vive le roi
Today the French republic is 212 years old, sort of. And the Maytag washing machine is 144 years old, and Ingmar Bergman would have been 83, and my mother turns... guess how old. That's right, 29. Happy birthday to all.
Art Spiegelman's Maus is finally being published in Poland, the holdup having stemmed from its portrayal of Poles as pigs.
The embassy guy nodded politely, but clearly he wasn't buying my explanations. 'Mr. Spiegelman,' he said gravely, at length, 'the thing you don't seem to understand is that in Poland calling someone a swine is a much, much greater insult than seems to be the case here in America. Swine, you see, is what the Nazis called the Poles.'
"'Exactly!' I replied. 'And they called us vermin. That's the whole point.' You see, I didn't make up these metaphors, the Nazis did. I was just trying to explore them, to take them seriously, to unravel and deconstruct them. I must say, I keep waiting for some Pole to take umbrage at the fact that I portray Jews as rodents—I mean, I'm not holding my breath or anything, though it would be nice.
