Jules Feiffer? Leonard Roy Frank? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: Many years ago I encountered a comic strip presenting a humorous commentary about the modern condition. In a series of panels a person complained to a doctor about feeling overtired, anxious, depressed, and paranoid. The doctor simply replied that the person was perfectly normal. I do not recall the exact phrasing. I think the creator was cartoonist Jules Feiffer. Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In January 1969 “The Village Voice” newsweekly of New York printed a six-panel comic strip by Jules Feiffer. Each panel contained one of the phrases below accompanied with the drawing of a face displaying an evolving sequence of unhappy expressions. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
I TOLD THE DOCTOR I WAS OVERTIRED—
ANXIETY RIDDEN—
COMPULSIVELY ACTIVE—
CONSTANTLY DEPRESSED—
WITH RECURRING FITS OF PARANOIA..
TURNS OUT I’M NORMAL.
Additional details and citations are available in the article on the Medium platform which is located here.
Image Notes: Picture of two surveillance cameras from Miłosz Klinowski at Unsplash. The image has been cropped.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Mardy Grothe whose inquiry led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Grothe knew the text of the comic and was told that the quotation appeared circa 1968 in a Jules Feiffer comic strip in “The Village Voice”. Many thanks to Ben Zimmer who precisely located the work in the January 30, 1969 issue of “The Village Voice”.
[1] 1969 January 30, The Village Voice, (Comic Strip by Jules Feiffer), Quote Page 4, Column 1, The Village Voice Inc., New York. (Google News Archive) link