Daddy's Cap Is on Backwards by Bil Keane Publisher Out Of Stock Mass Market Paperback - (June 1996) Reading level: Ages 4-8 Customer Comments Write an online review and share your thoughts with other readers! Avg. Customer Review: 4.5; Number of Reviews: 29 A reader from Houston, The Republic of Texas , March 3, 1999 Keane is too doctrinaire I think that many of the reviewers have missed the point that Bil(l) Keane has been following the same outdated left-wing intellectual formula since the start of the Cold War. Each of his one panel cartoons are so filled with subtexts and post-Leninist commentary on the decay of capitalism that one is almost compelled to shout, "Hey, get with the rest of the world. Socialism is dead." Trying to pawn off its virtues in the form of a benevolent family is a little too obvious. One is reminded of the Socialist Realism school portraying Stalin (good old Joe the Georgian) dancing and patting the little children on the head. I feel for the FC (FC was the old State department license plate code for the old USSR (coincidence, I think not)) kids, forced to spout obscure, neo-Brezhnevick sayings through pouty lips when they could just be watching South Park. At least Uncle Roy is a reminder of Beria and serves as the one reminder of the failure of perfectionism. A reader from Exit 315, Virginia. , March 3, 1999 Circus Maximus and the Truth Hertz Donut To paraphrase the Times review of Mathew Brady's photographs of the dead of Antietam, if Mr. Keane has not lain the swollen corpses of our suburban PTO meetings and cries of "Not Me" at our breakfast tables, he has certainly done the closest thing to that. The elderly, ferocious Bil holds the syncophantic mirror under the unfrosting nose of post-Seinfeld Amerika and declares all mores defunct and expurgated. Mr. Keane follows the travails of a country without mystery, without science, without theatre; through a morass of deeply etched black dotted lines. Yeats said that it was better to feel thorns than never see a rose, and this turgid sampler of Mr. Keane's epic sesquiology is certainly a crown of thorns - - a crown of thorns, on backwards, and most likely marinated in pisghetti sauce. As Ebert's character of Zeman Barzells would put it, it is indeed Mr. Keane's Happening, and it freaks us outre.

clehmanhaupt@nytimes.com from New York , March 3, 1999
A penetrating look at the American psyche
Bil Keane's work is an amazing pastische of modern angst. From Thelma's silent scream, and her subsequent haircut, to Dad's constant fear of aging, this is a portrait of a uniquely American hell, one from which escape is impossible.

Keane's depecition of a childhood filled with conflict and rage, the near sexual banter between Dolly and Jeffy, their constant teasing and bragging shows the perils of sex among the young, a land where ever blood ties are not a barrier.

Mom and Dad are the prototypical patriarchs of the dysfunctional American family. Their only talk centers around their children, yet they feel increasing estranged from them. Whatever sexual interests these people have has been submerged in the interests of a fragile family unity. When they do express their sexuality, it is of a desperate, clinging sort, where they express their desperation in frantic lovemaking. Using sex to explore the outer regions of their emotional torment.

This book moves the work of the early 80's novelists Bret Easton Ellis and Jay McInerney into the complex and troubling dilemmas of moving into the staid middle class suburban life, where those desperately clinging to the verities of middle class life and middle management are the only things holding the fragile family unit together.

It is the best of Arthur Miller set in the the staid, seemingly tranquil middle class.

Daddy's Cap on Backwards is an illustrated glance into the dark soul of the American family. A look at a doomed world of frustrated parents and adolescent sexuality, in a moral climate reaching Tennessee Williams Cat on a Hot Tin Roof set in the cyber world of the late 1990's.

