Born in the Bronx, New York on January 26, 1929, Feiffer was the product of an unhappy marriage. "[My mother] was not meant to be married; there wasn't a moment of married life that wasn't cruel to her. She was a bohemian, but she lived in a time when independent women had to be much stronger and tougher of spirit ... in order to go it alone. She would have been most happy with a career and friendships and no sex life and no children.... [She] would have ended up in her 80s as a fairly delightful person with many, many friends, living an upper-middle class life ... instead of being in poverty for most of her mature years and embittered and alienated from her children who were furious with her, because they felt unloved."¹

"[My father was] a defeated man by the time I knew him. Maybe it was that, as...