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Maus : a survivor's tale / Art Spiegelman

Author
Spiegelman, Art
Subjects
Spiegelman, Vladek; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) - Poland - Biography - Comic books, strips, etc.; Graphic novels
Summary
It is the story of Vladek Speigelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.
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Read associated articles: List of award-winning graphic novels, Maus, Parshas truma, Robert Grossman
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Work ID
7700250
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Title, Author, Edition Date Language Format Locations
Maus I : a survivor's tale : my father bleeds history / Art Spiegelman. - 1st ed.
New York : Pantheon Books,
135 pages
1986 English Book; Illustrated 14
Title
  • Maus I : a survivor's tale : my father bleeds history /​ Art Spiegelman.
Also Titled
  • My father bleeds history
  • Maus 1
  • Maus one
Author
  • Spiegelman, Art.
Edition
  • 1st ed.
Published
  • New York : Pantheon Books, c1986.
Physical Description
  • 135 p. : chiefly ill. ; 23 cm.
Subjects
Language
  • English
ISBN
  • 0394747232
Dewey Number
  • 741.5/​973
  • 940.53/​18/​0922
Libraries Australia ID
  • 26872564
Record ID
Contributed by
Libraries Australia
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Maus : a survivor's tale / Art Spiegelman. - 1st ed.
New York : Pantheon Books,
159 pages
1986 English Book; Illustrated 34
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Title
  • Maus : a survivor's tale /​ Art Spiegelman.
Author
  • Spiegelman, Art.
Edition
  • 1st ed.
Published
  • New York : Pantheon Books, c1986.
Physical Description
  • 159 p. : chiefly ill. ; 23 cm.
Subjects
Summary
  • It is the story of Vladek Speigelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity. Maus is a haunting tale within a tale. Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits. This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors. Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.
Contents
  • My father bleeds history
  • And here my troubles began.
Language
  • English
ISBN
  • 0394747232 (pbk.)
  • 9780394747231 (pbk.)
Dewey Number
  • 940.53/​18/​0922
  • B
  • 940.53/​15/​03924024
  • 741.59/​73
LC Call Number
Libraries Australia ID
  • 4543429
Record ID
Contributed by
Libraries Australia
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Maus : a survivor's tale / Art Spiegelman.
London : Penguin,
296 pages
2003 English Book; Illustrated 32
Title
  • Maus : a survivor's tale /​ Art Spiegelman.
Also Titled
  • Complete Maus
  • And here my troubles began.
  • My father bleeds history.
Author
  • Spiegelman, Art.
Other Authors
  • Spiegelman, Art. Maus.
  • Spiegelman, Art. Maus II.
Published
  • London : Penguin, 2003.
Physical Description
  • [296] p. : ill. ; 23 cm.
Subjects
Summary
  • This book memorializes Spiegelman's father's experience of the Holocaust - it follows his story, frame by frame, from youth and marriage in pre-war Poland to imprisonment in Auschwitz. The 'survivor's tale' that results is stark and unembellished.
Contents
  • I. My father bleeds history.
  • II. And here my troubles began.
Notes
  • Maus. Originally published: New York: Pantheon, 1986; London: Deutsch, 1987 - Maus II. Originally published: New York: Pantheon, 1991; London: Deutsch, 1992.
  • Formerly CIP.
Language
  • English
ISBN
  • 0141014083 (pbk.)
Dewey Number
  • 940.5318
  • 741.5973
Libraries Australia ID
  • 25367031
Record ID
Contributed by
Libraries Australia
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    The Copies Direct service is designed to assist you in ordering material from the National Library of Australia collections. Clicking the link will take you to the Copies Direct order form, where you can populate the details of your request into the form.

    Please note: Copyright restrictions apply. You may only be able to obtain a copy of part of this item.

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Maus I : a survivor's tale : my father bleeds history : Maus II and here my trouble began / Art Spiegelman.
London : Penguin Books,
295 pages
2003 English Book; Illustrated 13
Maus : a survivor's tale / Art Spiegelman.
London : Deutsch,
159 pages
1987, 1986 English Book; Illustrated 13
Maus : a survivor's tale / Art Spiegelman. - 1st ed.
New York : Pantheon Books,
295 pages
1997 English Book; Illustrated 9
Maus I : a survivor's tale : my father bleeds history / Art Spiegelman.
London : Penguin Books,
159 pages
1987 English Book; Illustrated 7
Maus : a survivor's tale / Art Spiegelman.
London : Penguin, - Maus
295 pages
2003 English Book; Illustrated 6
Maus : a survivor's tale / Art Spiegelman.
London ; New York : Penguin,
2 v. : ill.
1997, 1996 English Book; Illustrated 4
Maus : a survivor's tale / Art Spiegelman. - 1st ed.
New York : Pantheon Books,
2 v . : ill.
1986-1991 English Book; Illustrated 2

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Work history
Raw, Painful and Personal.
5/5
Amazon
Greg Harris (gharris@law.harvard.edu) (Somerville, Massachusetts)

This is a powerful work. The tale of a young man's painful relationship with his father is elegantly interwoven with the father's recollection of life as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Poland. Spiegelman's skill and honesty make this a raw, gut-wrenching read, though the tale is somehow ultimately uplifting.

I first read this book as a teenager, and would highly recommend it to people of any age. Over the years, I have re-read it frequently and shared it with friends of all ages. All have taken much from Spiegelman's tale.

