RALEIGH—In the summer of 2003, libraries at two highly reputed research institutions received significant “rare books” donations. Comic books, role-playing games (including “Dungeons & Dragons” and “Traveller”), and board games, to be exact.
In June, brothers Edwin and Terry Murray donated 55,000 comic books and 500 role-playing games and board games to Duke University’s “Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library.” The Edwin and Terry Murray Collection of Pop Culture, as the collection will be called, takes up 918 archival boxes, the Duke Chronicle reported July 23.
Reaction among the university community, at least judging by the Chronicle article, has been enthusiastic. The immediate focus has been on how the collection might be used academically.
“It’s a funny field because it goes beyond all the departments,” Duke Anthropology chair Anne Allison said. “Anyone interested in storytelling, images or pop culture might be able to use it. You can even make the argument that comic books are a form of literature.” Such an argument would be old hat for Duke’s English Department, which was recently featured in “Course of the Month” because a professor was using 1930s-era Soviet propaganda as a form of literature in discussing the “hope” awakened by the Soviets’ collectivization of agriculture.
Indeed, a professor of literature and English who is also director of Duke’s film and video program, Jane Gaines, wrote that the comics collection “carved out a very distinctive niche (for Duke) and made an investment in the future where the distinctions between high and low culture will be less marked.”
Allison also told the Chronicle that “[c]omics can offer a window on topics such as notions of masculinity and where our fantasies come from.”
“Women’s Studies would have a field day” with the collection, Senior Library Assistant Megan Lewis said.
Duke’s niche sustained a blow the following month when UNC-Chapel Hill received its own large comics donation. Dan Breen, a lifelong comic book collector in his 50s, gave the UNC Rare Book Collection about 26,000 comics. Breen’s collection filled 90 boxes. Curator Charles McNamara told The News & Observer Aug. 18 that he had, for the past several years, begun “to wonder how we could get comic books” in the library.
“The library had some science fiction and pulp fiction from its popular culture,” the N&O said, “but it was woefully short on comics.”
Speaking of cartoons
When Barbara Ehrenreich finally decided to weigh in on the controversy at UNC-CH over the school’s selection of her book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America for its summer reading program, she did so in an article entitled “Poverty, not a book, threatens North Carolina.” It was published in The Charlotte Observer on Aug. 8.
It will come as no surprise to those who have read any of Nickel and Dimed that Ehrenreich quickly ascertained the heart of the matter: “I saw that this controversy was less about the book than it was about me.”
Nor will it surprise them that her descriptions of the radio stations that invited her to discuss her book in light of the controversy: “I suppose I should be grateful for the chance to parse the finer points of Marxism vs. feminism on the kind of radio stations that update the traffic and weather every 15 minutes.”
She was quite taken aback by criticism of her statement in the book about Jesus being a “wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist.” She brooked no debate over “vagrant,” admitted “‘guzzling’ may be a bit overstated,” but added that “Jesus was sufficiently associated with wine (‘I am the true vine,’ etc.) to be confused with the Greek wine god Dionysus in the Hellenistic world — a subject I have yearned to expound upon for years.”
“As for Jesus being a socialist, I take it back. He was actually a little to the left of that, judging from his instruction to the rich man to sell all that he had and give to the poor. If that’s what it takes to be a true Christian, believe me, it’s a hell of a lot easier to be a socialist: You have to dedicate yourself to working for the poor, just as a Christian should, but at least you get to keep your stuff,” she said.
Someone might point out to Ehrenreich that beyond that one anecdote, there’s a whole book available on “what it takes to be a true Christian.” Although granted, it probably is easier to be a socialist. You get to laud yourself as “working for the poor,” which includes keeping all your stuff and forcing everyone else to give up theirs. There will be more poor to care for that way, too — your virtue can only increase.
Plus, socialists aren’t encumbered by the search for truth. As Lenin taught, “there is no such thing as abstract truth.” Truth is fashioned by political expediency. That is why Lenin could also state, “The Marxist doctrine is omnipotent because it is true.”
Jesus taught “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Surely it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a socialist to accept the concept of objective truth, although as Ehrenreich, they will gladly portray Jesus as a socialist for the political expediency.
Jon Sanders is an assistant editor of Carolina Journal.