuminating, and hilarious memoir will
perhaps clarify what dark forces are at work when it comes to becoming a
cartoonist rather than a podiatrist, a billionaire tech mogul, or
someone who is deeply into collecting owl figurines. And if it doesn't,
you will love it anyway."-- Roz Chast
From a longtime New Yorker staff cartoonist, an evocative family
memoir, a love letter to New York City, and a delightful exploration of
the origins of creativity--richly interleaved with the author's witty,
beloved cartoons.
David Sipress, a dreamer and obsessive drawer living with his Upper West
Side family in the age of JFK and Sputnik, goes hazy when it comes to
the ceaselessly imparted lessons-on-life from his meticulous father and
the angsty expectations of his migraine-prone mother. With wry and
brilliantly observed prose, Sipress paints his hapless place in the
family, from the time he is tricked by his unreliable older sister into
rocketing his pet turtle out his twelfth-floor bedroom window to the
moment he walks away from a Harvard PhD program in Russian history to
begin his life as a professional cartoonist. Sipress's cartoons appear
in the story with spot-on precision, inducing delightful Aha! moments
in answer to the perennial question aimed at cartoonists: Where do you
get your ideas?
