Literature has her quacks no less than medicine
We read comic books in my Contemporary Literature class, which is the sort of thing that makes English one of the most mockable fields of study. (One year, our departmental t-shirts read: "English: It's Not Just a Muffin, it's a Major." This was either shortly before or after Philosophy used the slogan "We're in it for the money.") These were non-comedic comics: Maus by Art Spiegelman. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, Maus recounts the story of Spiegelman's grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. In the books, Jews are represented by mice; Nazis, cats.
Temporally, the book moves between World War II and the present day. In the present-day passages, Art dramatizes a few visits to his psychologist. The psychologist character takes in a lot of stray cats, and feline forms wander through the panels.
A fellow student, whom I'll call Brad because I have forgotten his name and Brad is a quintessential bullheaded dude moniker, was insistent that the stray cats were connected to the cat-Nazis, that there was a coded message from Spiegelman there. Brad was turning his head inside out trying to figure out why the psychologist would be harboring Nazi cats.
"I don't think it's symbolic," I said. "If we assume this is a true story, I think it's a mistake to look for symbolism in everything. The character is based on a real person, who may very well have had a soft spot for cats. You've gotta assume that people become psychologists because they are capable of deep empathy and want to help those who've suffered recover. That dovetails with taking in abandoned animals, too."
"I can't believe you don't think the cats are significant," Brad retorted.
"Well, there's nothing in the story that suggests the shrink was a Nazi sympathizer. Quite the opposite."
The discussion shifted, me mentally noting that Brad was dumber than me but otherwise assigning no importance to the exchange. The professor didn't take a side, but he later wrote me a powerful recommendation when I applied to grad school, so I like to think that he did take a side in his heart, and it was mine.
Let's fast-forward several weeks. It's near the end of the quarter and we've moved onto something else; Iris Murdoch's The Message to the Planet. Brad came into class one day brandishing a Maus postcard.
"I wrote to Art Spiegelman to ask him about the psychologist's cats," he said to the class at large.
Holy shit, I thought. My holy shit dates the story; in a post-internet, post-Twitter world, we communicate fluidly with Very Important Persons. It was only a few years after this incident that Elizabeth Wurtzel, having read my review of Prozac Nation, would email me to thank me for my thoughts. (Which was strange, since I'd said I found her story contrived. Years after that, More, Now, Again came out, and I found that not only was her first book indeed contrived, she had written to me under the influence of a massive cocaine habit, which made the email's content fall into place. But once more, I digress.)
It's hard to say what surprised me more: that Brad had been burning to settle to the debate to the extent where he took out his typewriter and pounded out a letter, or that Spiegelman had graced Brad with a reply. I didn't know any published authors at the time and assumed they were busy with other things, like counting their royalties or attending soirées in their honor. This naiveté was in part what led me to conclude that majoring in English was a viable option.
"I finally got his reply today," Brad said. He read it aloud. It was brief, what with its being a postcard. I will endeavor to recreate it as close to verbatim as possible:
Dear Brad:
Thanks for writing. To answer your question, my psychologist just happened to adopt a lot of cats. They don't represent Nazis--it's just a coincidence that I used a cat/mouse metaphor for the book. Wish I could have been a fly on the wall for your discussion!
--Art Spiegelman.
When the faces of my fellow students rotated in my direction, I shrugged and said to the closest one, "Well, there's our answer."
At this point, I could have easily pulled an IN YOUR FACE, BRAD, and it was, in fact, generally in my nature to do so at the time. Mitigating circumstance: I knew that, in Brad's shoes, there was no way in hell I would've brought that postcard to class and admitted I'd been reading too much into things, and that sometimes a cat was just a cat.
Temporally, the book moves between World War II and the present day. In the present-day passages, Art dramatizes a few visits to his psychologist. The psychologist character takes in a lot of stray cats, and feline forms wander through the panels.
A fellow student, whom I'll call Brad because I have forgotten his name and Brad is a quintessential bullheaded dude moniker, was insistent that the stray cats were connected to the cat-Nazis, that there was a coded message from Spiegelman there. Brad was turning his head inside out trying to figure out why the psychologist would be harboring Nazi cats.
"I don't think it's symbolic," I said. "If we assume this is a true story, I think it's a mistake to look for symbolism in everything. The character is based on a real person, who may very well have had a soft spot for cats. You've gotta assume that people become psychologists because they are capable of deep empathy and want to help those who've suffered recover. That dovetails with taking in abandoned animals, too."
"I can't believe you don't think the cats are significant," Brad retorted.
"Well, there's nothing in the story that suggests the shrink was a Nazi sympathizer. Quite the opposite."
The discussion shifted, me mentally noting that Brad was dumber than me but otherwise assigning no importance to the exchange. The professor didn't take a side, but he later wrote me a powerful recommendation when I applied to grad school, so I like to think that he did take a side in his heart, and it was mine.
Let's fast-forward several weeks. It's near the end of the quarter and we've moved onto something else; Iris Murdoch's The Message to the Planet. Brad came into class one day brandishing a Maus postcard.
"I wrote to Art Spiegelman to ask him about the psychologist's cats," he said to the class at large.
Holy shit, I thought. My holy shit dates the story; in a post-internet, post-Twitter world, we communicate fluidly with Very Important Persons. It was only a few years after this incident that Elizabeth Wurtzel, having read my review of Prozac Nation, would email me to thank me for my thoughts. (Which was strange, since I'd said I found her story contrived. Years after that, More, Now, Again came out, and I found that not only was her first book indeed contrived, she had written to me under the influence of a massive cocaine habit, which made the email's content fall into place. But once more, I digress.)
It's hard to say what surprised me more: that Brad had been burning to settle to the debate to the extent where he took out his typewriter and pounded out a letter, or that Spiegelman had graced Brad with a reply. I didn't know any published authors at the time and assumed they were busy with other things, like counting their royalties or attending soirées in their honor. This naiveté was in part what led me to conclude that majoring in English was a viable option.
"I finally got his reply today," Brad said. He read it aloud. It was brief, what with its being a postcard. I will endeavor to recreate it as close to verbatim as possible:
Dear Brad:
Thanks for writing. To answer your question, my psychologist just happened to adopt a lot of cats. They don't represent Nazis--it's just a coincidence that I used a cat/mouse metaphor for the book. Wish I could have been a fly on the wall for your discussion!
--Art Spiegelman.
When the faces of my fellow students rotated in my direction, I shrugged and said to the closest one, "Well, there's our answer."
At this point, I could have easily pulled an IN YOUR FACE, BRAD, and it was, in fact, generally in my nature to do so at the time. Mitigating circumstance: I knew that, in Brad's shoes, there was no way in hell I would've brought that postcard to class and admitted I'd been reading too much into things, and that sometimes a cat was just a cat.