Sigh.

A few days ago, James Lileks brilliantly skewered one of the forgotten "victims" of 9/11 -- Art Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning comic book artist and author of Maus (which told the tale of his father's survival of the Holocaust). In his new book, In the Shadow of No Towers, Spiegelman apparently recounts his own victimization at the hands of the 9/11 terrorists (they made him feel really, really bad) and subsequently at the hands of the power-mad Bush administration (they make him feel really, really bad, too). If you're as flabbergasted as I am by the utter inanity of that formulation, go read Lileks again. And again.

If, on the other hand, you're in the mood for the chin-cupped-between-thumb-and-forefinger, furrowed brow, "let's-pretend-to-ponder-the difficult-questions" approach, then the New York Times is the place to go. Here's a sample from David Hajdu's review:

"[Spiegelman] shows himself sometimes in conventional caricature (a few wavy brush strokes for what's left of his hair, some dots for his perennial 5 o'clock shadow), at other times as his anthropomorphized ''Maus'' self, and once morphing from human form to mouse, as if to illustrate how the events in this book -- the devastation of Sept. 11 and the Bush administration's exploitation of it -- keep bringing back thoughts of his father's Holocaust experience."

I suppose any reviewer who can repeat with a straight face Spiegelman's claim of moral equivalence between the 9/11 terrorists and the Bush administration would fail to see the irony of deploring the political "exploitation" of 9/11 while hawking your own narcissistic "exploration" of the tragedy. Maybe I should write a book entitled In the Shadow of Unadulterated Idiots, wherein I explore how I was victimized by 9/11 and then victimized again by the sanctimonious, self-important "artistes" who exploited the tragedy for personal profit. Do you think I could get the New York Times to review it?

"In content and theme, ''Maus'' and ''In the Shadow of No Towers'' share some ground. Each of the books deals with a relatively ordinary man, a Spiegelman of one time and place, confronting mass murder (on vastly different scale and a wholly distinct nature, of course) and an arrogant, power-hungry regime (again, on a far different level). Both focus on the primacy of family and tribe to their protagonists, and both evoke the incoherence, the gruesomeness and the vainglory of war. In Vladek and Art Spiegelman, however, each book has a unique center. The elder was a man of unceasing action and confidence, the younger a reflective sort haunted by impassivity and doubt. The father was a survivor in his bones, relentless in the face of epic hardship; his son, a fatalist for whom the specter of imminent doom would only reinforce his everyday fears. 'I know I see glasses as half empty rather than half full,' Spiegelman writes in new book. 'But I can no longer distinguish my own neurotic depression from well-founded despair!' "

Oh. Dear. God. Hajdu's parenthetical reference to the "differences" between the "arrogant, power-hungry regimes" in Spiegelman's two books conveniently glosses over the fact that Spiegelman has apparently suggested a similarity in kind (if not yet in degree) between the Third Reich, which hunted his father, and the Bush administration, which makes him feel really, really bad. Just as infuriating as Spiegelman's obscene solipsism, however, is Hajdu's facile evasion of the most important questions to be asked about Spiegelman's book. Here are a few questions Hajdu could have asked: Isn't Spiegelman's inability to "distinguish [his] own neurotic depression from well-founded despair" merely a self-aggrandizing attempt to glorify his neurosis? Isn't his insistence on writing about that inability a pathetic attempt to claim victim status and -- if you want to get all Freudian about it -- to get out from under the shadow of his father's victimhood by stepping into his own personal "Holocaust?" How, if at all, does Spiegelman defend the moral equivalence he formulates? Don't hold your breath, though. Hajdu's review typifies the mainstream media approach to "arts" criticism, in which striking the correct pose (Rodin, anyone?) obviates the need to ask the right questions. There's one way in which poor, persecuted Spiegelman might consider himself fortunate. His book will be received with open arms by those who have inserted high-minded banality where their brains used to be.