gleth@idt.net from Brooklyn, NY , March 3, 1999
Castration or De-CAP-itation?
Not since the work of Jane Gallop has the phallus been so masterfully deconstructed. Representing the final blow to the Nom du Pere, the title "Daddy's Cap is On Backwards" suggests the power of the infantilized Other to name back while transforming the work of representation itself. Indeed, Keane reverses a crucial scene from David Copperfield: whereas young David is forced to stand with his back to his peers, faceless, with a sign naming his crime pinned to his back, here Jeffy and friend offer their "backs" and "backsides" in subversive rage. They reveal the truth about the phallus: not merely veiled, or "capped," it is in fact on "backwards," which is to say that the power of the phallus rests ultimately on the subjugation of what is anatomically "behind" it. Brims aft, Jeffy and friend suggest a different way to read: the anus, like an asterisk, points the feminist and queer reader in a different direction.

sheltone@yahoo.com from New York, NY , March 3, 1999
An unflinching look at Realism in the New Millenia
Wow! What else can be said about Bil Keane's unflinching look at the problems of the forthcoming millenium through the emotionally violent squared circle of "Family Circus." And what a circus life has become with the antiheros "Not Me" and "Ida Know" running rampant through our lives as though there were no repercussions. The sadness of PJ is apparent through his "Waiting for Godot"-like refusal to speak, almost Communist in its nature. Daddy's sudden appearance and disappearance through the early days of PJ's existence surely account for some of the depression inherent in every last strip. The relationship each character has with Grandfather would be hysterical if it wasn't so emotionally shattering. And Mother with her recent quest for a new hairstyle represents all that is wrong with nineties materialism and the century in general. This crass me-first mentality is apparent in Dolly and Billy's continued behavior of not learning to share, no matter what the cost to those around them, as well as themselves. The humiliations they have piled on Barfy the dog are too numerous to list here. We can only pray the rest of the world can learn from their mistakes in time. God save us all.

A reader from Arlington, VA , March 2, 1999
Mort Walker meets Hubert Selby Jr.
While I can understand the thoughtful and incisive comments other readers have posted about DADDY'S CAP IS ON BACKWARDS, I'm afraid I just found Keane's unflinching one-panel approach to gritty kitchen-sink social realism a bit much to take. Beneath the anodyne surface and the Soylent Green gags, Keane's real point is much like Sartre's -- namely, that hell is other people. I also don't think it's stretching things to compare the "Jeffy" series of panels to Todd Solondz's HAPPINESS, or even to Hubert Selby Jr's LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN. Clearly, Keane shares those artists' essential belief that once we become sexual beings, we are damned; that "the innocence of childhood" is a fool's paradise that is best appreciated through a nostalgic haze. In drawing after drawing, Jeffy shows the signs of a painfully emerging self-knowledge that may mirror Keane's awareness of his own mortality. "Ida Know" and "Not Me" look more than ever like classically Freudian denial mechanisms, as Jeffy tries desperately to put off the initiation into dreary, hopeless adulthood that he knows is looming ever closer.

In short, I would have liked DADDY'S CAP a lot more if I had been able to restrain my own hard-fought tears from rolling down my cheeks as I turned the pages. Some truths are just too much for most of us to handle, and Keane knows those truths intimately.

pburnett@agconsult.com from Atlanta, GA , March 2, 1999
A Gaze into the Abyss
We do not simply read "Daddy's Cap is on Backwards", we get the uncomfortable feeling that, like a single, unblinking eye or an invasive camera lens, Keane's brilliant strip is looking back at us, taking in all that is prosaic and trivial about our lives and spinning it on its axis.

The cover itself is disturbing. Daddy's cap is indeed on backwards - he stares ahead, eyes blank behind his Coke-bottle lenses, the scene awash with the harsh, bright colors so often tortuously rendered by Keane's brush. Daddy doesn't notice the darkling sky, the dying leaves in the bushes behind him, Billy and Jeffy underfoot. He is drawn ever-forward, zombie-like into the future.

I give this book high praise, but I don't know if I will be able to read it again. It will be a long time before I will be able to rid myself of these images.

