Customer Reviews

Tantrum

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In Tantrum, a middle-aged man grows tired of the pressure of his life and spontaneously rejuvenates into a two-year-old. Feiffer gives a humorous but sometimes uneven look at the misadventures that follow. Some of the story is realistic (eg., the man's family take the infant to a doctor, who proclaims that "this is a normal, healthy two-year-old" and chastises the family for wasting his time), while other parts are fantastic (the man-infant, out on his own [?] happens into a convention of other regressed adults and has to pretend he is a simple two-year-old to escape them). Some of the book does not bear close scrutiny -- such as why a person who looked and dressed like a baby would be allowed to travel freely like an adult -- but is overall an enjoyable and thought-provoking work.

The premise of this book is one that nearly all adults can relate to. Leo is a man with a wife and two teenage children who is in a rut, feeling that his life has no mystery and he is suffering from depression. His children are self-centered and his wife is sympathetic, but mouths platitudes rather than engaging in real conversation.
Finally, Leo reaches the point where he screams "Mommy!" several times, which transforms him into a person with the body of a two-year old but retaining his adult mind. At first he thinks this is great, he is once again small enough to be held and be carried piggy back. However, he quickly finds that the world does not react in the ways that he would like. His wife, children, siblings and parents all reject him, so he makes connections with other adults that have made the same type of "escape" that he has. They prove to be too self-centered for his tastes, so he travels to Palm Springs to visit Joyce, a woman he remembers as being buxom and sensual. When he arrives, Joyce is in a bikini but following a fad diet that has her down to less than 85 pounds. Of course, those mammoth breasts are now nothing but a memory. Leo manages to convince Joyce to end her diet, but he cannot handle the responsibility.
He eventually leaves himself in a basket at the door of Ms. Swallow and she begins treating him like a baby. Life is bliss until they take a bath together. Once she begins washing his genitals, disaster ensues. Leo once again becomes a man and runs swinging from the bathtub. He returns to his family to find his children are happy to see him again but his wife resents his experiences.
Expressed in cartoon form, this book describes the thoughts of most adults. The responsibilities of earning a living, handling children and the needs of a spouse, and doing the same things day after day make nearly everyone yearn for simpler times. Nothing could be simpler than the basic pleasures of a child who wants their stomach rubbed and to be carried around. Feiffer has used his cartoon genius to express desires that nearly everyone has in a way that is funny, yet bitingly accurate.

Feiffer presents a full-length graphic novel this time, instead of a collection of his famous cartoon strips. In it, a 42 year old man wishes himself back to age two, when he was the still the center of attention and didn't have to do anything to earn it. (C'mon, surely you've had fantasies with some of those elements.)

The problem is, his new childhood lets him see just how crazed and needy the adults areound him all are. That includes his paranoid parents, coke-addled brother, anorectic sister in law, and (worst of all) an army of other neokids just like him. Towards the end, he finally gets the motherly attention he wants, but his forty-two-year-oldness betrays him. He returns shame-facedly to his family, and ...

Find out for yourself. This isn't the best of Feiffer's culture-jamming satire, and his signature scrawling style don't always work when blown up to one panel per page. The drawing still has all of Feiffer's traditional energy, maybe more, and he's not shy about taking shots at targets that desperately need it. I recommend this to Feiffer fans, but Feiffer newbies should start with collections of his comic strips.

-- wiredweird

This is one of the few books that irked me to the point of utter disgust. It was one of the worst books I have ever read. As much as I've enjoyed Feiffer's work in the past, he really missed the mark on this one.

The main character is 42 and decides to cash in adulthood for infancy. Instead of functioning as a spouse and father to two teenagers, he lies on the floor screaming that he's two and somehow re-emerges as a 2-year-old toddler.

The story is truly asinine. On the one hand, a pediatrician proclaims him a healthy toddler; on the other, he is somehow able to travel freely and even shack up with a secretary. The most absurdly paradoxical part was when the secretary takes a bath with the ersatz infant (excuse me, but an ADULT taking a bath with one she presumes to be a CHILD?!) The secretary even tells the "child" that he is the ugliest baby she ever saw, all wrinkled like a gnome. Even if he really had been a child, that kind of verbal abuse does not speak to character.

The convention of other former adults/converted infants was sickening. It really was, just like the entire story.