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Maus – Art Spiegleman

My edition of Art Spiegelman’s Maus has the following on the back cover flap:

Maus is a book that cannot be put down, truly, even to sleep. When two of the mice speak of love, you are moved, when they suffer, you weep. Slowly through this little tale comprised of suffering, humor and life’s daily trials, you are captivated by the language of an old Eastern European family, and drawn into the gentle and mesmerizing rhythm, and when you finish Maus, you are unhappy to have left that magical world and long for the sequel that will return you to it.

Umberto Eco wrote that. You can trust him.

Elementary School

I picked up Maus for the first time in the late 80s. I was a pretty precocious reader, and left the “grade school” section of my school’s library for the “big kids” section. As much as I wanted to give the impression that I was a very serious reader (keep in mind that I was younger than 10 at the time), I couldn’t ignore the cartoon mice. So I took it down and started reading.

Lower Sackville

I grew up in a little town inside Halifax, Nova Scotia called Lower Sackville (in all honesty, I didn’t know how funny that name was until I was 15) that didn’t exactly have a large Jewish population. When my brother went off to High School, the school was legally required to put up Happy Chanukah signs for my benefit alone. Let’s just say that reading about the Holocaust as told by cartoon mice made me more than a little uncomfortable, so I didn’t read a whole lot of it. Probably ended up with another Gordon Korman book.

So now, 15+ years later, I finally finished Maus and I’m glad that I waited. I’ve been reading some articles about the graphic novel’s role in literature and this is the first time in my life I’ve really considered them part of that group. Maus is a stunning book. The subtleties in the drawings are only made more impressive by the quality of the writing. Instead of getting another long-winded description of the War, Maus presents the history in an irreverent, minimalist fashion that left me completely incredulous.

Jews

I think I was most impressed by the representation of the Jews. They aren’t glorified as martyrs and victims, nor have their attitudes been candy-coated. Instead we get a story told by a very cranky old man who can’t (or won’t) appreciate his new wife. We see Jews arguing over dinner, selling each other out – being human. And by the end, you see a Jewish son swearing “Christ” and disrespecting his father beyond belief. This isn’t a negative, stereotypical representation. This is family and this is survival.

Family

At the heart of this book is the relationship between a father and his son. It’s heartbreaking to see a father who never got what he wanted making sure his son is repressed in the same way. I was amazed at how hurtful father and son were to each other without even realizing it. There’s an implicit hate – internal and external – that neither man can rectify. The spoken and unspoken frustrations that permeate the pages, both in words and actions, creates a world beyond reproach. Maus won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 – there’s a very good reason for that.

Comics as Literature

I’m currently halfway through both David Collier’s Portraits from Life and Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Reading comics as literature has opened up a new world.

Posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 7:35 pm in Uncategorized.
MLA: Gruman, Matthew. Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. matthewgruman.com. Matthew Gruman, 6 Sep. 2007. Web. 10 Feb. 2012.

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