| Maus | |
|---|---|
Cover of Maus: A Survivor's Tale Part I: "My Father Bleeds History" |
|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Apex Novelties Pantheon Books |
| Genre |
Comics series featuring anthropomorphism |
| Publication date | 1972 – 1991 |
| Creative team | |
| Writer(s) | Art Spiegelman |
| Artist(s) | Art Spiegelman |
| Creator(s) | Art Spiegelman |
| Collected editions | |
| My Father Bleeds History | ISBN 0-394-54155-3 |
| And Here My Troubles Began | ISBN 0-394-55655-0 |
Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, is a biography of the author's father, Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. It alternates between descriptions of Vladek's life in Poland before and during the Second World War and Vladek's later life in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City. The work is a graphic narrative in which Jews are depicted as mice, while Germans are depicted as cats. It is the only comic book ever to have won a Pulitzer Prize.
The complete work was first published in two volumes: the first volume in 1986, and the second in 1991. In 1992, the work won a Pulitzer Prize Special Award. In reporting the selection of Maus for the honor, The New York Times noted that "the Pulitzer board members ... found the cartoonist's depiction of Nazi Germany hard to classify."[1]
Contents |
Maus (German for 'Mouse') took thirteen years to complete. Spiegelman's first published version of Maus was a three-page strip, printed in 1972 in Funny Aminals, an underground comic published by Apex Novelties. In 1977, Spiegelman decided to do a longer work,[2] publishing most of the work serially in RAW magazine, a publication Spiegelman co-edited along with his wife Françoise Mouly. It was then published in its final form in two parts (Volume I: "My Father Bleeds History" in 1986 and Volume II: "And Here My Troubles Began" in 1991), before eventually being integrated into a single volume.[3]
Art Spiegelman, wanting to record his father's (Vladek Spiegelman) history as a graphic novel, conducts a series of interviews with him over several years. Vladek tells how German policy towards Jews slowly changed in the late 1930s, and how his well-to-do family came to suffer penury, persecution, and loss of life. Vladek tried to make the most of difficult situations in Radomsko, Częstochowa, Sosnowiec, and Bielsko. Eventually, he was sent to Auschwitz as a prisoner.
Between interviews, the novel records the contemporary (1970s-1980s) life of the Spiegelman family in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City. In particular, it depicts Vladek's difficult personality and Art's attempt to make sense of it. He is exceedingly stingy and makes life very difficult for his first wife Anja (Art's mother, a concentration camp survivor who committed suicide) and his second wife Mala (also a concentration camp survivor). Art contrasts the contemporary Vladek with the historical Vladek, whom he only knows indirectly through his research. He also points out that while Vladek was himself a victim of bigotry that he was known to hold bigoted views against African Americans and homosexuals himself. He comments about the difficulties of presenting Vladek's story accurately.
Throughout Maus, Jews are represented as mice, while non-jewish Germans are represented as cats. Other animals are used to represent other nationalities, religions, and races. Almost all the characters of a single "nationality" were drawn identically, with only their clothing or other details helping to distinguish between them. In making people of a single nationality look "all alike", Spiegelman hoped to show the absurdity of dividing people by these lines. In a 1991 interview, Spiegelman noted that "these metaphors... are meant to self-destruct in my book — and I think they do self-destruct."[4]
Since its publication, Maus has been the subject of numerous essays. Deborah R. Geis published a collection of essays involving Maus titled Considering Maus: Approaches to Art Spiegelman's "Survivor's Tale" of the Holocaust.
Alan Moore praised Maus, saying "I have been convinced that Art Spiegelman is perhaps the single most important comic creator working within the field and in my opinion Maus represents his most accomplished work to date."[5]
Maus has also been studied in schools and universities.[6] It is used in courses dedicated to the study of modern English literature, European History, and Jewish culture. It has been translated into 18 languages.[7]
In 2008, Entertainment Weekly listed Maus as #7 on their list of The New Classics: Books - The 100 best reads from 1983 to 2008, making it the highest ranking graphic narrative on the list.[8]
Maus has been classified both as fiction and as history. When the second volume of Maus was published in hardcover, it made its way onto the New York Times best-seller list in fiction. In a letter to the New York Times Book Review Spiegelman disagreed with classifying it among fiction, writing, “I shudder to think how David Duke … would respond to seeing a carefully researched work based closely on my father’s memories of life in Hitler’s Europe and in the death camps classified as fiction.” One editor reportedly responded, “Let’s go out to Spiegelman’s house and if a giant mouse answers the door, we’ll move it to the nonfiction side of the list!” But the Times, following Pantheon (which had listed it as both history and memoir), ruled with Spiegelman.[9]
The series has been collected into a number of volumes published by companies like Pantheon Books:
| Volume | Binding | ISBN |
|---|---|---|
| Volume I | paperback | 0-394-74723-2 |
| hardcover | 0-394-54155-3 | |
| Volume II | paperback | 0-679-72977-1 |
| hardcover | 0-394-55655-0 | |
| Hardcover boxed set | two-volume hardcover set with slipcase | 0-679-41038-4 |
| Paperback boxed set | two-volume paperback set with slipcase | 0-679-74840-7 |
| Complete Maus | paperback containing both volumes in one book | 978-0-141-01408-1 |
| hardcover containing both volumes in one book | 978-0-679-40641-9 |
In 1995, The Voyager Company released The Complete Maus on CD-Rom, a collection which, in addition to the comic itself, contained taped transcripts of Vladek, filmed interviews with Art, sketches etc.[10]
In the fall of 2011, Pantheon Books published a companion to The Complete Maus entitled Meta Maus. It contains the explanation why Spiegelman wrote Maus, why he chose certain animals, and how he was able to get his father to open up about his life and experiences. It features illustrations, photos, and a DVD that includes video footage of conversations and interviews with his father.[11]
| Year | Organisation | Award | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | National Book Critics Circle | National Book Critics Circle Award | Nominated |
| 1988 | Angoulême International Comics Festival Awards | Religious Award: Christian Testimony | Won |
| Prize for Best Comic Book: Foreign Comic Award (Maus: un survivant raconte) | Won | ||
| Urhunden Prize | Foreign Album | Won | |
| 1990 | Max & Moritz Prizes | Special Prize | Won |
| 1992 | Pulitzer Prize | Special Awards and Citations - Letters | Won[12] |
| Eisner Award | Best Graphic Album: Reprint (Maus II). | Won | |
| Harvey Award | Best Graphic Album of Previously Published Work (Maus II) | Won[13] | |
| National Book Critics Circle | National Book Critics Circle Award | Nominated | |
| 1993 | Los Angeles Times | Book Prize for Fiction (Maus II, A Survivor's Tale) | Won[14] |
| Angoulême International Comics Festival Awards | Prize for Best Comic Book: Foreign comic (Maus: un survivant raconte, part II). | Won | |
| Urhunden Prize | Foreign Album (Maus II). | Won |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||