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Maus
Cover of Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Part I: "My Father Bleeds History"
Publication information
PublisherApex Novelties
Pantheon Books
Genre
Publication date1972 – 1991
Creative team
Created byArt Spiegelman
Written byArt Spiegelman
Artist(s)Art Spiegelman
Collected editions
My Father Bleeds HistoryISBN 0-394-54155-3
And Here My Troubles BeganISBN 0-394-55655-0

Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, is a memoir of Art Spiegelman listening to his father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, retelling his story. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek's life in Poland before and during the Second World War and Vladek's later life in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City. The work is a graphic narrative in which Jews are depicted as mice, while Germans are depicted as cats. It is the only comic book ever to have won a Pulitzer Prize.

The complete work was first published in two volumes: the first volume in 1986, and the second in 1991. In 1992, the work won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award. In reporting the selection of Maus for the honor, The New York Times noted that "the Pulitzer board members ... found the cartoonist's depiction of Nazi Germany hard to classify."

Publication history

Maus (German for 'Mouse') took thirteen years to complete. Spiegelman's first published version of Maus was a three-page strip, printed in 1972 in Funny Aminals (cq), an underground comic published by Apex Novelties. In 1977, Spiegelman decided to lengthen the work, publishing most of the work serially in RAW magazine, a publication Spiegelman co-edited along with his wife Françoise Mouly. It was then published in its final form in two parts (Volume I: "My Father Bleeds History" in 1986 and Volume II: "And Here My Troubles Began" in 1991), before eventually being integrated into a single volume.

Overview

Art Spiegelman, wanting to record his father's (Vladek Spiegelman) history as a graphic novel, conducts a series of interviews with him over several years. Vladek tells how German policy towards Jews slowly changed in the late 1930s, and how his well-to-do family came to suffer penury, persecution, and loss of life. Vladek tried to make the most of difficult situations in Radomsko, Częstochowa, Sosnowiec, and Bielsko. Eventually, he was sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner.

Between interviews, the novel records the contemporary (1970s-1980s) life of the Spiegelman family in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City. In particular, it depicts Vladek's difficult personality and Art's attempt to make sense of it. He is exceedingly stingy and makes life very difficult for his first wife Anja, (Art's mother, a concentration camp survivor who committed suicide) and his second wife Mala (also a concentration camp survivor). Art contrasts the contemporary Vladek with the historical Vladek, whom he only knows indirectly through his research. He comments about the difficulties of presenting Vladek's story accurately. While Vladek has endured so much from the German soldiers, he still barters with them for food and luxuries throughout the story. Vladek shows his point of view in the story, and Art portrays the characters races through animal form. Americans (Dogs) chasing the Germans (Cats) who then chase the Jews (Mice or maus). (During Maus II) Also portrayed in the story are The Poles (Pigs), the British (Fish), and the French (Frogs). While Art shows no signs of racial discrimination in his drawings or his fight with his father(even the solo black character hitching a ride is portrayed as a black dog) Vladek still shows his signs of racism after Art drops off the gentleman. Vladek's own injustice of racism has not made him any different of those that he feels racism towards.

Use of animals

Throughout Maus, Jews are represented as mice, while Germans are represented as cats. Other animals are used to represent other nationalities, religions, and races, the most notable other being Americans as dogs, Poles as pigs and French as frogs (and at one point the British are portrayed as fish and the Swedish as deer). Almost all the characters of a single "nationality" were drawn identically, with only their clothing or other details helping to distinguish between them. In making people of a single nationality look "all alike", Spiegelman hoped to show the absurdity of dividing people by these lines. In a 1991 interview, Spiegelman noted that "these metaphors... are meant to self-destruct in my book — and I think they do self-destruct."

Impact

Since its publication, Maus has been the subject of numerous essays. Deborah R. Geis published a collection of essays involving Maus titled Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust.

Alan Moore praised Maus, saying "I have been convinced that Art Spiegelman is perhaps the single most important comic creator working within the field and in my opinion Maus represents his most accomplished work to date."

Maus has also been studied in schools and universities. It is used in courses dedicated to the study of modern English literature, European History, and Jewish culture. It has been translated into 18 languages.

In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed Maus as #7 on their list of The New Classics: Books - The 100 best reads from 1983 to 2008, making it the highest ranking graphic narrative on the list.

Collected editions

The series has been collected into a number of volumes published by companies like Pantheon Books:

  • ISBN 0-394-74723-2, Volume One (paperback)
  • ISBN 0-394-54155-3, Volume One (hardcover)
  • ISBN 0-679-72977-1, Volume Two (paperback)
  • ISBN 0-394-55655-0, Volume Two (hardcover)
  • ISBN 0-679-41038-4, Hardcover set (both volumes in two books)
  • ISBN 0-679-74840-7, Paperback boxed set
  • ISBN 978-0141014081, Paperback containing both volumes in one book
  • ISBN 978-0679406419, Hardcover containing both volumes in one book

Awards and nominations

Awards

Nominations

Notes

  1. Stanley, Alessandra (April 8, 1992). "'Thousand Acres' Wins Fiction As 21 Pulitzer Prizes Are Given". The New York Times. Art Spiegelman won a special award for his "Maus" chronicles, the history of an Auschwitz survivor told in comic book form. The Pulitzer board members, like book reviewers and book store owners before them, found the cartoonist's depiction of Nazi Germany hard to classify. (requires login)
  2. "Art Spiegelman" (http). Witness & Legacy - Contemporary Art about the holocaust:. Retrieved February 14, 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
  3. "Art Spiegelman's MAUS: Working-Through The Trauma of the Holocaust Retrieved May 20, 2010
  4. Bolhafner, J. Stephen (1991). "The Comics Journal". 145: 96. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  5. "RAW: "recommended by Alan Moore"". Readyourselfraw.com. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
  6. "Teaching Resources for Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale". Buckslib.org. 2004-07-11. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
  7. "MAUS - A Resource Guide for Readers" (PDF) University of Texas, Arlington, official website. Retrieved May 20, 2010
  8. "The New Classics: Books". Ew.com. 2008-06-27. Retrieved 2010-10-04.

References

External links

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