When the Texas state Board of Education last week banned Brown Bear, Brown Bear, the beloved (if slightly repetitive) children’s book written by Bill Martin Jr. and illustrated by Eric Carle, most of us said: WTF?

It soon became clear that a Board of Ed member had done a cursory Google search and discovered a 2008 book titled “Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation,” by Bill Martin. And soon after that, it became even clearer that that those Texans had their Martins mixed up:  Bill Martin, the 53-year-old philosophy professor at DePaul University who wrote Ethical Marxism, is not in fact Martin Jr., who died in 2004. We corralled Dr. Martin on IM yesterday to get his take on censorship, children’s literature, and insects.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, had you heard of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear” before the Texas Board of Education tried to ban it?

Yes, although I was more aware of Bill Martin, Jr., the writer, than his specific titles, other than one about bugs, which I think was his first book. It caught my eye because I like bugs.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, what is your favorite bug?

I’d have to say the ant.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, why?

There is just a great deal to learn from ants, as you can see in the books of E. O. Wilson; among other things, ants turn the topsoil and process it through their bodies, and, along with worms, this creates the nutritive basis of agriculture (or real agriculture, in any case).

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, it’s not because the ant is a symbol of the proletariat?

I wasn’t aware that the ant is a symbol of the proletariat, but it would be a good symbol!

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, what was the fallout of the story for you, personally?

Just fun, really, nothing bad, so I wouldn’t call it “fallout.” I’ve heard from various people around the country who I haven’t been in touch with in years, who saw the story in one or another newspaper, and that’s been neat. Of course what I would really love to have happen is a little more attention to the actual book I wrote, Ethical Marxism.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, is accidental celebrity really different from, uh, “real” celebrity?

I like the way you put that, and, yes, right, I would say it isn’t different. Sure, this whole thing is a fluke, in some sense, but then when you look at the people who are merely “famous for being famous,” as they say, then, hey, at least I’ve written some books that have some good arguments in them about what we need to be doing in the world.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, do you have kids?

No, my wife and I were agreed on that before we got married, it was never really a question for us. When I got my job at DePaul and had insurance to pay for it, I got a vasectomy, happily. However, we do have a superb cat named Theo, who is sitting nearby, or I should say he has us.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, oh, good, you’re a cat person. I recently argued that cat people make better parents than dog people, so you should know that even though you decided not to have kids, you’d probably be a good parent. But anyway: Bill Martin, Bill Martin, what do you remember reading as a young child?

I think when I was first reading it was the usual “Dick and Jane” stuff, I don’t think I ever read Bill Martin, Jr., unfortunately. As I got further into elementary school, I liked reading about scuba divers and motorcycle riders, and also I really loved the “Alvin” books, especially Alvin and the Secret Code, and also the Danny Dunn books. In sixth grade I read my first Robert Heinlein book, Time Enough for the Stars, and that made a big impression on me. I guess before that I was also reading about the space program and also sea exploration, sea creatures, etc.

There is even a part of Ethical Marxism about cephalopods, especially squid, so that stuff is still very much with me.

I did also read the Bible a good bit, I should mention—I was a good Christian boy.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, how much did that reading shape your eventual critical point of view?

I would say it shaped my views a great deal, I still think about questions like how we would explain to aliens from another planet why we have messed up this planet so much, as if “we destroyed that forest because we own it” is a good explanation.

Or, millions have to starve or die from bad water because otherwise they would have no “incentive” to work hard, as if that’s an explanation.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, what is the role of children’s-book publishing in advanced capitalism?

Well, not to be reductive about it, but it is not hard to see children’s literature as being a part of encouraging one way or another of looking at and living in the world to people in their most formative years–either to establish certain “norms,” for example of gender and gender relations, or to question these norms.

In philosophy and literary theory some of us are very interested in the relationship between reading (and “learning to read”) and epistemology, the theory of knowledge–what we know and how we know it. For sure children’s literature would be fertile ground for this sort of inquiry, though I haven’t undertaken this myself.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, do you know if there are any good Marxist kids’ books, or at least books about Marxism that would be interesting and readable for kids?

Amazing question, really. I do still like the Marx for Beginners book that has been out since sometime in the 1980s–it’s basically a comic book.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, in Brown Bear, Brown Bear, every animal is asked “What do you see?” How does that relate to the “animal question” in Ethical Marxism?

Clearly Brown Bear is about the interconnectedness of the animal world, and also the idea of looking around. But “seeing” is not quite as transparent a question as one would think. One interesting thing that the book raises is that some animals, such as humans, are set up to see in a predatory way–our eyes, and the eyes of bears, are aimed straight ahead. But there isn’t any predation in Brown Bear, these animals are just looking around taking note of each other and appreciating each other. So maybe that is good “communist” literature for children.

One of the things I discuss in Ethical Marxism is the way that kids often rebel against eating animals at a certain point, when they realize what they are eating. Then a great deal of pressure is brought to bear on getting most kids “past this hurdle,” so to speak.

You probably know the Calvin and Hobbes cartoon about this, where Calvin asks his mom if hamburgers are made from people from Hamburg. Which idea he finds highly amusing, but then he’s grossed out when he learns that hamburgers are made from cows.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, did you get “past the hurdle” and then turn around and get back behind it (i.e., become a vegetarian), or did you never get past it in the first place?

I first became a vegetarian when I went off to college, out of all sorts of motivations, including the not especially laudable one of just wanting to be different. That lasted for about five years (though I did graduate in four!), but I kept having problems with anemia, I wasn’t getting the right stuff–which should have just been a matter of looking more into things and also learning how to cook. Then, about twenty years ago, it was really my partner and fellow philosopher, Kathleen League, who got me back into that direction. She had become a vegetarian herself a couple of years before, and then one day I was at a gyro place in Chicago, looking at that hunk of lamb on the metal rod, and thinking of the line from William Blake, “little lamb, who made thee?” And I thought, “what could possibly justify this?”

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, that sounds like the children’s book you should write—Little Lamb, Little Lamb, with illustrations by Blake.

Sure, or someone better at that sort of thing should write it. Then they can ban it in Texas!

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, is there a Marxist reading of this whole incident?

Yes, I think on a number of levels, but probably first of all going to the question of the way that capitalism functions in a “postmodern” way these days, where the new media and the Internet, etc., are not some ancillary add-ons to the way things work, but are fully integrated, and so the genesis of this “incident” is not only a superficial Google search, but also the consciousness (or lack thereof) of people whose whole notion of knowledge or research is now fundamentally shaped by these media. This includes the politics of speed, in this case of not being able to take more than literally a few seconds to “research” something, which is also an integral part of what I call “postmodern capitalism.”

One last thing I would say on this is that it has simply become normative, and acceptable, to just say “that’s good enough for me,” in terms of anything that is critical of capitalism (though I am indeed harshly critical of it, in Ethical Marxism I call capitalism “evil” and give extended arguments for not only this judgment but also for why we need to use that word), as a supposed justification for dismissing such criticism.

Bill Martin, Bill Martin, that’s good enough, I think, for us. Thanks for chatting with me, and for playing along with this admittedly silly conceit.

Thanks very much, Matt. It was great chatting with you.