The book launch for David Sipress's memoir What's So Funny? was held at the Housing Works Bookstore in Lower Manhattan on April 3. This was the Sunday of MoCCA Fest 2022, so there was a conflict built into the schedule. A cab ride downtown from the venue to the bookstore probably could have accomplished one's aims. Still, I had such a successful Saturday at MoCCA Fest this year that I skipped Sunday's session altogether, even though I had paid for it in advance. In lieu of visiting the bookstore on Crosby Street, I decided instead to order by mail a signed copy from the bookstore. The outcome, as one might expect, is a copy of the book that is signed but otherwise impersonal.
June 25, 2022 Update: The memoir, which I have now finished, is a very honest and insightful portrait of Sipress's family and, ultimately, of himself. I was expecting a book about his cartooning career with some personal history thrown in, but the emphasis is just the opposite. The book is remarkably well written and the various family members believable while ultimately unknowable. Everything you've heard about humorists being serious people is borne out. Sipress comes to understand that his cartooning life comes directly from his personal life and in some ways is an extension of psychotherapy. I highly recommend this one to everybody with a sense of the comic, the seriocomic, or the tragic.
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