When Cris Mazza received a National Endowment for the Arts individual fellowship last year, some of her supporters steeled themselves for another vigorous round of right-wing protests. Mazza and the NEA have a history of making waves together. In 1997, after the publication of Chick-Lit 2: No Chick Vics, an anthology of experimental fiction by women coedited by Mazza, Congressman Peter Hoekstra of Michigan denounced the book–which includes depictions of lesbianism, oral sex, self-mutilation, heroin use, and fetishism–as indecent and “an offense to the senses.” Hoekstra, chair of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, then launched an investigation into the use of NEA moneys to fund “obscene” works of art. Chick-Lit 2 was one of four books put out by Fiction Collective 2 (FC2), an Illinois State University-based nonprofit publisher of avant-garde fiction, to come under attack.
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Mazza’s relationship with the NEA dates back to 1993, when she served on her first prose fellowship panel, and she remains a staunch supporter of the agency. “The NEA doesn’t completely support any publisher,” she says. “But without grants from organizations like the NEA, independent publishers, especially publishers of literature, simply could not survive.” As to the NEA funding controversial work, she replies, “I’m sure the NEA regrets funding certain projects, not necessarily because of standards of ‘decency,’ but because art is an experiment, not a guarantee of success. Not all attempted art will become universal or sublime art–but without an attempt, there is no art at all.”
