Art Spiegelman reissues 'Breakdowns' with new perspective on book bans

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Arts, Books

4.2 • 671 Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2023

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Author and cartoonist Art Spiegelman is familiar with the hysteria surrounding certain library books. In today's episode, he tells NPR's Scott Simon about how comic book burnings during his childhood in the 1950s weren't all that different from book bans taking place across the country today. Spiegelman says that though they tackled difficult subjects, he found then – and continues to find today – great emotional power in comics, such as his reissued collection Breakdowns. And he says he's felt deeply unsettled by the ongoing challenges against these kinds of books.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Lambeung.
0:05.6	Okay, this is a big one. You know, all this week we've been talking to these authors who've gotten their books banned recently, and I don't know if any author's banning has caused a bigger hubbub than Art Spiegelman.
0:16.6	Just a quick refresher, his acclaimed graphic memoir, Mouse, which covers his father's experience in the Holocaust,
0:22.5	was removed from the 8th grade curriculum in McMinn County, Tennessee early last year.
0:27.0	Of course, Mouse isn't his only comic, another one of his graphic memoirs, titled Breakdowns,
0:31.4	was recently re-released and Spiegelman talked to NPR Scott Simon about the rocky aspects of his home life the book covers.
0:39.0	But they do get to talking about the book-bending incident.
0:42.1	And I was surprised at how much the incident weighed on him.
0:45.4	You know, he's always come off to me as one of those like tough as nails, old school New York types.
0:49.7	But he says the whole affair left him unable to draw.
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1:19.1	On our new show, Sources and Methods.
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1:28.8	Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:34.8	Breakdowns has been published before.
1:37.3	Almost 45 years ago, it's been republished a couple of times.
	...

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