What Does This Say?: Family Circus [Mass Market Paperback]

Bil Keane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 1994

Another collection of the heartwarming and hilarious Family Circus cartoons of Bil Keane, featured daily in nearly 1,500 newspapers worldwide!

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Fawcett (July 31, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449148149
• ISBN-13: 978-0449148143
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,153,881 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

202 of 210 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Proustian introspection with Munch's visual conundrums, July 29, 2002

By 

"momfy" (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Does This Say?: Family Circus (Mass Market Paperback)

Yeats once wrote, "None other knows what pleasures man/At table or in bed." Bil Keane, however, seems to have found in his latest 'Family Circus' opus a treasure-chest of pleasures for each and all of us.

There are some who chafe at the seeming repetitive themes within Keane's major works; I would respectfully submit that all great stories are about life and death, love and loss, fear and triumph. If not Keane, then so go Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz and Callimachus, too, for good measure. It is not originality that spawns thought and wonderment; it is the vessels of those themes (Billy, Grandma, Barfy, PJ) that inspire and enlighten.

Keane, as carrier of these vessels, reminds us of a truth so eloquently immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Some books leave us free and some books make us free." In 'What Does This Say', it is clear that the tome achieves the latter, with gusto and aplomb.

204 of 215 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Happiness, November 10, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: What Does This Say?: Family Circus (Mass Market Paperback)

There is a certain sadness one feels in remembering happy times: turning over the last page of a good novel, and reflecting over the wonders we have just experienced, the characters who have become our friends; discovering old pictures, seeing ourselves in the halcyon throes of youth, silly smiles on our innocent faces; the plangent last notes of a Chopin nocturne, the theme, growing softer and softer now, floating across the room to rest against our face like the rhythmic breaths of a peaceful, sleeping lover.

I don't know how: but Keane captures this feeling, this happy sadness - "Oh heavy lightness," as Shakespeare put it. Billy romps around the yard. He runs all over town. His parents are in love. His family is love with itself, each unto each. Can our lives ever be like this? Perhaps not, but we can watch, watch ever single day, and wrap ourself in that happy sadness. And maybe forget, if only for a little while, the way our lives really are, the way they have to be: our heavy lightness. Thanks, Bil Keane, for that, and thanks to Amazon for letting people express themselves. Thank you all.

98 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comic strips at their finest! Huzzah for Keane!, March 11, 2002

By 

R. Mccormick (Woodstock, GA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Does This Say?: Family Circus (Mass Market Paperback)

If there is a finer piece of work every written in the history of comics, I have yet to see it! Once again Bil Keane has published an anthology just as sure to raise the bar for his peers in the comic industry as it is to delight his legions of fans. Though he utilizes only a single, circular panel in his art, time and time again Keane has proven that in no way does this format limit his genius of comic delievery. He consistantly produces panels of a dazzling scope and depth, which hide layers upon layers of humor that seem to demand multiple readings. Although enourmously complex and even at times displaying a dark sense of humor, Keane nevertheless is able to keep even the youngest of readers amused through his delightful art and the uplifting messages his panels hide. Sad to say, but since the death of Charles Shultz, Bil Keane has been left without a true peer in the world of comics. ...No, truly each period of human exsistence has produced a select few men whom society can look up to. Just as the Roman Historian Sallust could proudly say he lived in the Republic of Caesar and Cato, and past generations could say they lived in the days of Washington and Jefferson, so can we say we knew the time of Keane and Roy, and thus are we more fortunate than all others who came before.