Jules Feiffer's
Address to Graduates
Commencement, May 23, 1999

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President Steinberg, Provost Bishop, Chancellor Sillerman, members of the board of trustees, Congressman Forbes, members of the faculty, students, momentarily ex-students, and everyone who's come along that's near and dear to them, I cannot begin to tell you what a pleasure it is for me to be here today. This year, for the first time, I taught a course here at Southampton Graduate Campus that I called Humor and Truth. In my first class, after a two-and-a-half hour Jitney schlep from New York, to which my initial response was "this is going to kill me," I faced these 28 or so students whom I had never seen before and knew nothing about-- and who may or may not have heard of me, but most, I could tell, weren't sure of what I did-- or what I was there for. And once I started explaining, and they began to understand, five or six of them left during the break and didn't come back.

And the ones who stayed -- I took a careful look and couldn't help asking myself, what the hell was I doing there? They were men and women, some in their twenties, some in their thirties, a sizable group in their forties. They were parents, some of them, and a grandmother, one of them, and a few of them could have been the parents to a few others in the class, a cross-generational span that I feared was going to defeat me from the start. On what level can I proceed, how do I strike a balance? Do I want to strike a balance? What do they have in common? What do I? And then there was the problem with the name of the course. Humor and Truth. What did I mean by Humor and Truth? Did I mean Jay Leno jokes on the state of Bill Clinton, did I mean gags about this and that, politicians and public figures, like Art Buchwald? Did I mean Woody Allen, and if so, which Woody Allen? The Woody Allen who was whiny, funny and meaningful? Or the later Woody Allen who was whiny, funny and mean.

Then, one by one, they all confessed to me, my new students, that they weren't actually writers of humor, that they didn't know how to be funny, that their lives weren't all that funny, that they weren't sure what I wanted out of them-- and while I was sure-- I wasn't at all sure that they were going to be able to give it to me.

And two Wednesdays ago, we had our last class, the usual three-hour session, in which we read aloud one-act plays I had assigned them to write -- and these plays were full of humor, and vibrated with truth, often off-beat, charming, troubling and dangerous. A lot were good , and some were very good, and a couple were as far as I am concerned, ready to open in an Off-Broadway theater next week. And I realized by the end of their class, that I had just completed one of the richest experiences of my life -- and one of the best times I have ever had in any of the several careers I somehow pursue.

And I want to thank Southampton Graduate Campus, and in particular, Roger Rosenblatt and Bob Pattison and Kit Hathaway for cutting sharply into my career as a creative human being, because how can I write and draw when there are all these students out there who are under the impression that I am going to help them?

What was there to talk to them about? Well, in the beginning, and many times over, I talked about what I want to you about. The up side of failure. We Americans are a people who have given failure a bad name. If you are not a winner, you're a loser. If you're not a player, you're a doofus or a nerd. If you're not number one or part of the winner's circle that dotes on and teases and genuflects before number one, then there is no circle for you. Losers do hang out, but one nod from the winning circle, and it's "What did you say your name was? Do I know you?"

But in the writing and other arts, no one, well almost no one, commits a perfect first draft. John Updike, maybe. Joyce Carol Oates. But I doubt it. James Baldwin once said, "I don't write, I rewrite." And that goes for every other field of endeavor.

We are all continually embarking on first drafts, in every aspect of our lives, in whatever line of work, and to succumb to the frustration of failure is to undercut the very purpose of a first draft. Get it down. Get it all down. Then go back, and get it right. If not the second time, then the third or fourth or fifth -- and as you do this, you come to understand that there's a logic to this. You are learning, always learning-- and learning, by following a trail, very much like a private eye, that leads you down one cul-de-sac--oops, wrong!-- and then another, and then another. You begin to appreciate this kind of work-- hard work, but interesting, as a process. A process, the demands of which teach you in time, that while inspiration and luck are nice things to have, they are strategically negotiable.

You develop a nose for the right chain of events, and an ear for the order of words that will best tell and illuminate your story. And rather than this becoming formulaic and dry as dust as a way of doing things, it frees, it liberates.

There's nothing you can't take a stab at, because who's gonna know? You screw up. You cross out. You delete. You find one sentence or one paragraph in this mess that's on the money, you get rid of the rest-- or follow the lead of that one sentence and paragraph and figure out how to tame the rest of these out-of-control ramblings, so that they begin to take shape and make sense.

And while doing this, you don't make judgments on yourself. "I can't do this, I'm no good, this is too hard, whatever made me think that I, of all people -- I loathe myself."

Well, of course, all creative people loathe themselves at one time or another. That too is part of the process. Then after indulging in glorious self-hate and self-pity, you get back in and go at it again. And again.

One of my students turned in a piece that pretended to be a play but was really an extended monologue, in which she felt sorry for herself, and the role of all the other characters was to tell her that she was right.

And after we beat her up in class -- but generously, our aim was not to humiliate but to clarify -- she went home, took herself to bed, woke up at midnight, typed 'till five in the morning, and what she produced as her second draft, read like her fifth or sixth draft. It was alive, it was funny, it was tough, it was wonderful.

That's the way it works -- or is supposed to. Of course, it doesn't always. Some stories remain clinkers no matter what you do to them. So you go on. And you go on. And you work, and you curse, and you suffer, and you understand at bottom, that there is nothing, absolutely nothing that's as much fun as this.

We've had fun in this class, and we've done real work. And I learned a lot -- and owe a lot to my students. I walked into class certain that this was going to be humiliating. And here, I stand today, in the winner's circle. An honorary degree, the commencement address. I like it. But I can't be carried away. I still have lots of work that I must do. Time for me to get back out there and start failing. And one last thing: I've gotten to love the Jitney.

I trust that each and every one of you will triumph, but not in such a hurry. Thank you.