Time USA (2022-02-28)

96 TIME February 28/March 7, 2022

taught and the issue is the curse

words and nudity in your book.

Do you take them at their word?

My guess is what they did is be-

cause the law of the land is based

on the 1982 decision that you can

ban things for their eff ect on young

minds and whatever, but you can’t

on the basis of content. So they focus

on how terrible it was to see what

they described as a nude woman,

and what I saw as the naked corpse

of my mother in the bathtub, having

slashed her wrists in that bathtub.

And then you curse out your father

for destroying her diary. Can’t

people object to bad language?

They were upset that I was breaking

the commandment to honor thy

father. That was usurping their

authority. They’re all parents. They

don’t want their kids talking to them

like that, thank you. They focused on

that because authority is what they

like the most. They’re authoritarians,

dammit.

Any chance you’ll agree, as the

board’s lawyer suggested, to white

out words like bitch? Maybe we

should just put in blintz or bagel.

Make for a more wholesome Jewish

cultural experience.

Your book is on best-seller lists

again. Isn’t that part nice? Maus

has been really selling steadily

since 1986, when the first volume

came out. Even more so after it won

the Pulitzer Prize. I didn’t need to

boost my income. It’ll give me more

money to donate to things like voter

registration.

Have you ever been to eastern

Tennessee? Never.

Would it help to meet these

people? Through bulletproof glass,

yeah. —KARL VICK

The school board of McMinn
County, Tennessee, voted on
Jan. 10 to stop assigning eighth-
graders to read Maus, your graphic
novel recounting the Holocaust
through your family history. Do
you take personal offense? Yes. But
I can’t tell how malevolent they are.
Are these people really idiots? Or
are they actually sinister forces that
have gathered to, like, kill America? I
can’t tell to what degree these people
carried water for more whacked-out
people, the ones who really stand
to profi t from getting more charter
schools in the area that teach reli-
gion, thereby taking money away
from a public education that needs
far, far more to do its job well.

Did you read the minutes of the
board meeting? Several times.

The book was removed from a
curriculum. Is that a ban? To use
authority to keep people from things,
yes, it’s a ban. And yet it’s not a book
burning.

Didn’t the burning of comic books
launch your career? The Comics
Code is what made me, yes. The
burning of comic books, literally—in
the ’40s and ’50s by teachers, clergy-
men, parents—focused on the same
thing these school-board people
focus on: we have to protect the chil-
dren, as opposed to educate them.
But those comic books that they
were burning were getting more far
out as they led into the more adult
audience. The horror comics, and
some of the very lurid images in
many of those comics, were among
the comics I love the most, because
they were kind of on the edge of the
forbidden. They were showing me
things to their most exaggerated.

These board members said the
Holocaust should certainly be

What do you

think is actually

going on here?

Art Spiegelman The cartoonist on a Tennessee

school board’s move against Maus, his memoir

of family and the Holocaust

11 QUESTIONS

SARAH SHATZ