P. Maudit

A Journal of Literature, Democracy & Dissidence

In the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the Machine

Critical Cartoons
We have become intolerably tired of scolding the rogues and dunces of this village to no purpose. The more shrilly we clamor against them the more irreclaimable they become. It has just dawned upon us in the light of a revelation, that mere verbal satire is a delusion and a cheat—that the battles of intellect are waged with stuffed clubs—that the pen is not only less mighty than the sword, but is even inferior to a well-wielded hand-saw...

—Ambrose Bierce

P. Maudit, the editor's cartoonist sobriquet, was auto-didactically born in 1998 to illustrate The American Dissident, eventually became a paid feature on another website, and was almost hired by the academic publication Adjunct Advocate (see Literature—Free Speech in Peril). Today, P. Maudit cartoons are now a regular feature on National Free Press (see www.nationalfreepress.org). Whenever possible, the editor informs the individuals criticized in the cartoons to hopefully foment, what partisans of the established order seem to detest most: vigorous debate, cornerstone of democracy. When real persons are depicted, the dialogue in the cartoons is not fabricated but obtained via real conversations, email correspondence, and/or from magazines and books. By the way, J. P. Christiansen made a good suggestion, which I implemented: "Half of the cartoons have no month and year listed; if you remove the month and year from all of them, they will be timeless and apropos to the present. The conditions depicted in the cartoons have not changed, so removing the month and year is of pertinence." For other cartoons, check out The American Dissident Blog.
Click on the image to make it larger.

For a review of New England Review, see NER.
For an amazingly lame Parini graduation speech, see "The Model Graduation Speaker".

For a poem on this, see Christiansen.

For an account of my protest against Ashbery, see www.theamericandissident.org/CreeleyAward.htm.

For more on this, see Chronicle2.

For more on this, see Chronicle.

For more on this, see TU.

For more on this, see AAP.

Nelson actually put this one up on his website. Could he not comprehend it?

Nelson did not, however, post this cartoon.

For more on this, see Chronicle.

For more on this, see Beatniks.

For more on this, see Poets & Writers.

For more on this, see Beatniks.

For more on this, see Gerald Locklin.