The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale (No 1) | Art Spiegelman

The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale (No 1) | Art Spiegelman | A Must Read for Everyone Who Thinks the Holocaust was a Hoax

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The Complete Maus:...

	The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale (No 1) Art Spiegelman Pantheon, 1996 - 296 pages average customer review:based on 193 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Memory excavations

Boy, can I be a dope sometimes!

I've resisted reading Art Spiegelman's Maus for years. There was something about the holocaust turned into a comic that set my teeth on edge. It wasn't that I didn't know that lots of people whom I respect thought Spiegelman's work a masterpiece, or that several of my fellow professors had actually used Maus as a text in various courses (much less that the book won a Pulitzer!). It was just that I couldn't bring myself to reconcile the theme (genocide) with the genre (comics).

Well, I was a dope. I've learned a lot about the genre since then (although I wish we had more appropriate titles for it than "comics" or "graphic novel"), and I've discovered that the genre is perfectly capable of handling heavy themes (Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner's Our Cancer Year or Joe Sacco's books on Bosnia and Palestine are perfect examples). So I've spent the last week reading Spiegelman's Maus.

Oh my. Who could've imagined that the unclassifiable tragedy of the holocaust could've been so poignantly, so thoughtfully, expressed? The story line and the drawings are incredible, succeeding in saying entire volumes in the abbreviated way characteristic of this genre. It astounds me that so much can be said in just a few words and "simple" drawings. No doubt years of thought and mountains of draft went into such craftsmanship. One is reminded of how much effort it takes to write good poetry.

One of the best features of Maus is that Spiegelman, in telling the story of his parents' ordeal through the story of his troubled relationship with his survivor father, keeps the holocaust in the present instead of relegating it to a distant past. The father Vladek's memories of the horrific past bleed into the normalcy of the present. One of the most chilling examples of this temporal fluidity is found in Volume 2 (p. 79). Vladek, Art, and Art's wife Francoise are driving through some wooded areas on their way to a supermarket. Vladek is telling the story of four young girls who were hanged at Auschwitz. One of the panels comprising this segment is an overhead shot of the car containing Vladek, Art, and Francoise as they drive under a canopy of tree branches. From the branches we see four sets of legs and feet dangling. The legs have the characteristic striped pants of Auschwitz inmates. The power of Vladek's memory invades the present.

And indeed this is one of the major themes of the book. Vladek, who infuriates Art with his stinginess, his continuous tension and nervousness, and his constant complaining about everything, is who he is because the horror of the past is always with him. He can't shake it, and neither can his son Art. Indeed, the theme of memory percolates throughout the book: unwanted present memories, yearned for lost memories (exemplified by Vladek's destruction of the diaries written by Art's mother, Anje).

That's one of the reasons this book is the masterpiece it is. It isn't just a several-layered story. It's also an implicit archaeology of memory that, layer by layer, uncovers what it means to be a creature capable of both remembering and forgetting.

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A Must Read for Everyone Who Thinks the Holocaust was a Hoax

Not only did I have an Uncle who lived through the Shoah, but I was lucky enough to grow-up in an area where many of them settled and brought up their children. It was never easy to listen to them speak of what they had went through, but it was important to listen. Many of them never got over it, and others totally blanked it out.

For better or worse, it will be the defining moment for the Jewish people until the next one. What you ask? The next one! That's right, it can happen again and probably will. Just like Germany, Austria and Hungary, five hundred years ago, when the Jewish People were living graciously in a society, they were brutally attacked and thrown out of Spain. The Spanish inquisition was no less destructive of the Spanish Jews than the Shoah was for European Jews.

Sadly, the post World War Two destruction of the Mediterranean and Asian Jews has been little explored. No one talks about how the two million Jews who lived in North Africa and the Middle East were forced out of their homes, and charged exorbitant 'exit' fees to be thrown out of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, etc. Communities that lasted for three thousand years, were obliterated in a few short decades. The story of "Maus" should be a warning to anyone who thinks it can't happen here.

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For those of us who want to know, because we don't

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.

"I was friendly to everyone--the prisoners, the Kapos, the Nazis--if you want to stay alive, it's good to be friendly."

A man, who was one of the first Allies to see Belsen-Belsen, nobody knowing what to expect, says that there were piles and piles of corpses, and on top of them, sometimes under them, were a few semi-living human beings. The first thing many of these tried to do, he says, stifling a sob, was to free their hands, and raise two fingers, "they tried to do the victory thing, you know," he says, wiping tears from his eyes. "Sorry," he says. This man is apologizing for crying at the memory of his first sight of Belsen-Belsen.

But somehow, it is very important that Spiegelman does not cry. A good graphic book should not cry, It should report. This one does.

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A unique insight into the Holocaust.

Having studied and read many books on the Holocaust I think that Maus is unique and it is a book that anyone who wishes to learn about this appalling period in twentieth century history should read.
It is the story of Vladek Spiegelman's experiences in Nazi occupied Poland as told to his son Art who is an illustrator. What makes mouse stand out for me is the fact that it shows not only the after effects of the Holocaust on the survivors but also on their families born after the event. It is a brilliant insight into how people lived and survived this time in history and also how different survivors coped with it in different ways after the war's end.
Mr Spieglman has dealt with what is without doubt the most heinous crime against humanity ever in a way that does it great service, the fact that he uses graphic art to tell his story actually enhances what he has to say, it is a book that you will return to again and again if only to ask yourself, "How was such a thing possible?". Do not hesitate, if you have not read Maus then now is the time to purchase a copy, I highly recommend it.

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A Must-Read

Despite the approachable medium of the grpahic novel, Maus is an intense experience that I think everyone should read. This novel is NOT for minors.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

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