A reader from los angeles, ca , March 2, 1999
cartoons are real good!!!@@!
i dont know what you people are talking about but these cartoons are good and dolly is mean but pj is the best funny kid

A reader from Atlanta, Georgia , March 2, 1999
Bill Keane is a menace to Somalia
While Bill Keane may enjoy the momentary spotlight with his "rock 'em shock 'em" stle and urbane wit, he's gonna land hisself in hot water with his "racy" remarks on somalia and somalians as a whole. Why in the name of god would Bill Keane have everything the somalian beggar say printed in unreadable gibberish? And why of all things make him a cripple beggar? Furthermore, where those nunchucks he was carrying, or was it a bonge? I just don't get this humor anymore. Mary worth never had bonges on her cartoon. Heck, matlock doesn't even have bongs on his show, and his shoes are real nice. I'm very upset a bout the granpa character too. Giving an otherwise loveable character like granpa an unholly nervous tick just broke my heart. And the drawing was shocking! To have him barely clothed in front of the children, and his hands shaking right near his "you know what". He looked like some kind of sicko. Keane used his talents to display the leathery maw of and old sick man!The closeup of his mouth was too much for me. I'll go back to mary worth if this keeps up. Why, I wet myself I was so angry.

A reader from Los Angeles , March 1, 1999
Genius
I always hated Family Circus. Boy do I feel stupid now.

A reader from College Park, Maryland , March 1, 1999
Economical Comedy
The several dollars spent on this handy little book is a lot cheaper than the $1,654.79 needed to collect all the cartoons contained inside from their original newspaper runs. All your favorites are here: from "Mom, I stepped on a nail!" to "Mom, I stepped on a nail again!" to "Mom, I stepped on a nail '78!" to "Mom, my lockjaw continues to worsen!" to "Mom, surely Soviet Man is superior to Joe Six-Pack." This collection also includes the cartoons the defeatist Keane wrote during the Spring of '42, when he was convinced that the Japanese would soon conquer the United States. Billy's Shinto shrine, and his stirring oration on the Meiji period, will bring joy and wonder to even the most hardened patriot. This is not to say Keane was a collaborator; to the contrary, when the defeat of the Japanese was assured, the Family Circus crew immediately returned to the jingoistic hijinks that had been their trademark during the long guerilla war in the Phillipines following America's defeating of the Spanish in 1898. Progressives should fear not, however, for the Family Circus has always advocated forward looking policies like forced sterlization and the confinement of the insane and dysfunctional to dark facilities so as not to disturb the producing classes. What we'll really remember, however, is not the politics, but the love; as Billy declared in 1934, "Even though Daddy lost his job, I still love him, only not as much as before." And we love you, Billy.

Monty Markum from Steamwood, IL , March 1, 1999
First Looks Can Be Deceiving
On the surface, Keane's work appears to be nothing more than a superficial, lighthearted romp through some sort of mytho-realistic version of the American nuclear family. A light chuckle, or "aw-shucks" is about all one would expect to find in the reaction to this underappreciated giant's work.

But delve below, into the murky depths of the subconcious. Dare, if you will, to read between the frames, to see around the picture-bubble world and one finds a dramatic, painful portrait of the American family, caught in the jaws of the bear-trap that is 20th century capitalism.

How else can one interpret these children, in this "Family Circus" who blame their failures and malicious doings on the ghostly "Notme" - a comical representation of the oppressed masses of the disenfranchised of 20th Century America. Like their parents, amasing material goods in a suburban wasteland, the children foist off their troubles on the invisible "Notme", just as father and mother leave the invisible future generations to deal with the fruits of their despoilation of American culture.

Some may call Mr. Keane a mediocre cartoonist, but not I. I have seen the truth as he meant it to be seen.

brothernotme@paradise.com from Remote Armed Compound, TX , March 1, 1999
A Manifesto For The New Millenium
My brothers and sisters, the time has come, the stars are right, and our Bible has arrived. The publishing of Brother Keane's lastest holy work will be remembered as a day of holy ecstacy, fasting, and self-flaggration with special twigs. Praise the Maker for his Divine Inspiration! Death to the unbelievers, the unwashed, the unroundheaded! Eternally shall our pantheon be that of the Great Family Circus.

