Book & Free Expression Communities Lose a Champion: Doug Marlette

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, author, and renowned free speech advocate Doug Marlette was killed in a single-car accident in Mississippi on Tuesday, July 10. Marlette was a passenger in a car heading to Oxford, Mississippi -- where he had been helping some high school students stage a musical based on his comic strip Kudzu -- when the car apparently hydroplaned on a rain-soaked road before hitting a tree, according to published reports. Marlette was 57.

"The First Amendment has lost one of its champions," said Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE). "During the ABFFE panel at BookExpo America in 2006, he passionately condemned American newspapers for refusing to reproduce the Muhammad cartoons that had provoked such violent controversy around the world. He had a lot of guts, and he thought everyone else should have them, too."

In what was a tragic irony, on Friday, July 6, Marlette was in Charlotte, North Carolina, to attend the funeral of his father. Afterwards, he flew to Memphis, where he and Oxford High School drama teacher John Davenport headed by car to Oxford, as reported by the Tulsa World. Davenport, the driver of the car, was taken to the hospital where he was treated and released, the World noted.

That Marlette was taking the time to generously lend someone else a hand was not surprising, noted Oxford Mayor Richard Howorth, owner of Square Books. "Doug was on his way to Oxford to work on something that he volunteered to do -- he had formed a relationship with the drama students and the high school teacher and was willing to help. Doug was just an extremely nice person," said Howorth. "His loss is a loss to the world of journalism, the world of books, and advocates of free expression."

Marlette was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1949, and was raised in Durham, North Carolina; Laurel, Mississippi; and Sanford, Florida. After graduating from Florida State University, he started drawing political cartoons for the Charlotte Observer in 1972. He joined the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1987, New York Newsday in 1989, the Tallahassee Democrat in 2002. He had been employed by the Tulsa World since 2006.

Throughout his distinguished career, Marlette won numerous awards for his editorial cartoons, including the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. His work appeared in publications ranging from Time and Newsweek to the New York Times. His cartoons and Kudzu comic strip were syndicated and appeared in newspapers around the world. His cartoons are collected in 19 volumes, including In Your Face: A Cartoonist at Work; Faux Bubba: Bill and Hillary Go to Washington; and A Town So Backwards Even the Episcopalians Handle Snakes.

Marlette's debut novel, The Bridge (HarperCollins), was published in October 2001 and was voted Best Book of the Year for Fiction in 2002 by the former Southeast Booksellers Association (now the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance [SIBA]). His second novel, Magic Time (Sarah Crichton Books/FSG), was published in October 2006.

Wanda Jewell, executive director of SIBA, said that Marlette was a true friend of the independent bookseller and noted that the association plans on honoring him at its next book awards luncheon. "My life is better for having known him," she said. "He was all the things we loved: a great writer, southern, funny, and smart. He had an understanding of what it means to be a real friend."

As both a cartoonist and novelist, Marlette earned a reputation as an artist who rarely pulled punches. In 2002, his cartoon of a man in Middle Eastern garb driving a rental car with the caption "What Would Mohammad Drive?" set off a media firestorm of criticism and condemnation from groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Referring to himself as an "equal opportunity offender," Marlette drew the outrage of a broad spectrum of political and religious groups: Christian fundamentalists, the Pope, and Israel were among his many targets. But he was not one to back down due to criticism or political correctness, and once wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, "In this country we do not apologize for our opinions."

In 2006, at BookExpo America in Washington, D.C., Marlette, a featured speaker at an event on threats to press freedom, bemoaned that there were fewer and fewer good political cartoonists. "Twenty years ago, there were 250 [political] cartoonists working. The number of cartoonists working now is 70," he said, adding this trend was due in part to the "corporate culture of niceness," which makes the press fearful of being offensive or controversial.

At the event, Marlette also noted how his cartoons had come under attack from both the left and the right. Often, when liberals or conservatives claim they believe in free speech, what they really mean is "they believe in free speech for themselves," he said.

As a staunch free speech advocate, Marlette was extremely disappointed with the American press for being afraid to run the controversial Mohammad cartoons following the violence that erupted after their publication in the Danish paper Jyllands-Posten in 2005. In a column published by Salon.com in February 2006, Marlette wrote: "Once these images became a major news story (and given that they easily satisfied Western standards of legitimate commentary and in fact only became internationally controversial after being misrepresented to the larger Muslim world) I can see little reason -- other than bodily fear, bottom-line self-preservation, and just poor judgment -- that the U.S. media and the public officials entrusted with defending our freedoms wimped out so thoroughly when challenged to live up to their historic obligation under the First Amendment to keep the American public informed."

Marlette is survived by his wife, Melinda Marlette, and an adult son, Jackson, as reported by the World. --David Grogan