Book Notes

Remembering Doug Marlette

By: Joan Ruddiman
   Reading the comics is not supposed to make you cry, but on a lovely August day, the sad reality that Doug Marlette was really gone hit hard. "Kudzu," his daily cartoon strip that I’d followed for over 25 years had been replaced. Even sadder, not a word acknowledged the passing of this talented man as his spot in the second column was summarily filled without pause.
   Mr. Marlette died July 10 in a tragic car wreck. He was a passenger, having just been picked up at the Oxford, Miss. airport by a drama teacher who was taking Mr. Marlette to Oxford High School to help the students polish their production of "Kudzu the Musical." The students chose that piece to present at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland where they had been invited to perform.
   The visit to Oxford was intended to be a quick stopover. Mr. Marlette was coming from his father’s funeral in Charlotte where he had given the eulogy the week before. Though he maintained a home in Hillsborough, N.C., Mr. Marlette was on his way back to Tulsa where he worked since 2006 for the Tulsa World as a syndicated editorial cartoonist.
   Doug Marlette was known in his field as a "double dipper." His comic strip "Kudzu," syndicated in newspapers all over the country skewered American culture with his cast of southern characters based loosely on his own life as a misfit teen. Over the years, Kudzu Dubose, his overbearing mother, his pastor, the Rev. Will B. Dunn — an obsessive-compulsive parrot, and neurotic friends guaranteed a smile with the morning tea.
   To many, Mr. Marlette was better known as a political cartoonist. Perhaps you recall the political cartoon that ran after the Challenger disaster. An American eagle, muted with grief, looked at the stars with a tear trailing down its cheek. His homage to the Challenger victims was so requested that his editors at the Charlotte Observer made prints available to all who asked. Hundreds were mailed out.
   Mr. Marlette was surprised at the positive reception to his sincere reaction to a national tragedy, as most of his sincere reactions captured in his political cartoons were not as well received.
   The list of his controversial cartoons is long and quite inclusive. He offended the Christian right with his images of Jim and Tammy Bakker, as well as annoying many in Bakker’s hometown of Charlotte when he worked for the Charlotte Observer. However, he won the Pulitzer for Public Service in 1988 for "detailing the misuse of funds by Jim Bakker’s PTL television ministry." By then, he had moved on to the Atlantic Constitution.
   His images annoyed Jews and Palestinians. His "What would Mohamed drive?" cartoon prompted death threats. When he skewered the Pope when he worked at Newsday in New York, Catholics were outraged — and his editors put him on probation.
   Mr. Marlette called himself "an equal opportunity offender."
   Never shy, Mr. Marlette published collections of his "Kudzu" and political cartoons with titles that reveal his defiance of critics. "A Town So Backward Even the Episcopalians Handle Snakes" (out of print) introduces a collection of "Kudzu" strips, and "Drawing Blood" (Graphic Press, 1980) is one of many collections of his most controversial (and witty) political cartoons.
   A favorite of mine is his nonfiction "In Your Face: A Cartoonist At Work" (Houghton Mifflin, 1991) that worked well with my eighth-graders when I taught the art of political cartooning.
   In this book, Mr. Marlette shares not only how he creates, he also strongly expresses why he creates. He begins:
   "If Elvis had drawn, he would have drawn cartoons. Good cartoons are like visual rock and roll. They hit you primitively and emotionally, turning you every which way but loose. There is something wild and untamed about the best of them, raw and vaguely threatening…Unruly, impertinent and bristling with attitude, they just won’t mind."
   Which is why, Mr. Marlette, notes in this raucous introduction, "the fastidious New York Times refuses to run them." He adds, "As Times editor Max Frankel said, sitting across from me at the Pulitzer Prize ceremonies, ‘The problems with cartoonists is you can’t edit them.’"
   "Exactly!" Mr. Marlette exudes.
   Ironically, one of his most notable moments of infamy came from his first work of fiction.