A reader from San Francisco, Californai , March 1, 1999
Postmodernism and postcolonialism in post-fun Keanism
Spiralling in the cyclical world of 'Family Circus' I'm sure we can all identify with the trenchant themes of post-modernity and postcolonialism redolent in Keane's latest feather in the "Caps". Motifs of power surging out from underneath when children mock the order in a carnivalesque topsy-turvey 'play' found in the revolutionary circular 'frame' around the comic. Symbolism and text fuse creating a semiotics of order and chaos, play and work, the 'cap' and the naked head. Keane has subversively undermined the empiricist color/race dichotomy by insisting on full-color publication, much like William Blake's "Songs of Experience and Songs of Innocence". I wait with baited breath for the next addition to Keanism.

Wilhelmina Lidke-Shaeffer, Ph.D (shaeffer.w@columbia.edu) from New York, NY , March 1, 1999
Deconstructing Jeffy
The reigning master of the art form often referred to as "burb noir" returns with a scathing polemic on race relations in a present-day American hurtling towards an Apocalyptic millenium.

Taking his inspiration from such social woes as the proliferation of gangland behavior in Omaha, Nebraska (one must surely wonder if the American heartland will spawn a melanin-enhanced Bernhard Goetz for our day) and the growing Disconnect between government and citizen, Bil Keane accurately chronicles the shoals of negotiated hostility that comprise America today.

Even the title, wryly echoing both fear of Government (surely there is no more authoritarian "Daddy" for any of us) and the hip-hop, Plains-Gangsta culture, shows Keane's acerbic wit. As American culture has evolved, Keane's sensibilities have kept pace. Even Oedipal concepts fail to escape Keane's pen; in the brutal "Jeffy Has An Accident", we discover the dark side of Mommy's shapeliness, and journey into the madness of a child consumed by a lust he can neither comprehend nor control.

Every American owes it to themselves to raptly journey through Keane's reality, and leave reluctantly, wondering whether, in fact, the ghosts of Keane's harshly realist renderings are with us all; truly, Ida Know.

cquirky@yahoo.com from Oxnard , March 1, 1999
Word and Image Meld in Psychotropic Zeitgeist
Using barely 10% of the vocabulary of a Tom Robbins or even a Kurt Vonnegut (not Jr. since daddy died which is part of the subtext of Keane's symbolic reference to "Daddy's Cap" and its being backwards much like the Abby Road album cover that revealed that Paul was dead which was revealed in the text of the lyrics by being played backwards--but there is not room in this brief review to trace all the multicultural strands of meaning captured in Keane's tortuous keenings.) Anyway, back to the kids. Kid's today! Does anybody know the ins and outs of their little psyches better than Bill (or is it Bil?) Keane? I don't think so. And in this seminal book, Keane "pop's a Cap" into the heart of every granny and gramps with his heart-rending renditions of common everyday cuteness grandkids-style. The subliminal message, of course, is "Enjoy them while you can for tomorrow you may die." Great book!

A reader from Washington, DC , February 28, 1999
Oddly dystopian
Despite accolades from other readers, this book's treatment of social interaction rituals struck me as puerile and frankly ludicrous. The cash-and-carry theory crowd may find much to crow about here, but in my view his observations are reductive and highly predictable. How much originality is there, after all, in simply reversing the hat and then declaring it "on backwards"? I don't mean to sound cranky, but for my money you are better off with Roz Chast.

