Art Spiegelman is still haunted by Maus, said David L. Ulin in the Los Angeles Times. Two decades after he became the first comic-book artist to win a Pulitzer—for a work that was centered on his father’s experiences at Auschwitz and that depicted Jews as mice and Nazis as cats—the 63-year-old author is not done reckoning with the project. “I’m blessed and cursed by this thing I made that obviously looms large for me and for others,” he says. “The result is that I can’t do this thing that seems quite easy, which is: ‘That’s that, and now I’m working on a new thing.’” MetaMaus, a new collection of interviews and sketches that deconstruct his defining work, almost exists to prove his point. “If you can’t outrun it,” he says, “just stare the damned beast down.”
The new book digs deep into Maus’s creation, said Neal Conan in NPR.org. Of the decision to tackle the Holocaust in a comic book, Spiegelman says, “I wouldn’t have made a really great ballet about the Holocaust.” The choice was daring, but it opened the door for other artists to use the medium in a new way. “That’s what’s hard to remember—just what disrepute comics were held in,” the author says. Though he suffered deep guilt about the success of Maus—“because it was built on so much murder”—he can’t imagine not having followed through on the idea. “It was my way of understanding and making a monument on paper to what happened, not just to my parents but, by implication, beyond.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
'Elevating Earth Day into a national holiday is not radical — it's practical'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
UAW scores historic win in South at VW plantSpeed Read Volkswagen workers in Tennessee have voted to join the United Auto Workers union
-
Today's political cartoons - April 22, 2024Cartoons Monday's cartoons - dystopian laughs, WNBA salaries, and more
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”