art spiegelman's "maus" classic or dud?

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on the occasion of spiegelman's new work, "in the shadow of no towers."

well in an objective sense it's a classic as it's become one of the few graphic novels to be canonized by the mainstream (that is, people and institutions not ordinarily interested in comics), taught in school classrooms, etc. spiegelman is as respectable and famous a figure as the comics world has produced.

but what do you think of it?

the book's epigram, if i recall correctly, is a quote from hitler calling jews the rodents of the world. the book appropriates this concept -- although freeing it of its denigrating quality. or... does he? does the very act of making different nationalities/ethnicities different species serve a positive purpose? does it just reinforce a dubious conviction of innate differences or does it ironize/undermine this?

and what of spiegelman's mixture of holocaust drama and confessional drama? does it play up the disconnect between art and his wife's personal angst and his father's participating in a world-historical trauma? or does it kind of level them? does the film defy the holocaust bathos of sophie's choice or is it ultimately the same thing?

if i can remind myself of what the landscape of holocaust literature was like when "maus" first appeared, the book is refreshing for not grafting a transcendent narrative onto historical events, for acknowledging the role of chance (and of baser, even selfish survival instincts) in determining the fates of his characters. there's been a fair amount of "revisionist" holocaust literature since then that have perhaps obscured the relative newness of such an approach. maybe the more sentimental aspects of "maus" are only clear to us now....?

anyway, whatd'ya think?

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Sunday, 12 September 2004 22:30 (twenty-one years ago)

actually isn't the epigram a quote from hitler denigrating mickey mouse and then comparing jews to rodents? so present in the book's forum is a kind of riff on mickey mouse as the emblem of comics and cartoons.... not sure to what end...

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Sunday, 12 September 2004 22:32 (twenty-one years ago)

It's been more than ten years since I read Maus. I think the assigning animal species to the different nationalities kinda made sense since he was dealing with WWII and how Polish interacted with Germans interacting with French interacting with Americans, etc. I thought the meta part where his therapist keeps framed pictures of her pets, interrupting the metaphor flow of the novel, was funny.

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Sunday, 12 September 2004 23:29 (twenty-one years ago)

wasn't there a fuss cos the poles were pigs?

― gaz (gaz), Sunday, 12 September 2004 23:37 (twenty-one years ago)

when i saw art spiegelman talk at mcgill about 5 years ago (he was GREAT btw, really intelligent and well-spoken) some guy stood up and made a big fuss about the polish = pigs thing

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 13 September 2004 01:05 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm of polish ancestry, and the fact that spiegelman portrayed the poles as pigs doesn't offend me (though maybe it should? -- more on that later in this post). the maus books were memoirs of what spiegelman's parents went through before and during the holocaust. since many of the poles treated the spiegelmans in a swinish way, then i suppose that art spiegelman felt that it was only natural that they be portrayed as pigs. each nationality in maus was assigned a different animal, some in accordance w/ pre-existing stereotypes (the french as frogs, the americans as dogs (in accordance w/ a common european stereotype of americans being rather mindlessly friendly and high-strung like dogs), i imagine that the russians were bears [if there were any russians in maus, i don't remember]). i guess that if art spiegelman didn't want to offend anyone he could've portrayed the poles as falcons (the bird on the polish flag), though that would've been ridiculous w/n the context of maus and out of accord w/ how spiegelman's parents were treated by the poles.

if there's any fuss by poles being portrayed as pigs, i imagine that it comes down to several things: (a) lingering polish-jewish resentments stemming from WWII -- one of which being the all-too-common stereotype among many jewish people that ALL poles are latent, inveterate anti-semites (i believe that lanzmann's film shoah was roughly simultaneous w/ maus, and i know that shoah was attacked for portraying a less-than-flattering portrait of the poles); (b) a lack of acknowledgment in maus of polish suffering during WWII (i.e., if the poles were acting like pigs it wasn't always or necessarily b/c of anti-semitism but b/c of the extremely harsh nazi policies against polish gentiles caught harboring jews); (c) the common knowledge that pigs are considered "unclean" animals under jewish dietary laws, ergo the poles are seen as "unclean" creatures to the jews (which kinda ties into (a), i suppose) and, tangentically, that the poles were as responsible for the holocaust as the germans (which ties into (b), as well as my qualified "maybe i should be offended?" earlier in this post).