A few notes must be made in response to the 10/26/97 comment posted below by a reviewer from Ontario, Canada. It is quite clear that this reviewer did not, in fact, read the book. (S)he mistakenly attacks Spiegelman for portraying the Poles as rats, and wonders if he would be offended if a book were written portraying Jews as rats. Anyone who took the time to read Maus (or merely to examine it's cover!) would know that it is, in fact, the Jewish people who are portrayed as mice/rats, whereas the Poles are portrayed not as vermin, but rather as pigs.

In fact, far from a "vicious" attack against Poles, there are many acts of kindness by Polish people portrayed in the book. Certainly there is unkindness as well, but how can the reviewer forget that this is a factual account of Vladek Spiegelman's life, told from his perspective. If unkind acts by Polish people are a part of that life, then they should be in the book.

Finally, the reviewer in question inelegantly raises a point of some merit, though it is one that is only tangentially related to Spiegelman's work. The Polish people did, in fact, suffer horribly at the hands of both Nazis and Soviets alike. Their death toll in the concentration camps numbered in the millions, and should never be forgotten or omitted when discussing the Holocaust. This book, however, is about Vladek Spiegelman, and so surely it cannot be assailed for its focus on events from his perspective.

Spiegelman's fidelity to his father's! story is to be admired, not attacked. And certainly not by a reviewer who could not be bothered to read the book.

More from Amazon

Explanation of the Animal Portrayals
5/5
Amazon

As a history and literature major, I wrote my senior thesis on Maus and Maus II because, after reading them for a class, I couldn't stop thinking about them. The imagery, both drawn and implied, was masterful. Each panel tells the story of the Holocaust as SOMEONE REMEMBERS IT. Spiegelman took his father's story and graphically interpreted it in an incredibly moving way. He did not write a work of historical fact (for whatever those books are worth anyway - even history is a work of memory and interpretation). I love these graphic novels for what they are - brilliant literature and testimony.

I was looking over some of these reviews of Maus because I am going to see Spiegelman speak this weekend and just wanted to know what others had said in the past. I was disheartened to read some of the negative responses to the use of animal caricatures, especially since I have always felt this was the most ingenius part of the works. Looking at these reviews, though, I remembered an interview with Spiegelman I read a while back. He explains the animal caricatures a bit, and I thought it might be beneficial to place a quote here, in this forum.

Published in The Comics Journal, October 1991:

Spiegelman says of the animal portrayals,

"These images are not my images. I borrowed them from the Germans. At a certain point I wanted to go to Poland, and I had to get a visa. I put in my application, and then I got a call from the consul. He said 'the Polish attache wants to speak with you.' And I knew what he wanted to talk to me about. On the way over there, I tried to figure out what I was going to say to him. 'I wanted to draw noble stallions, but I don't do horses very well?' When I got there, he gave me the perfect opening. He said, 'You know, the Nazis called us schwein' (German for pig). And I said, 'Yes, and they called us vermin (German for mouse or rat).'

Ultimately, what the book is about is the commonality of human beings. It's crazy to divide things down the nationalistic or racial or religious lines. And that's the whole point, isn't it? These metaphors, which are meant to self-destruct in my book - and I think they do self-destruct - still have a residual force that allows them to work as metaphors, and still get people worked up over them."

I guess he's right. People do get worked up over the metaphors. Too bad some of those people can't understand them. If you haven't read Maus, you are missing a true piece of art.

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Ignore the ramblings of the PC watchdog reviewers.
5/5
Amazon
speedracer

First of all, if you've read or are reading the other reviews, ignore the blather about how the whole "Animal Farm" metaphor--Jews as mice, Germans as cats, etc..--being racist and demeaning.

Art Spiegelman attempts to tell the story of his father Vladek's life in Hitler's Europe. By and large, the book is a detailed, objective retelling of his Vladek's story. However, as Art himself will realize, "I can't even make sense out of my relationship with my father--how am I supposed to make sense out of the Holocaust?" and "Reality is much too complex for comics--so much has to be left out or distorted." Thus liberated from the impossible standard of complete objectivity, Art is free to insert two important subjective elements into the story--the depiction of different races as different species, and the insertion of himself as a character in MAUS.

Obviously, Art is not a overt racist--in fact, in the second part of MAUS, Art will scold his father for distrusting a black person, and a German-Jewish couple will help Vladek return home after being freed from the death camps. The point of portraying Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, etc. is to show what race relations during Hitler's Europe might have been like.

The characterization of race doesn't end there, though--as the scene shifts from Nazi Germany to the present, and as Art must suffer the daily trials and tribulations of life with a father permanently scarred by his experiences, Art depicts himself as a mouse as well, a confession that he himself is unable to completely escape the aftermath of the poisoned race relations of the Holocaust. Maybe this makes him a covert racist. But if he is, then who isn't?

Art's involvement in MAUS goes beyond interviewing his father, though. Later in the story we will see that Art was treated in a mental hospital and sees a psychiatrist regularly. As the book cover declares, "MAUS is a story about the survivors of the Holocaust--and of the children who somehow survive the survivors."

The storytelling in MAUS is stellar, and the craftsmanship is as well. The comics medium allows Spiegelman to employ some interesting tricks. For example, whenever Vladek is trying to sneak around, he is portrayed with a pig mask. When Vladek and Anja are trying to escape from the ghetto, Anja, who in real life was easily identifiable as a Jew by her appearance, is drawn with a long tail, while Vladek is not.

In sum, MAUS is a gripping story of his parents' experience during the Holocaust, filled with countless brushes with death, tales of betrayal, and plenty of terrible, graphic illustrations of victims being executed. It is not a history text in the most austere and empirical sense. Rather, it is a confession that the Holocaust defies dispassionate and detached analysis.

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