Windom Earle(harvsatan@aol.com) from Twin Peaks,Washington - USA , February 27, 1999
His Cap Maybe Backward,But He Sees The Way!
BIL KEANE has truely taken the Family Circus to the next level,with this brilliant and positively witty tome. From his sly in-joke with the books title,"Daddy's Cap", an obvious nod to the DEVO quote,"Dying Under Daddy's Cap"(Or perhaps more perversely,Devo saluting Keane.)~ to the humourous last page strip, "Route Taken By Jeffys Funeral Precession". This is Keane at maximum overdrive! His stories innovate and move us all. Who can forget inspirations such,"Mommy's Dykie Hairdo"? or "Billy Gets Ringworm"? Does it get any better than this? Hot Dog,Maynard,IT DOES!! A Family Circus? No my friends,its a Rip Snortin'Dardevil-Death-Defying-Not-For-The-Squeamish-Trip To Insanity!!! And you'll want to buy the ticket and take the ride..again and again and again!! Dolly asks,"Daddy why is there an ear ring on your chest?"...and she speaks for us all. Why is our world so "silly"? You will ponder life a little less,after this spanking good read! Just ask Jeffy,he's had many spankings,"For Gosh Sakes!!Read this book before my Daddy beats me again!!". What a little imp!! So sit back in the family station wagon,have a rootbeer,and let Daddy & Mommy and the whole gang take you for the most flip ride of your life!!! Who would want to miss this much fun?? Ida Know! Notme!!

A reader from Pittsburgh, PA, USA , February 27, 1999
lexical and graphical interstices indeed break bricks
Keane, stubborn iconoclast of a nearly Kantian refusal to deny subjectivity any positionality other than a rather liminial objectivity, again bewilders with an assault of semic puns, abstractions, and a keen sense of self-reproduction, likely intending to bewilder and intoxicate those still thinking from little Billy's place of exteriority. Keane allows the drama between innenwelt and umwelt to unfold through a lexicon of hard-hitting metonymic battles ranging from our simple confusion at the relationship between cap and daddy to our mystification at 'le represente deplace' and how these intersubjective formations relate to the primal scene so clearly played and replayed through the flows of desire precisely contextualized within Keane's shrewd depiction of those radically disjunctive breaks some would so vaguely label as relatively autonomous.

A reader from Brooklyn, NY , February 26, 1999
American Werther Sets Suburbia Aflame
For decades the raw, plangent heart of the Sunday funnies, the familiar circular frame of Keane's Family Circus has long served as the demon-lens aimed straight into the increasingly decentralized and prurient soul of the American suburban milieu, an aperture through which we can almost smell the alcaloid, claustrophobic air of Lillian B. Rubin's "worlds of pain," described evocatively in her classic study of lower-middle-class sociology. Nonetheless, the tragic mainstream apparatchiks casually and systematically dismiss Keane's ur-comic as either a dangerous pastiche of retrograde longing for a racialist, theocratic center, or, more often, as an intolerable vestige of the kind of canned, sanitized, hopelessly outdated kitsch found in the tiki-torch grottoes of of Eisenhower's cold-war TV-land, inhabited by programmatic Audie Murphy horse operas and the June Taylor dancers kicking in unison to Glenn Miller's televisionary obsequies. Recently, an otherwise astute friend remarked with incredulity and a hint of outrage that Family Circus continues to be syndicated nationally. That flash of anger is the key to understanding Keane's persistent trumping of the American booboisie. Undeniably, the Family Circus strip is grindingly banal. Mommy's search for the dog-collar or Jeffy's interminable perorations on the subject of pie are lethal enough to paralyze a pouncing lynx. But to borrow a term from art critic Arthur C. Danto, Family Circus is a premier example of "reflexive art"ó our reaction to it, and our desire to revise and even obliterate it, tells us more about ourselves than of the author's formal intent. As is the case in Noh, Keane's comic strip is animated by the familiar, predictable banality of the office party, the PTA meeting, the repetitive ritual of our own anxious endearments and the sex act itself. We are uncomfortable but we cannot look away, so we continue to gaze at Family Circus like those gathered around a car wreck gazing blankly at their own mortality, for unlike "Prince Valiant" or "Snoopy," it has too-truthfully shown us our own lives. "Daddy's Cap is on Backwards" takes Keane's guerilla-texts from the sleepy woods of the Sunday paper to the streets, and it's as though a drowsing 1000-foot serpent has uncoiled itself at last. Like all American phenomena that begin in the vernacular and suddenly submerge the culture in chaos--Presley's Sun recordings, Rauschenberg's furious collages, Welles' "Touch of Evil" come to mind as lesser examples--"Daddy's Cap is on Backwards" is a meta-event that offers a rare and genuine glimpse of the cyclopic Logos, altering our landscape by organizing it around itself. Debating its contents would be futile; no amount of critical discourse can pacify its matterhorn of rage, or mitigate the visceral shock it will exert on a nation huddling in the dawn of the angry red sun of Y2K. Drop the scales from your eyes and read this book. You have it coming.

