I have a bunch of e-mailed requests to comment on the current controversy about Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, Maus. It's been quite some time since I read it but I recall the following: Many, many people in the comic art community were raving about it. When I finally got around to it, I wasn't as impressed as they were and didn't quite "get" the analogies of Jews to mice and Nazis to cats. But I thought it was an honest effort and if it was that meaningful to so many people, fine. I don't have to love something to recognize that it has value in the world.
In fact, Art invited me to lunch one day because, I think, he wanted me to explain to him the appeal of Jack Kirby's work. I'm pretty sure I didn't give him a satisfactory (to him) answer and it pretty much came down to me saying that he didn't have to love something to recognize that it had value in the world. To me, the salient principle is that the taste of one person or one group should never be the reason to deny something to those of opposite taste. I am not really in favor of outlawing cole slaw even though I and all decent people find it repulsive.
If I still had Art's number, I'd call and congratulate him on this latest "banning" because it sure has helped his sales and drawn a lot of attention to a work that many had forgotten. Sergio and I oughta figure out a way to get Groo the Wanderer "banned" somewhere…especially if it can be "banned," as Art's book has, and still be readily available everywhere except where it's sold out.
I'm putting "banned" in quotes because I think that word oughta be reserved for when something is actually banned, not merely deselected. When Lorne Michaels decides not to have a certain star host Saturday Night Live again, the Internet erupts with the news that that star has been "banned" from SNL. When Costco decides not to sell a certain book on that table where they sell a microscopic percentage of all the books published, its author complains that their book has been "banned by Costco."
Maus is not banned. It's selling better than it has in years. Isn't that kind of the direct opposite of banning something?
From the articles I've seen, it seems like the Tennessee school district did not "ban" Maus. No copies were burned. No booksellers were threatened with jail time if they sold it. The Board merely removed it from the curriculum of books to be taught in their schools. I'm not sure how School Boards select and update those lists but I would assume books are constantly moved on and off them…especially since I've heard that new books continue to be written.
It seems pretty silly to take one off for the stated reasons. Someone is bothered by one drawing of a dead nude cartoon mouse and a couple of naughty words in an account of a true obscenity in The History of Mankind? Wow. That's what bothered them?
What I'm thinking right now is this: Some people — and I'm not saying this is surely the motive of the 10-member McMinn County School Board — want to soft-pedal The Holocaust and deny or trivialize it. If a controversy like the one about Maus can remind us of the danger of that, maybe Art Spiegelman's book was more important than I thought.