This fall, Art Spiegelman will receive an honorary National Book Award for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He feels honored, and a little worried.
The unexpected pleasure of being cited by the National Book Foundation comes months after the jarring saga of his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Maus” being withdrawn by a Tennessee school board, which found Spiegelman’s graphic novel about the Holocaust inappropriate for the district's curriculum. Sales for “Maus” and other Spiegelman books surged, but the attention distracted him from other priorities.
