All right, finally put this together. A quick summary/review/why you should read it on Art Spiegelman's classic, Maus.
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Maus, by Art Spiegelman
In brief: Art Spiegelman tells the true story of his father, Vladek, a survivor of Auschwitz -- as a funny animal book, with Jews depicted as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs.
Significance: Won a Pulitzer.
Price: 2 $14 paperbacks.
Maus is one of a handful of books that I can say, without hyperbole, changed my life. I first read it at the age of 11, and it proved both a compelling history of the Holocaust and a demonstration of the true power of the comics medium.
It's a highly personal story that has two major components. The cartoonist, Art Spiegelman, sits down with his father, Vladek, and asks him to recount his story as a Holocaust survivor. The book splits focus between Vladek's story and the "present" (some time in the late 1970's and early 1980's), where Vladek is a damaged, neurotic old man. Art loves his father and feels a sense of duty to tell his story, but can hardly stand to be around him -- at one point, he remarks to his stepmother, Mala, that he is worried about the contradiction between telling what his father suffered and simultaneously depicting him as what amounts to an antisemitic stereotype.
As the story progresses, and particularly in the second volume (which was written after the first was published and received acclaim), another theme emerges: the cartoonist's own relationship to his work. He's overwhelmed, not merely by the desire to honor his father, but by the magnitude of the Holocaust itself. In one scene, he depicts himself sitting on a pile of the dead while surrounded by enthusiastic reporters asking him questions about his book.
Maus succeeds because it is deeply personal. It is one man's story, seen through the eyes of his son. Spiegelman addresses the big themes by focusing on the small and immediate, and by wearing his own conflicted feelings as storyteller on his sleeve.
And then of course there's the storytelling style itself. It's a funny animal book: Spiegelman takes the Nazis' rhetoric, "Jews are vermin and Poles are pigs," literally. The most striking effect, of course, is to highlight the utter absurdity of such a claim. There are scenes, for example, where Vladek puts on a pig mask to escape detection, and in one sequence, a prisoner at Auschwitz pleads with the guards that he is a German and his son a decorated military hero -- Spiegelman depicts him as a mouse in one panel and a cat in the next. Likewise, in one of my favorite scenes, Art is sitting with his wife Francoise and wondering aloud whether he should draw her as a mouse or a frog, as she's French but converted to Judaism. Ultimately he decides she should be a mouse (and she has been throughout the scene), and describes a sequence (not actually pictured) where a rabbi transforms her into one. (This may also have been my first encounter with metafiction. There are several more sequences where Art switches back and forth between speaking as if he's not in a comic and then acknowledging that he is; later in the same chapter he's worrying that his work is unrealistic and takes too many artistic licenses, and then says to Francoise, "See? In real life you never would have let me talk this long without interrupting.")
Another effect of the anthropomorphic animal characters is to provide a sort of cushion, a layer of fantasy between the reader and the horrors on the page. It makes the shocking reality of Vladek's story easier for the audience to cope with, without diminishing its power.
At its core, of course, is the message that arbitrary distinctions don't matter, that we're all human, with all the vices and virtues that entails -- but that on the other hand, crisis shows us who we really are, and that when we face it, we may not be so different from frightened animals. The story is full of people who, out of fear or avarice, steal, lie, and betray. Vladek ends up in Auschwitz because he is double-crossed by two Poles who believe they will get preferential treatment if they turn in some Jews, and by a family friend who is coerced, under threat of death, into writing a letter claiming he is safe in Hungary. Their betrayal does not save them; all three of them ultimately die in the gas chamber.
Vladek, on the other hand, survives, partly through wits and resourcefulness but mostly because of simple blind chance. He is able to make himself useful, to stay strong enough to do odd jobs at the camp, but he never betrays his fellow prisoners and on more than one occasion he risks his life to help a friend or a family member (or even a stranger). The book is punctuated as much by small acts of kindness as by ugly scenes of cruelty and self-serving betrayal.
On the art: a reminder here, I'm not an artist and my vocabulary may be lacking. But here's what I notice as a layman:
Spiegelman conveys a lot of emotion with very little facial expression. In most cases, the mice are drawn with dots for eyes and without visible mouths, so their emotion is conveyed by their eyebrows and their body language. (There are exceptions; in one particularly haunting image, mice who are being burned alive are shown with wide eyes and visible mouths in panicked expressions.) There's a whole section in Understanding Comics about how simple iconic imagery resonates more with readers than detailed photorealistic images -- of course the fact that we're dealing with animals in the first place ties right into that.
There are no gray tones, and shading is done by hand -- something about Spiegelman's not-quite-straight, not-quite-parallel diagonal hash marks gives the book an organic, personal feel.
And the layouts -- they're mostly very simple and conservative, which makes it really pop when they become more complex and creative. Spiegelman's got a real eye for layouts, and I'm interested in checking out Breakdowns, his "new" book which is a collection of his work from the 1970's.
Maus is a brilliant book, deserving of its Pulitzer and its enduring reputation. It's an incredible comic that makes unique use of its medium; it would not work in another format. It's got pathos and drama and laughter and jokes; it takes on big ideas and unspeakable tragedy alongside a unique personal story of one family's struggles. If you haven't read it, you really should; I waited 15 years to read it a second time and I'm glad I finally got to experience it from an adult perspective.
