Ordinarily one does not advertise in this space, but occasionally commerce and virtue coincide. Behold the Graffiti Gobbler—"the first effective, no mix, inexpensive formula that quickly and easily removes graffiti without harming the original appearance of the surface." (Did you feel your heart leap?) Already proved successful in Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Detroit and Windsor, Ont. (Canadian graffiti?), the "spray-on, wipe-off' Gobbler is right now being tested on the New York City subways, the end of the line. If it works there, its Australian inventor, Norman Shuttleworth, will be the Emperor of Gotham. No fame will equal his. His name will appear on every wall in the city. And then, quickly and easily, it will be gone.
What inspires such inventiveness? Something loftier than dollars. Vengeance? Civic duty? It is not surprising to learn that Australia has a subway, being down under, but can that lovely country have possibly reached the stage of mural riot that rapes New Yorkers every rush hour? No. There must be some holy altruism in Mr. Shuttleworth. Unlike other inventors, he is not giving the world what it never had before, he is restoring it to its origins. (One wonders, in fact, if there really is a Mr. Shuttleworth. His name is suspicious; it has a subway in it.)
Of course, if the Gobbler works, we will lose a bit in the bargain. The instructive messages in public toilets, the phone numbers, the lively anatomical drawings—no loss in any of that. But some things will be missed. The desperate erudition on the walls of college hangouts, for example: ARS LONGA; VITA HERRING. The continuing message exchanges will also disappear:
TO DO IS TO BE—NIETZSCHE
TO BE IS TO DO—KANT
DO BE DO BE DO—SINATRA
Some genuine poetry will be erased as well, such as these lines from a Harvard men's room:
SHE OFFERED HER HONOR, HE HONORED HER OFFER, AND ALL NIGHT LONG, IT WAS HONOR AND OFFER.
If graffiti had stayed at that innocent level, there would be no need for Mr. Shuttleworth. No Gobbler would have been welcome in the days when Kilroy was here. But Kilroy is not here any more and his, in any case, was a benevolent omnipresence. Not so with his successors: TURP, BOOB, HURK, DZ3, SONY, JUNIOR Y, SODA 1, whose names—if they are names—twist and bubble on the flat surfaces of our lives like virulent bacteria. No place in the country is safe, but New York City is actually under siege, its walls tottering under the cumulative weight of the lettering. So dire are the city's straits that Richard Ravitch, chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has been holding truce talks with the graffitists, who are asking him to concede them ten subway cars for their "artwork" in exchange for leaving the others clean. One artist by the name of CRASH, speaking in his native graffiti, thinks that the plan would "pass with flying colors."
The premise of such heady deliberations is that graffiti is art—a premise supported over the past decade by several people with brains. In 1973 Twyla Tharp introduced the ballet Deuce Coupe, which used the doubly delightful background of music by the Beach Boys and six graffitists shooting spray cans at panels.