CameronFerguson@hotmail.com from Boone, NC , February 26, 1999
Watchout James Carville!!!!
There is a new kid on the block and he writes like he is mad dog in pursuit of truth. Mr. Keane has captivated the attention of the Great unwashed masses with his new diatribe on the massive scandal that plagues Wasshington, D.C. "Daddy why does that women wear a beret?" is perhaps the best quote to summarize the childlike inquisitiveness of our youth!!!

A reader from Chicago , February 24, 1999
A stunning and insightful critique of hip-hop culture!
Bil Keane has alway been known for his ability to display rapier sharp wit while skewering the more excessive aspects of American culture. With "Daddy's Cap Is on Backwards" Keane has reached a new level.

Serious and scholarly enough for even graduate level sociology, urban studies, and African-American studies courses, "Daddy" will entertain the general reader with its witty insights concerning the pervasivness of the now global reach of Hip-Hop culture.

A must for anyone who wants to learn more about about how popular culture is changing the face of America and the world!

A reader from Norman, Oklahoma , February 24, 1999
Hilarious and bracing in its self-examination
While the perspective of Keane as crossbreed between new journalist and contemporary social realist finds much support in the text of this novel, delving deeper into its construction reveals a subtext rooted in a much older philosophical vein. The juxtaposition of the notion of "backwardness" and the visuals of mundaneness is an attempt at the deconstruction of Sartre's original project of the systematization of the existentialist movement. While many contend that Sartre's attempt to force the notions of absurdity and being and time into a finite defined system killed the original essence of existentialism, Keane has proven that a self-aware dialectic of the absurd can rekindle the original existential realization that inspired Kierkegaard and his adherents. However, the recurring symbolism of the backward-hat-that-is-not-the-true-backward-hat at times becomes ponderous and loses its impact of absurdity, not unlike the human condition when viewed through lenses of everydayness. Keane needs to expand his symbolic vocabulary if he is to truly express his resolution of Heidegger's dilemma without degenerating into a trivialization of the uniqueness of humanity's temporal experience.

Corey Kosak (kosak+bil@cs.cmu.edu) from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania , February 23, 1999
The exercise of Reason DEPENDS on the individual's choice!
Ever since the untimely death of Ayn Rand in 1982, this country has lacked a moral leader, a powerful voice that can rise above the crowd and simply say "Reason is man's only proper judge of values and his only proper guide to action. The proper standard of ethics is: man's survival qua man." At last, that void has been filled. From the moment Jeffy refuses to eat the welfare cheese placed by Mommy in his "mackerooni", we realize that we have embarked on an extraordinary journey, an apocalyptic deathmatch of moral paradigmata from which only one can emerge intact. See Billy nearly starve after being tricked into delivering newspapers whose editorial slant he despises. Feel Dolly's anguish as she invents a new kind of steel with the potential to revolutionize the railroad industry, only to have that breakthrough suppressed by those in power, whose only ambition is to maintain the status quo. Struggle with Mommy over the book's central philosophical question: is breastfeeding PJ a form of charity or of slavery? In Daddy's Cap, Bil Keane succeeds where countless others have failed: he provides insightful and philosophically rigorous solutions to the open problems posed in Nicomachean Ethics and in Atlas Shrugged. Only one question remains: are you intellectually honest enough to accept Bil's unflinching portrayal of reality?

