Jules Feiffer's cartoons ran for many decades in such venues as the Village Voice, New Yorker, and Playboy. He has been inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame, and was awarded won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his political cartoons.

Feiffer's Marriage Manual is a short book with cartoons on married life in the white middle class during the early 1960s (it was published in 1962). The cartoons are mildly amusing, and sometimes insightful, with characters who are neurotic, bored, depressed, and unsatisfied. The marriages depicted are bleak and joyless; Feiffer's view, in the words of another reviewer here, is that "marriages exist devoid of honesty, which is probably what keeps the couples married."

All this sounds like an unlikely combination for entertainment, but the right reader will find amusement borne of recognition. ( )

More of Feiffer's pointedly introspective cartoon essays on the human condition, which generally paint a bleak and joyless portrait. Not funny so much as insightful and illuminating, these cartoons focus on the state of marriage as Feiffer sees it. In his view, most marriages exist devoid of honesty, which is probably what keeps the couples married. ( )

http://home.comcast.net/~tonydal/wiseguy_reviews.htm ( )