Maus

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale Paperback – October 1, 2003
Author: Art Spiegelman ID: 0141014083

About the Author

Art Spiegelman is a contributing editor and artist for the New Yorker. His drawings and prints have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Maus, and a Guggenheim fellowship. It was also nominated for the National Book Critics Award. He lives in New York.

Paperback: 296 pagesPublisher: Penguin Books, Limited (UK); unknown edition (October 1, 2003)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 0141014083ISBN-13: 978-0141014081 Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies) Best Sellers Rank: #4,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #2 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Graphic Novels > Historical & Biographical Fiction #19 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Military > World War II #23 in Books > History > World > Jewish > Holocaust
I haven’t read many graphic novels, but I am decently well-read otherwise, and my knowledge of the Holocaust would be above the average person’s, but not phenomenal. Given that background, and all that I had read about Maus, I was expecting a "tour de force" that would make at least a minor dent on my reading career. That, unfortunately, was not to be, and while I finished the book feeling that the time spent on it was definitely well spent, the book is already fading in my memory.

Maus tells the tale of an artist who decides to write a comic book based on his Father’s recount of the Holocaust, which, in fact, is what the author is doing based on his own Father’s experiences. The book spans about 4 decades from the mid-thirties to the seventies, covering the pre-WWII period to the time when the author is actually exploring the past with his Father and writing this book. There are two stories intertwined marvelously in this book: a first-hand survivor’s experience of life before, during, and after the Holocaust, and that of a relationship between an ageing Father and young-to-middle aged son who have a serious disconnect.

The two stories could actually have been written independently, but it is their excellent juxtaposition which is one of the clear highlights of the book, for it has a multiplier affect on the poignancy of both the Father’s and the Son’s situations. Each of the stories themselves is well crafted, managing to weave together a bunch of incidents across points in time to create a very smoothly flowing narrative.
Imaginative…shocking…brilliant. As the title so cleverly suggests, I could go on for days raving about this book. Having clearly thrown my objectivity out the window, let me tell you why Art Speigelman’s Maus is the best thing to happen to comix since sliced bread.

Although Maus is written in comic strip format, Spiegelman does everything he can to subvert our assumptions about the medium. There are few, if any, character `thought bubbles;’ there is little emphasis on humour and witty exchanges. This is a serious book about a serious subject: the holocaust. As Spiegelman himself notes in the book (I am paraphrIDg here), "how can a comic strip, a medium historically dismissed as nothing more than `the funnies,’ capture the horror and pathos of the attempted extermination of an entire race of people?" The great achievement of the book is that not only does it meet this lofty challenge, I honestly can’t think of another medium that could have better captured the spirit of those times. Spiegelman’s skilful use of illustration adds a layer of irony to the story, and demonstrates the pathos that underscored the rise of Nazi Germany. Particularly interesting is that people of differing backgrounds appear as animals. There is the obvious binary where Germans are depicted as cats and Jews as mice (the text quotes a disturbing German Nazi-era editorial equating Jews with the flea-ridden mouse). Among others, Poles appear as pigs, the French as frogs (problematic, to say the least, although Spiegelman tries to justify this by pointing out instances of French hostility towards Jews), and Americans as dogs. The reasons why certain animals symbolize certain countries or ethnicities is not explained, neither whether ethnicity and nationhood are essentially the same construct.
I’m Jewish–and 72 years old–but my families have been here for several generations, so I didn’t have to experience any of it, except from a great distance (and as a 5 to 10 year old). I only recently became aware that some Jews will not read any book, or see and film, relating to the Holocaust,–because they can’t stand to.

O.K. Maybe Maus isn’t the best place to start. But for those of us who are curious as to how it really was, without any sugar coating, and without having our noses rubbed in it, it is very good. We do not have to SMELL or TASTE the camps; we do not have to see rotting corpses, mice do not have very expressive faces. It is the story of a survivor–through no fault, he stresses, of his own!–told in American speech, frequently organized in Yiddish word order, frequently punctuated by Spiegelman’s own speech, and that of his wife. We learn, from a very personal story, of everything that happened to Art’s father, without having to be afraid of turning the page. It is very honest. He does indeed "bleed history." And sometimes the blood is funny as well.

There is never any question of "Well, why didn’t they get out, while they could?" You do what your country tells you to do, and by the time you realize you are a prisoner of war (Art’s father was briefly in the Polish army), and that this involves being treated like a non-human, it’s too late.

Vladek is very good at "organizing" things–eggs, chocolate, seeing his wife, finding hiding places–but had he once been caught by the wrong people, at the wrong time, with thre wrong things in his hands or speaking to the wrong people about the wrong things, there would be no Art Spiegelman.
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