I just finished transcribing Alan Fern's interview of Jules Feiffer at the Cosmos Club in Washington last year, on the occasion of the McGovern award. It will appear in the Fall 2008 issue of the International Journal of Comic Art. Subscribe now!

Here's a sample, with Feiffer talking about bringing his portfolio to show to Will Eisner and being told his art was no good:

...But I had long ago established a habit of responding to unpleasant truths by not hearing them, or changing the subject, and I sure as hell was not going to walk out of this meeting with Will Eisner, my hero, with my tail between my legs, being told I had no talent. This was not the way this was going to end, so I started improvising and the only thing I could think of talking about was him and his work. Now here was a guy who had revolutionized comic book art and he had three highly crafted professionals in the other room who didn’t give a damn about his work. Who thought he was kind of out of date, and didn’t know anything about his career, and then he met me and I had a whole dossier. I knew everything he ever had done. I could talk about it not just as a little boy, but as a knowledgeable fan. He had no choice but to hire me as a groupie.

[audience laughs]

As you can see from the above scans of the program, Jules Feiffer was awarded the Cosmos Club's McGovern award last night. Mr. Feiffer gave a short overview of his career in comics strips, read a few pages from a memoir that he's working on which sounds very interesting to me, had a short interview with moderator Alan Fern and then took a few questions. I'll post in more detail when I have a chance to decipher my notes, but it was a great pleasure to see him get this award for the humanities. I had the opportunity to sit with him and discuss old comic strips too as he finished his scotch and he talked about his old friends like Bill Mauldin and Milton Caniff. I'll update this post soon!