Hello. This is Phillip Periman in Amarillo reviewing David Sipress' book, What's So Funny? for the HPPR Reader's book club. Sipress, a regular cartoonist for The New Yorker is also a native of NYC. He has written a memoir that engaged me as a reader in both worlds. Most of the folks I know who live in Manhattan came from places outside of NYC. Sipress notes in the very first sentence of his memoir that he was born and raised there! Our readers will quickly recognize what a different experience that is from being born and growing up in the High Plains region, which is one factor that makes Sipress' book interesting.
Another is his history of how he became a cartoonist. When I was a teenager in Amarillo High School, I loved going to my Aunt Saxie's because she subscribed to The New Yorker, and I could look at all the cartoons which was about all I was interested in at the time. Since then I have become a regular reader and recognize many of the cartoons Sipress uses to illustrate his memoir. He makes the point early on that he never thought of being a New Yorker writer or poet, but only a cartoonist. This was an early interest as Sipress shows us by displaying a note from his sixth-grade art teacher which reads: "To David Success as a Cartoonist."
Ignore Sipress' notion that he wasn't interested in being a writer. The quality of his writing makes it clear that he learned this skill, too. In much of the book, Sipress writes about his relationship with his father, a Russian Jewish immigrant who managed to open a jewelry store in midtown Manhattan and had clients of great wealth and fame. It delighted me to learn that Sipress as a ten/eleven-year-old was in the store for a few weeks every Christmas season. He met people like Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Burton, and one of Amarillo’s own, Cyd Charisse. Interestingly, her dad was a jeweler in our town. Sipress' relationship with his distant, laconic father can only be described as complicated and maybe why both he and his sister had serious emotional issues as adults. These are discussed with much detail in the book. Unfortunately, his sister eventually died of a deliberate overdose.
His mother is a constant presence and someone who constantly worries about Sipress. She was in his words " a wonderful artist" pianist, and singer, but these took a back seat to cleaning and organizing their apartment. But even more importantly she devoted her life ensuring that her husband had no disruptions when he came home from six long days of work and that her two children recognized how their "secure, privileged existence" came from their father's hard work.
In "What's So Funny", Sipress reproduces many of his cartoons with explanations of how his encounters with psychiatrists, his family, schoolteachers, and even funerals resulted in hilarious single drawings. Finding a funny caption to add to these wry drawings with what he calls "comic timing" made it possible for them to be published in The New Yorker and elsewhere.
Perhaps, the secret to this book is the photograph on the cover: Sipress cap pistols as an eight-year-old, his impeccably dressed father, hand on his teenage sister's shoulder as she stands behind David, and his mother with her tailored dress and handbag to his side. The perfect successful NYC clan, except the photograph without a caption does not reveal that his dad, the tallest person in it, is only five feet-two inches tall. I am sure if it were a drawing instead of a photo, Sipress with his immaculate comic timing would find a caption that would make us all laugh.
This has been Phillip Periman for the HPPR Readers' Book club.