i dunno how art spiegelman has answered any of the fuss over the "poles = pigs" thing, so what i'm about to say may stand to be corrected if he has. as far as (a) and (c) go, i presume that spiegelman did not DELIBERATELY intend to cause offense -- that if he was playing up jewish stereotypes about poles, that it was at best subconscious. as i said before, maus concerned how his parents lived through the holocaust -- notwithstanding any stereotypes, the portrayal of the poles as pigs made sense w/n that context (as did the portrayal of the germans as cats). as for (b), that's kind-of beside the point -- spiegelman was concerned about telling his parents' story, not that of the poles (or, strictly speaking, any other jewish survivors of the holocaust). anyway, it IS rather interesting that spiegelman shows his father speaking polish at one point (when art picks up a black hitch-hiker w/ his father in the car).

― Eisbär (llamasfur), Monday, 13 September 2004 01:44 (twenty-one years ago)

People who get all worked up about how the Poles are portrayed in Maus weird me out.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Monday, 13 September 2004 02:55 (twenty-one years ago)

i thought he was speaking yiddish ("schvartzer" etc.)

xpost

― amateur!!!st (amateurist), Monday, 13 September 2004 02:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I interviewed him once, when the second collection came out, but I'm damned if I can find it. I did ask him about the use of animals, but I can't recall what he said.

I think we should remember Primo Levi before being too critical of pre-maus Holocaust literature.

Anyway, I liked Maus a lot, and I think it's a fine piece of work. I have seen it filed under humour in bookshops, and I have just recalled my wife trying to buy one of the Penguin editions for me for my birthday. She went in the local comic shop, and asked for maus, by art spiegelman. They had never heard of it. She said "It's a graphic novel about the Holocaust," and they said "The what?"

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 13 September 2004 12:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Martin, did they do a comical double-take with eyes bugging out and boingy sound-effects?

― Dan Perry '08 (Dan Perry), Monday, 13 September 2004 12:50 (twenty-one years ago)

Maus was pretty good, though I often can't decide whether some of the autobiographical stuff detracts as much as it adds. I think the one big huge mistake in Maus is the inclusion of his old comic about his mother's suicide. For me, it completely interrupts the aesthetic feel of the book (in a really unfortunate way) and spoils the tone. Luckily that section is over quickly and easily skipped on subsequent reads.

― TOMBOT, Monday, 13 September 2004 13:10 (twenty-one years ago)

Martin's post definitely brings to mind a visual of the Comic Book Guy at the Android's Dungeon.

I think that Spiegelman's animal characters in Maus were useful in that they helped to offer a personal and manageable perspective on the complex and immense horror of the holocaust. The what?

― briania (briania), Monday, 13 September 2004 13:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Dan, it wasn't a shock horror "THE WHAT!" it was a 'we have no idea what this Holocaust thing might be' "the what?"

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Monday, 13 September 2004 14:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Aw.

― Dan Perry '08 (Dan Perry), Monday, 13 September 2004 14:24 (twenty-one years ago)

The Holocaust? Wasn't he a one-time sidekick of the Red Skull who turned up briefly in Fantastic Four issues 136-139?

― briania (briania), Monday, 13 September 2004 14:33 (twenty-one years ago)

Tom's point about the earlier comic is well taken but I'm actually glad it's there because it gives you a chance to see how his styles have changed (and for the better -- the woodblock nature of the earlier comic can work but very clumsily).

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Monday, 13 September 2004 14:35 (twenty-one years ago)

anyone read in the shjadow of no tower syet?

― s1ocki (slutsky), Monday, 13 September 2004 18:55 (twenty-one years ago)

It's always struck me as something that feels like a side project, curio, not Full Blown Masterpiece. I enjoyed every panel of it, but there wasn't a single "wow" moment to be had.

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Monday, 13 September 2004 18:58 (twenty-one years ago)

anyone read in the shjadow of no tower syet?

