Bibliofreakblog

Maus I & II by Art Spiegelman

I remember my sister having the first one over fifteen years ago.  She was still living at home and going to college, which would make me…  Let’s say 8.  I wanted to look at them because they were cartoons, and she explained to me that they were about the Holocaust.  I tried to read them anyways, but soon grew bored.

Probably because cartoons they may be, but they aren’t for children.

Unless you’re into showing your children sketches of the Auschwitz victims.

Like Persepolis, the two volumes have now been combined into one “complete” addition, thereby saving you a couple of bucks.  Or half the library fines if you’re late with them.

Regardless, if you read one, you’ll probably read the other.  I suggest you do get them together or in the “complete” edition, because graphic novels go by so fast–even with a serious subject.  

Art Spiegelman’s father and mother were Auschwitz survivors (take that Ahmedinejad & Mel Gibson).  Spiegelman depicts his father’s stories, through drawings of animals.  All of the Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats, the French are frogs (natch) and the Polish are pigs.  I kind of didn’t like Polish as pigs, but hey, I didn’t live through it.

Interwoven with Art’s father’s story is Art’s struggle to have a meaningful relationship with his father.  His father is stingy and kinda a jerk.  Their relationship is further complicated because Art’s mother committed suicide in 1968.  

Part of what makes this story so  interesting, besides the animals and treating a horribly scary subject with cartoonish delight, making it a sort of comic noir (anime noire?), is the brutal truth Art writes and sketches.  And I don’t mean just the brutal truth of the Holocaust, but the necessary ways of survival in the Holocaust.  Sharing vs. not sharing, helping vs. not helping, friends vs. self, and countless other conflicts come up time and again.

The first book ends with Art’s father’s arrival to Auschwitz.  If you think the first book was devestating, needless to say it goes downhill from there.

If you like this book/author, you might like:

Animal Farm (F) by George Orwell
Persepolis (CNF) by Marjane Satrarpi
American Born Chinese (F) by Gene Luen Yang
Palestine (CNF) by Joe Sacco
The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (CNF) by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon
The Book Thief (F) by Markus Zusak
Night (F) by Elie Wiesel
Survival in Auschwitz (CNF) by Primo Levi
Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (CNF) by Anne Frank
Fire on the Water: Porgess and the Abyss (F) by Arnost Lustig
The Good War: An Oral History of WWII (NF) by Studs Turkel
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (F) by Tadeusz Borowski
Poland (F) by James Michener
The Apple (CNF) by Penelope Holt
 

Other works by Art Spiegelman:
 

Breakdowns: From Maus to Now, an Anthology of Strips (F)
The Wild Party: The Lost Classic by Joseph Moncure March (F)
Open Me, I’m A Dog (F)
In the Shadow of No Towers (CNF)
Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! (CNF)

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