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"Vladek was never supposed to end up on a Rego Park street throwing a ball. It’s only the displacements of history that dropped him from outer space to there."
My first reading Maus was dominated by the horror of the holocaust, but on a second, the father/son relationship is equally compelling, and the story is as much autobiographical as it is (family) history. This book, structured as a long interview (with many pictures) between Art Spiegelman and Hillary Chute, is a deep dive into every little thing to do with Maus. The first third, which details Art's childhood with his holocaust survivor parents, his grappling with what happened to them, and his research in preparation for telling his father's story was endlessly fascinating. Unfortunately, that only covers 1/3 of the book. The rest is more about Maus as comic, getting deep into the animal caricature metaphor, the formal aspects of the comic, Spiegelman's comic influences and his career, which, while they offered up the occasional morsel, were nowhere near as riveting as the family drama of the opening. I can imagine the opposite being true for someone else, so if that sounds great, have at it.
If Art is to be believed, the strained relationship depicted in the comic is only the tip of the iceberg, to the point that he once pretended to have remained in San Francisco for a full year after having moved back to New York to avoid his father. Finding out more about his family life was endlessly fascinating, especially his mother, who was out of the picture for large portions of Vladek's time during the holocaust, and was dead by the time Art began interviewing Vladek, her journals burned years earlier. The book also includes recollections from survivors who knew Anja during the holocaust. One amusing anecdote was that Vladek, in his cheapness, bought Art old pre-code comic books rather than newer ones, which ended up fuelling his interest in the less sanitized side of comic books.
Art's researches into the holocaust are also interesting, since they took place in such a different context than the present day. It's hard to imagine now, with the holocaust one of the primary pillars of the American secular religion, but there was such a time where it was not discussed so openly, with his parents and their friends talking only of their time "in the war", Art having to scrounge in used book stores to accumulate research material, and watching the kitschy 1978 Holocaust miniseries (which he credits with creating a shift in the zeitgeist) with Vladek and Mala, which sounds surreal.
My first reading Maus was dominated by the horror of the holocaust, but on a second, the father/son relationship is equally compelling, and the story is as much autobiographical as it is (family) history. This book, structured as a long interview (with many pictures) between Art Spiegelman and Hillary Chute, is a deep dive into every little thing to do with Maus. The first third, which details Art's childhood with his holocaust survivor parents, his grappling with what happened to them, and his research in preparation for telling his father's story was endlessly fascinating. Unfortunately, that only covers 1/3 of the book. The rest is more about Maus as comic, getting deep into the animal caricature metaphor, the formal aspects of the comic, Spiegelman's comic influences and his career, which, while they offered up the occasional morsel, were nowhere near as riveting as the family drama of the opening. I can imagine the opposite being true for someone else, so if that sounds great, have at it.
If Art is to be believed, the strained relationship depicted in the comic is only the tip of the iceberg, to the point that he once pretended to have remained in San Francisco for a full year after having moved back to New York to avoid his father. Finding out more about his family life was endlessly fascinating, especially his mother, who was out of the picture for large portions of Vladek's time during the holocaust, and was dead by the time Art began interviewing Vladek, her journals burned years earlier. The book also includes recollections from survivors who knew Anja during the holocaust. One amusing anecdote was that Vladek, in his cheapness, bought Art old pre-code comic books rather than newer ones, which ended up fuelling his interest in the less sanitized side of comic books.
Art's researches into the holocaust are also interesting, since they took place in such a different context than the present day. It's hard to imagine now, with the holocaust one of the primary pillars of the American secular religion, but there was such a time where it was not discussed so openly, with his parents and their friends talking only of their time "in the war", Art having to scrounge in used book stores to accumulate research material, and watching the kitschy 1978 Holocaust miniseries (which he credits with creating a shift in the zeitgeist) with Vladek and Mala, which sounds surreal.