Exile off main street
TOMI UNGERER was once America’s most famous children’s book author. Then he disappeared, before popping up in West Cork in 1975. His extraordinary life is profiled in a documentary that takes its name from one of his catchphrases, Far Out Isn’t Far Enough, which will screen on as part of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival this month.
Ungerer is a preposterous character, beloved by the townsfolk in Bantry — according to former Fine Gael TD, PJ Sheehan — but brittle in temperament. Ungerer admits, while smiling roguishly, to being paranoid. “I’m always being arrested in my dreams,” he says. He’s full of contradictions. Without them, he says, he’d be jobless, a cute line for an artist but in his case resonant.