patrickbateman@earthlink.net from New York City , February 16, 1999
A collection of torrid drawings about childhood and family
Since his debut with The Family Circus in 1960, Bil Keane has been America's literary authority on the lives of the infinitely wealthy. His works are moralizing satires mixed with a great deal of autobiography. His landscape is populated by fashion aficionados that are bookish enough to read the pages of GQ, but show little recognition of the works of Tolstoy. These characters are frequently bisexual, which may or may not be due to the fact that Keane is bisexual himself. Violence is common to the lives of these fine young gentlemen and beauty queens, and so are cocaine and valium. Keanes' new book, Daddy's Cap Is On Backwards, has received both critical attention and vehement attacks. The attacks arise from the violent treatment and murderous behavior that Jeffy Keane, the main character, exhibits in his interaction with women. Defenders point out that more men are killed than women. Besides being misogynistic, and I'm not denying that Jeffy is, he's homophobic, racist, self-righteous, and firmly believes in the division of social classes. In other words, he's the living embodiment of that palnidrome that the poet Amiri Baraka observed in the word Love, Evol, or evil to use the correct spelling. In satire, I believe, realism is sacrificed for caricature. Being a conservative myself, and I'm rather embarrassed to be one, because liberalism is the dominating force in literature, I find that Keane has formed a stereotype that emerges more out of liberal propaganda than actual reality. Jeffy is more of an hallucination than human. Jeffy doesn't seem to harbor any motivation for his killings; it seems that his bizarre executions are for no discernible reason. It has been suggested that Jeffy secretly abhors the world he lives in; so his response is to destroy anything of aesthetic value. Evidence to support this theory is not only in his violent actions, but the fact that he has a painting hanging upside down in his apartment. Jeffy clearly has no sense of aesthetics, or if he does, which is more likely, he did that on purpose to deface and confuse the meaning of the painting. In Jeffy's review of the pop group Genesis, he complains that under Peter Gabriel's influence, they were too artsy. Jeffy is true to himself, only in these passages where he contemplates popular music, because that world is not of the glamourous landscape that he is trying to get out of. Other critics may disagree with me that popular music is not glamourous, but to me, it's not of the same aesthetic quality as fashion. It has always been unclear to me, exactly what Keane as a cartoonist actually thinks. On a recent interview with Vanity Fair magazine, he declined to tell what his sexual preference was. With respect to his privacy, this is typical of Keane. He's a master of moral ambiguity. Other critics may understand his views, like for instance, he comes off as a liberal in various ways, but he doesn't in others. Jeffy explains his political views at a dinner party at his girlfriend's house which amounts to a fusion of the platforms of both parties. While most Americans don't necessarily agree with all the opinions of their political party, their opinions were more defined that Jeffy's. A central problem that lies in Keane's work is that he needs to believe in something clearly defined in order to be a satirist. An arguement could be made that nothing is clearly defined; this is exactly why I think satire is a limited genre to work in. With his autobiographical tendencies, Keane compromises satire too. Social realism cannot be blended with satire because it confuses the reader. It just doesn't make sense. I mean, is Keane criticizing bisexuality as immoral or is he just reporting what he's seen? That's unclear. I might not be the ideal reader that he wants to have, but it seems to me that an author can't make a satirical character autobiographical because it muddles the purpose of it condemning the evils of society. Professors of literature and highly acclaimed writers say Keane is a satirist, but it is in social realism that Keane's talent really lies. In that same article in Vanity Fair, Keane admits to a friendship with Joan Didion. Her influence upon his work is easily recognizable. Didion, who is from the literary school of New Journalists that believed journalism would take the place of novels. A certain aspect of this, which Keane follows, is that he inserts real magazines (GQ and People) and real people such as Tom Cruise in Daddy's Cap Is On Backwards. James Fenimore Cooper got in trouble when he inserted George Washington into one of his novels, and I would say that I cringed when Tom Cruise's name appeared on the a caption. I got used to the fact that the magazines and reviews of contemporary musicians, but beyond that, I thought Keane went too far. Certain fiction like that, and the new journalist's nonfiction novel, I fear, are going to ever be lost to posterity, because the names of the celebrities will go unrecognized in the future. But an arguement could be that Tom Cruise was important to understanding the times. Keane is trying to cram new journalism, social realism, and satire into his work. It doesn't work. Keane succeeds in the comic vein though. His portrayal of businessmen as heartless boring individuals would make Charles Addams. His prose ignites a manic blur of events, with lively conversation even though his characters, frankly have nothing to talk about(But find no fault with him because businessmen wouldn't). Prose like that, even though I'm in the minority, and I sincerely believe this, is as refreshing as the Evian water the characters consume. Jeffy's often excuse for anything is "I have to return some video tapes" and that cracked me up through the whole book. The dirty yarns Jeffy's friends spin, one in particular about a Vassar girl (you'll have to read the book to find out what is is; ladies beware) are reminiscent of what my dad tells me of Henry Miller. These guys are morally decadent, that is obvious, but while Keane achieves cringing which he did with me, especially in the scenes with homeless people, he also makes me chuckle. In other words, I could see Quentin Tarantino making a film out of this. The violent scences in this book are nothing short of creative; picture torturing somebody with a rusted butterknife. Ouch. One scene with lighter fluid and cheese was truely inspired. But I read EC comics along with more literary pursuits so I'm used to this sort of thing. There's no doubt in my mind that Keane created the Giorgio Armani of gore cartoons. Keane is a good writer, he has talent, but he just burst on to the literary scene when he was only 72, so he didn't really have time to perfect his craft. He is an engaging read, but he well, has a central problem making characters that I care about, and mixes two different kinds of writing that I can't see merging. There is really no plot to the book, but I can deal with that, because Faulkner was plotless, John Hawkes is plotless, and their both good novelists, so I don't really care.

