For High Plains Public Radio Readers Club, I’m Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas. Today we are talking about What’s so Funny – A Cartoonist’s Memoir by David Sipress.
You know, I’d never heard of David Sipress before this book and at first, I had a problem. See, I like my memoirs where we go in order from the time they wiped the afterbirth off you until you got to your career – in that order. You don’t get order in this book. Oh, don’t worry. It’s all there, but it’s much like a cat – it’s everywhere.
You could literally open this to any page and start reading. It’s not in order. But soon upon reading, David became my friend. He made me laugh but he also made me aware of immortality and the fact that we are not immortal. We are all going to die. We are all going to become frail and you see, that is what this memoir is about.
It’s not so much about him, as I believe it is more about the fact that he wants to preserve who he is, meaning the memory of his family – who is father was; who his mother was; who his younger sister Linda was – because at the end of the book, they are all dead but David.
In the final scene of the book, he is in his sister’s apartment going through her affairs and lamenting the fact that he didn’t really know Linda. He talks a lot about how mean Linda was as a kid growing up and how annoying she was. He kept her distant but then after their father and mother died, she became pretty close to him, but again, David saw her more as an annoyance than a family member in need.
So, we see that when David and his wife are in the apartment, they are faced with the fact that it’s over. He is getting her affairs in order.
This book is a reminder that we don’t want to forget who we are because even the bad things that we don’t like about people shape us. For example, his father was always worried about money. David would always say, you’ve got plenty of money. Just call your broker and he’ll take care of it. Well, it turns out David himself worried a lot about money. And the fear of running out – he got that from his father along with many other traits.
I’m sorry that I didn’t have time to go into some of the many funny stories that I wanted to, but I felt like this is the message that we needed to convey in this book. Life is short and we shouldn’t take for granted the people who are around us because those people help shape us where we are. If we forget those people, if we forget those lessons, we could forget who we are.
That is why I believe that David wrote this book so that he would remember who he is and who his family was, to give us that same message to never take for granted the things we have, even the things in life that we don’t like. We may now find things to be annoyances turn out to be our best blessings.
If you want the funny stories, go out, get the book and read it. You’re going to laugh. You’re going to make a new friend. You’re going to meet one amazing guy in David Sipress.
For High Plains Public Radio’s Club, I’m Shane Timson in Colby, Kansas.