   "The Bridge" (HarperCollins, 2001) got headlines for "tearing a town apart." His Hillsborough neighbors — many who themselves are noted authors — were bent out of shape over a book populated with characters that were a bit too familiar. Some threatened violence and others actively sought to have the book censored.
   Interestingly, his former bosses at Newsday (he had moved on to the Tallahassee Democrat) didn’t seem concerned — at least not openly — that the first chapter was based on Mr. Marlette’s frustrations with being hamstrung by cautious editors. Of course, in real life, the angry political cartoonist didn’t beat up his editor and trash the office when his cartoon is pulled.
   It’s all fiction, right?
   Actually, most of what Mr. Marlette created in images and words came from his life. He just embellished it with razor sharp wit.
   "Kudzu" is a cartoon version of the teenage Doug. In "The Bridge," Pickard Cantrell, cartoonist, appears to be his fictionalized adult alter ego. Mr. Marlette began his career at the Charlotte Observer and hits the big time in New York City. Pick moved to New York with the "Sun," from the Charlotte "Sentinel." Marlette has thrown a few barbs at the Catholic Church in his time, as does the fictional Pick.
   In "The Bridge," Mr. Marlette also draws heavily on the story of his own grandmother, Grace Pickard, which is a mystery/romance that straddles a century and generations of neighbors. At the center of his fiction is the little known history of the Carolina cotton mills that erupted in horrible violence in the early 1930s. Like a character in the novel, his grandmother was bayoneted by a guardsman during a mill strike.
   In his second novel, "In Magic Time" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), Mr. Marlette takes on another important event that spoke to his southern soul. In this, Carter Ransom, a liberal journalist, re-opens the case of four murdered Civil Rights workers during the Freedom Summer of 1964.
   Henry Louis Gates Jr. of Harvard says that with this book, Mr. Marlette proves that "The Bridge" was "no fluke."
   "Marlette is a great writer of Southern fiction, and he understands that region as it was in the turbulent days of the Civil Rights Movement, and as it has reshaped itself since."
   Many remember Mr. Marlette as not only a brilliant talent, but also a generous and kind man. His editor, Sarah Crichton said, "He was both full of opinions and full of kindness."
   The noted author Pat Conroy in his eulogy to Mr. Marlette said Doug Marlette was his best friend.
   In his lifetime, Mr. Marlette was honored with every major award for editorial cartooning. He was the first ever cartoonist to be awarded the prestigious Nieman Fellowship for journalists given by Harvard University. His nonfiction and fiction books won critical praise. And he has amassed a devoted following of readers of all his mediums.
   In the Columbia Journalism Review in 2003, Mr. Marlette wrote what could be his own eulogy. In an article adapted from his book "What Would Marlette Drive" (Plan 9 Publishing, 2003) — alluding to the controversial Mohammed cartoon — Mr. Marlette reflected on the themes in his professional life and his philosophy that defined his work.
   "The professional troublemaker has become a luxury that offends the bottom-line sensibilities of corporate journalism. Twenty years ago, there were 200 of us working on daily newspapers. Now there are only ninety. Herblock is dead. Jeff MacNelly is dead. And most of the rest of us might as well be. Just as resume hounds have replaced newshounds in today’s newsroom, ambition has replaced talent at the drawing boards. Passion has yielded to careerism, Thomas Nast to Eddie Haskell. Why should we care about the obsolescence of the editorial cartoonist? Because cartoon can’t say ‘on the other hand,’ because they strain reason and logic, because they are hard to defend and thus are the acid test of the First Amendment, and that is whey they must be preserved."
   Doug Marlette’s political cartoons — always as timely as they were pointed — ended with his death. But the daily strip "Kudzu" ran for a month more, delaying for a short time the sad reality that this great talent and generous spirit is gone.
Joan Ruddiman, Ed.D., is a teacher and friend of the Allentown Public Library.