May 07 2007
Cat and Maus
I had always regarded graphic novels as comic boks with literary pretensions, an attitude which irritated my sister into lending me Maus, A Survivor’s Tale, by Art Spiegelman.
Maus is about the wartime experiences of Spiegelman’s parents, Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust, and Spiegelman’s difficult relationship with his difficult father.
Vladek and Anja Spiegelman spent three years dodging Nazis and their civilian, occassionally Jewish, collaborators until they were caught and sent to Auschwitz. Their story is harrowing, enraging and utterly compelling. Art’s depiction of his relationship with Vladek is poignant, and sometimes very funny.
Spiegelman’s art allowed him to create a book with far fewer words but the same richness, nuance, and texture as a straight prose book. The Germans and Jews are drawn as anthropomorphic cats and mice, respectively. Polish Gentiles are pigs. In one chapter, when Vladek and Anja are hiding in the home of a sympathetic Polish woman, Vladek furtively goes about his business in the village wearing a mask in the shape of pig’s snout. It sounds stupid written out like this but it absolutely works.
Maus is frequently difficult to read but impossible to put down. I highly recommend it and will read again.