Thumbed through it yesterday. Compelling, but at first glance all over the place.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 13 September 2004 19:43 (twenty-one years ago)

I read In the Shadow of No Towers a few nights ago. It's very short, printed on big thick cardboard pages, an interesing technique to make it seem worthwhile. I mean that in a good way. Had it been printed on glossy paper, it would've been a little pamphlet. The thick pages give an authority to his pages. What's really interesting about it is he keeps mentioning how he spent much of the time following 9/11 reading old newspaper comic strips, and he's picked a few that resonate with what was going on in his mind at the time. This is the more interesting part of the collection, moreso then his pages which make up the first part of the book which are repetitive and, while it's hard for me to put into words, just not his greatest work, but still very interesting. As a fan of old newspaper comic strips, I found the entire idea fascinating and greatly enjoyed the few reprints he offers.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Monday, 13 September 2004 20:01 (twenty-one years ago)

i get this sense that art spiegelman's career was basically sealed with "maus" and that he's sort of worked in the shadow of those books ever since. i can't tell if it's just that the reviewers are always holding up his latest work to "mau" and finding it wanting, or if spiegelman himself is so daunted by his past achievements as to not be able to commit himself to a similarly involved project...or a little of both.

― amateur!!st, Monday, 13 September 2004 20:10 (twenty-one years ago)

also, and I wasn't joining this conversation previously because I haven't read Maus in years, but I do remember a period of the Comics Journal where Harvey Pekar took some shots at some of the biggies, namely Maus and Love and Rockets, and started a lengthy debate. Anyone interested in discussing the above issues may want to check out that article.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Monday, 13 September 2004 20:15 (twenty-one years ago)

do you know the issue #?

― amateur!!st, Monday, 13 September 2004 20:16 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Art did himself a bit of an injustice by tackling the Holocaust so well and so early in his career. After that, any other subject matter winds up seeming so petty, it's almost impossible to impress people.

― TOMBOT, Monday, 13 September 2004 20:18 (twenty-one years ago)

so early? he had about fifteen years of work under his belt by the time Maus started (and 25 by the time he finished it). much of it was rubbish, of course, but yer Ace Holes and yer Don't Get Around Much Anymore's pretty much demolish any comics he's done since.

he's really done himself an injustice by only having one great book in him, and having to get through the rest of his entirely respectable career of illustration and editing and the occasional strip for a magazine with people thinking there's an entire closet of shoes to drop.

― kit brash (kit brash), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 01:22 (twenty-one years ago)

Let's not knock the Little Lit collection, which he did a great job of overseeing, not to mention the utterly lovely Open Me, I'm a Dog!

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 01:24 (twenty-one years ago)

I knew I was going to catch shit for saying "early"

― TOMBOT, Tuesday, 14 September 2004 01:32 (twenty-one years ago)

the Little Lit series is thoroughly covered in "entirely respectable career of ... editing"! his own strips are not necessarily the peak of any given edition though. Open Me, I'm A Dog is a cute kids book and I love the lead/placemarker, but it was like $30 for 16 pages over here, which isn't going to reward any non-parent's investment (unlike the density of say Narrative Corpse, to pick another overpriced art project completely at random)

the best creative work he's done since Maus was probably the jam strip with Maurice Sendak in the New Yorker.

― kit brash (kit brash), Tuesday, 14 September 2004 02:58 (twenty-one years ago)

five years pass...

somehow i had missed this graphic novel's existence entirely, until recently. i'm reading it now. it's devestating.

lately there have been more and more instances where i've mentioned WW2 or the holocaust to my 9-year old daughter. there's a whole separate discussion worth having about when such sensitive topics should be raised, and how they're dealt with (we're jewish).

― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, 22 August 2010 02:36 (fifteen years ago)

one year passes...

The contrast between the seriousness of the subject and the apparent frivolity that "a cartoon with Jews as mice and Naxis as cats" inspires is so great that I had in several cases to talk for five minutes just to convince someone to even read the book. I believe to overcome this you would have you enlist the support of well-respected individuals in many fields- get strong quotes and endorsements from a variety of people (not "cartoon people").

― and my soul said you can't go there (schlump), Thursday, 15 September 2011 10:15 (fourteen years ago)

two years pass...

can't even express how dumb this attempted takedown is:

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115649/art-spiegelman-retrospective-jewish-museum

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, 21 November 2013 17:58 (eleven years ago)

eleven years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbMI7EUMP-c

― Maresn3st, Wednesday, 22 January 2025 13:53 (nine months ago)

that looks great

― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Wednesday, 22 January 2025 14:30 (nine months ago)

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