A reader from Landfall, Minnesota , January 14, 1999
A frenzied trip, a trick-play on words
Another madcap collection from the author of "Jeffie's Lookin At Me" and dozens of other classics. A special irony in this oeuvre is the running ambiguity twixt hat and head: which in fact is on backwards? You'll be pulling your finger with delight at the antics of Uncle Roy, Not Me, Ida Know, and the chronically late Grandpa Keane. In a series of panels on fishing, culminating in Jeffie's capture of a veritable fresh-water whale, 'Dad' Keane reveals his master baiting techniques. A must-read for those trapped in the ninth circle of heck!

A reader from Craigsville, Va. , December 14, 1998
This book 'Caps' off a great career
If there's one thing that's not "backwards" in this topsy-turvy world, it's the Family Circus. This paperback compilation of panels from the popular daily comic provides a much-needed dose of little Billy misprononcing words like "gasphetti" and "soylent." While the annual family trip to Uncle Roy's provides the biggest laughs in this book, Keane also touches on a serious theme with his series of provocative milk carton captions. Read this book from cover to cover, and you'll exclaim aloud, "It's good on you, mate!"

A reader from Arizona (Bil Keane's home state!) , December 12, 1998
Keane's contemporary, quality cartoons K.O. the competition!
Mama said knock you out! Bil's artwork and sheer zaniness hold the Family Circus wher it is...as the top contender in comics! From "Whoa, I'm trippin'...", to "Soylent Green", to "Uncle Roy"...I haven't had this much fun since my youthful "Goofus and Gallant" days! Who is going to pass up on this treasure of laughs...NOT ME!

A reader from Plano, TX , November 10, 1998
Time stands still, but those rollicking Circus kids never do
Set in its own unique round universe, the Family Circus has been entertaining America for over 30 years. Follow the daily doings of Bil, Thel, their four kids and pets as they experience the joys and laughter of suburban living. Keane's deep insights into the psyche of our times is expressed in easy-to-digest one-liners, throwaway lines, subtle perspective shifts, and cute kiddie malapropisms that will leave you chuckling, then silently wondering.