- Maus
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For other uses, see Maus (disambiguation).
Maus 
Cover of Maus: A Survivor's Tale
Part I: "My Father Bleeds History"Publication information Publisher Apex Novelties
Pantheon BooksGenre
Comics series featuring anthropomorphismPublication 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
Publication history
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 lengthen the 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]
Overview
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.
Use of animals
Throughout Maus, Jews are represented as mice, while 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]
Impact
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]
Collected editions
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]
Awards and nominations
Awards and nominations
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 Notes
- ^ Stanley, Alessandra (April 8, 1992). "'Thousand Acres' Wins Fiction As 21 Pulitzer Prizes Are Given". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/04/05/specials/smiley-pulitzer.html. "Art Spiegelman won a special award for his "Maus" chronicles, the history of an Auschwitz survivor told in comic book form. The Pulitzer board members, like book reviewers and book store owners before them, found the cartoonist's depiction of Nazi Germany hard to classify." (requires login)
- ^ "Art Spiegelman" (http). Witness & Legacy - Contemporary Art about the holocaust:. http://sunsite.utk.edu/witness/artists/spiegelman/. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
- ^ "Art Spiegelman's MAUS: Working-Through The Trauma of the Holocaust Retrieved May 20, 2010
- ^ Bolhafner, J. Stephen (October 1991). The Comics Journal. 145. p. 96.
- ^ "RAW: "recommended by Alan Moore"". Readyourselfraw.com. http://www.readyourselfraw.com/recommended/rec_alanmoore/recommended_alanmoore.html. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
- ^ "Teaching Resources for Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale". Buckslib.org. 2004-07-11. http://www.buckslib.org/OneBook/Maus/unit2student.htm. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
- ^ "MAUS - A Resource Guide for Readers" (PDF) University of Texas, Arlington, official website. Retrieved May 20, 2010
- ^ "The New Classics: Books". Ew.com. 2008-06-27. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20207076_20207387_20207349,00.html. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
- ^ Franklin, Ruth (October 5, 2011). "Art Spiegelman’s Genre-Defying Holocaust Work, Revisited". The New Republic. http://www.tnr.com/article/the-read/95758/art-spiegelman-metamaus-holocaust-memoir-graphic-novel. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
- ^ The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman - Trailer on Vimeo
- ^ "Pulitzer Prize-winning Artist/Illustrator". http://www.barclayagency.com/spiegelman.html.
- ^ Pulitzer Prizes, official website
- ^ Harvey Awards 1992 winners
- ^ Los Angeles Times website
References
- "Art Spiegelman" (http). Witness & Legacy - Contemporary Art about the Holocaust:. http://sunsite.utk.edu/witness/artists/spiegelman/. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
- Allen, Sara (1997). "MAUS: A Narrative History of Family and Tragedy" (http). http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/bassr/218/projects/allen/maussea1.htm. Retrieved July 27, 2006.
- Feinstein, Stephen C.. "Witness and Legacy" (http). Witness & Legacy - Contemporary Art about the Holocaust:. http://sunsite.utk.edu/neighborhoods/witness/essays/feinstein/feinstein.html. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
- McQuade, Donald (2003). "Embodying Identity" (PDF). Seeing & Writing 2. http://bedfordstmartins.com/seeingandwriting2e/instructor/pdfs/mcquade_ch04.pdf. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
- Masłoń, Krzysztof. "Goebbels' Tradition in the Comic Book" (http). http://www.forum-znak.org.pl/index-en.php?t=przeglad&id=1020. Retrieved February 14, 2006.[dead link]
- "Maus" (http). National Museum of American Jewish History. 1996. http://www.nmajh.org/exhibitions/maus/maus2.html. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
- Dooley, Michael (2005). "The Unsinkable Denis Kitchen" (http). AIGA Journal of Design. http://journal.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=_getfullarticle&aid=1239039. Retrieved February 14, 2006.
- Spiegelman, Art (1986). Maus. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 0394747232.
External links
Listen to this article (info/dl)
This audio file was created from a revision of Maus dated 2005-06-23, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)More spoken articles- Teacher's guide at Random House
- Reconstructivist Art: Maus
- Questions and Resources for Art Spiegelman's Maus college study guide with archived articles
- Art Spiegelman's MAUS: Working Through the Trauma of the Holocaust. In Responses to the Holocaust, U. Virginia
Art Spiegelman Comics Breakdowns • Maus • In the Shadow of No Towers • Jack and the BoxEditor/Co-editor Arcade • Raw • The New Yorker (comics editor) • The Narrative Corpse • Little Lit • Lynd Ward: Six Novels in WoodcutsOther Worked for Associated people Françoise Mouly (wife) • Bill GriffithGenres Comics from Pantheon Books A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge • Alias the Cat! • Amy and Jordan • Asterios Polyp • Black Hole • The Beauty Supply District • Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@*! • The Cardboard Valise • Chicken with Plums • Epileptic • In the Shadow of No Towers • Ice Haven • The Jew of New York • Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth • Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer • La Perdida • Maus • Read Yourself RAWPulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards (Letters) - Love Songs by Sara Teasdale (1918)
- Corn Huskers by Carl Sandburg/Old Road to Paradise by Margaret Widdemer (1919)
- Kenneth Roberts (1957)
- The Defeat of the Spanish Armada by Garrett Mattingly (1960)
- American Heritage Picture History of the Civil War (1961)
- George Washington, Vols. I-IV by James Thomas Flexner (1973)
- Roots by Alex Haley (1977)
- E. B. White (1978)
- Theodor Seuss Geisel (1984)
- Art Spiegelman for Maus (1992)
- Edmund S. Morgan (2006)
- Complete list
- (Journalism)
- (Letters)
- (Arts)
- (Service)
Categories:- Pantheon Books comics titles
- 1972 comic debuts
- Autobiographical comics
- Comics featuring anthropomorphic characters
- Historical comics
- Holocaust literature
- Jewish Polish history
- Non-fiction graphic novels
- RAW (magazine)
- Eisner Award winners
- Fictional mice and rats
- 1991 graphic novels
- Comics by Art Spiegelman
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