Title: [Maus]
Author: Art Spiegelman
Genre: Nonfiction Graphic Novel
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Borrowed from Colleague
Date Completed: April 28, 2014
Rating: ****
30.
Title: [Maus II]
Author: Art Spiegelman
Genre: Nonfiction Graphic Novel
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Borrowed from Colleague
Date Completed: April 28, 2014
Rating: ****
I read my first graphic novel in graduate school - Fun Home, which was assigned as part of a Queer Theory course. Wholly unfamiliar with the genre, impart because of my own English snobbery, Fun Home presented a series of intellectual challenges, and ultimately I found myself drawing on my undergraduate film and art studies to help with my more practiced literary analysis. Ultimately, the experience was rewarding, and from time to time I again find myself pursuing a reading list of graphic novels (last inspired by the fortuitous introduction to Persepolis).
Recently, a colleague mentioned a new graphic rhetoric text, which I quickly obtained, and just as quickly handed off to another department colleague with far more experience in using graphic novels. From this same colleague I was given a promising reading list, beginning with Maus by Art Spiegelman (which he kindly let me borrow). I've heard of the pair before, and knew the general subject, but had never got around to picking them up. Now, armed with the story of Spiegelman's run-in with the New York Times Bestseller list, I spent an evening curled up with the most wonderful kind of difficult story - that of a survivor.
There are many elements I enjoyed, and some of which I was not fond. I appreciate Spiegelman's choice of anthropomorphic characterization, and cherished his ability to share complex and moving emotion through alien faces. I appreciated, too, his attempts at honest portrayal - his father, for all of admirable qualities and inspirational concentration Auschwitz story, is not at the time of the story a "good" man: he is miserly, bitter, critical, and racist. But it is this honest portrayal that I found most unsympathetic; though Spiegelman presents Vladek as he sees him, the angst he feels at his portrayal predominates much of the text, shifting the story from Vladek's survival to Art's attempt at survival - surviving the example and crushing influence of his formidable father.
I was engrossed from the beginning, and moved only to fetch the second volume once I had finished the first. That I have not moved so quickly to finish A Death in the Family may say something about my interests and tastes in reading, but I am glad to have finally had the opportunity to scratch Spiegelman off my list. Now onwards to the other promising reads suggested by my colleague, including Daytripper and The Graphic Canon.
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