New Yorker contributor David Sipress's What's So Funny?: A Cartoonist's Memoir affords many pleasures, but chief among them may be this one: his fans will at long last understand his proclivity for drawing fretful and harried couples, disappointed and controlling parents and analysands on therapists' couches.
At several points in his memoir, Sipress recalls his mother asking, "You had a happy childhood, didn't you, David?" What's So Funny? is essentially her son's long-form answer, his cartoons positioned throughout to reinforce observations he makes in the text. Sipress, born in 1947, grew up in a Reform Jewish household on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the son of an immigrant father, Nat, who owned a jewelry shop patronized by celebrities. What appears to be the American dream realized is offset by Sipress's home life, which featured an unstable older sister who quarreled regularly with her mother and was boundlessly indulged by her father. As for his mother's parenting style, Estelle seems to have played some of the same notes that sound in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint.
What's So Funny? is primarily about Nat and Estelle and the unusual place that Jews occupied in mid-century America, but it also offers a look at the artist's life. "I draw and write about what makes me mad, what I think is stupid, what confuses me, frustrates me, worries me, and above all, what makes me anxious," explains Sipress regarding his approach to cartooning. This matches his approach to writing this witty and alternatively dolorous and winsome memoir. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer