By Andrea Waxman
A chain-smoker who does not brake for audiences, Art Spiegelman peppered his recent lecture on the history of comics and his passion for them with clever, entertaining asides and multiple, Woody Allen-like references to himself as an anxious and guilt-ridden Jewish stereotype.
Spiegelman — Pulitzer Prize winning illustrator and author of the two-volume Holocaust story “Maus” — was Distinguished Lecture Series speaker at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Nov. 30.
In his address to an audience of nearly 600 at UWM’s Memorial Union, he epitomized one of the dominant images of the Jewish New Yorker.
Speaking at a fast clip, he crammed more information, cultural insight, opinion, analysis, history and jokes into his “performance” than anyone but a Jewish New Yorker could. He presented a fascinating mini comic art course with Power Point visuals.
And he fully acknowledged that the world of comics, as has been pointed out by many commentators, has long been inhabited by Jews, partly because, as he said, it was a genre beneath contempt and therefore without entry barriers.
Afterward, he mingled with audience members at a reception in the Union Art Gallery; and there, he confirmed a vague impression I had that I hoped was unfounded — that he just doesn’t have particularly positive feelings about his Jewish identity.
Neither does he seem to feel any warm connection to Israel. Nor did he reveal any sign that he views his Jewish heritage as a wellspring of his rich imagination, distinctive perspective or prodigious talent.
“I am your basic Jewish atheist,” he asserted in answer to a question I posed about how his Jewish identity informs his work. He added that it is just an accident of DNA that he was born Jewish.
And he said that he would like to see the demise of all religions, and he wouldn’t mind if Judaism disappeared with all of the rest of them.
In one of several indirect references to Israel as occupier and destroyer, Spiegelman suggested that less damage would be done to the world without religions, and maybe without Judaism in particular.
While my admiration for his pioneering art is not diminished by this, it makes me sad that Spiegelman doesn’t appreciate what seems obvious to me — how much his Jewishness contributes to his courage and independence of thought, his huge array of cultural references and his insights into the fragility of everything good.
Surely, I tell myself, I should understand that as the child of survivors of Auschwitz, Spiegelman suffered for his Jewishness. And as if growing up under the pall of the Holocaust was not enough, his mother committed suicide when he was 20.
Maybe, I argue to myself in his defense, he takes his Jewish identity for granted as only New Yorkers can. With every kind of Jew and Jewish institution available there, one can be Jewish in New York without effort or self-awareness.
But I strongly disagree with Spiegelman that the demise of religion would reduce conflict among people. While people clearly do use religion as a vehicle to justify their hatred for others, there is plenty of evidence that they can find other excuses — how about nationalism or skin color? — to serve this purpose.
Like so many Americans who grow up with one foot in an old world and the other in this new, secular American one, Spiegelman, himself an immigrant, clearly taps into a deep vein of cultural memories in creating his amazing art.
Because I chose Judaism and have found so much that is beautiful, meaningful and inspiring in it, I am sorry that this Jewish American artist and creative thinker, who embodies such a Jewish style, does not have — or, perhaps, has been robbed of — the joy of a positive sense of his own Jewish identity.
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