Maus – Art Spiegelman

Rating: 5 stars

I’m taking a break from reading for awhile or something so I decided my last book would be Maus. Undoubtedly you’ve heard of Maus, given how it was published in its entirety by 1991 for the second volume and 1986 for the first one. The individual pieces were written and published much before that (the copyrights go back to the 70s).

I dropped a much harder book to do it, and I think it was a good choice. Maus is much easier and quicker to read. Now, anyone that’s read the book will ask how a book on the Holocaust is easier to read, was the other book so bad? No, and this is to Maus’ favor, that it didn’t take much effort at all to read both volumes (or collections, whatever they’re called, books?) in one insomniac night.

The contents, though, that’s what we’re here to talk about. If anyone doesn’t know, it’s basically the writer interviewing his dad about his experiences in the Holocaust, from before the war until liberation and a little after. Some of it is fictional (any sort of writing will omit details and exaggerate others), but it’s undoubtedly more true than some memoirs. The experiences of the dad aren’t unique, to be honest (I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish community and heard nonstop about the Holocaust in the 90s). You read it because it’s the story of a victim of the Holocaust (and you always read those), it’s very high quality for a graphic novel and for its postmodernism.

That thing, I didn’t really talk about it, but it’s what makes the story unique. The son who writes the comic book is a character. Especially in the second volume, when a previous comic the author had written becomes relevant.

This next observation is well-trod territory but there’s also a good bit about how the author is feeding into the Nazi narrative, making the Jews anthropomorphized mice. Now, I would usually criticize a book like this for being too wishy-washy with such a thing and not making a point. Even the writer’s character says this at one point, that he has goal or message but that he’s just writing. I, however, believe that he is saying something, that even if it were all somehow true, humans deserve dignity.

I will say one last thing. Now that I’m a dad too, the scene where the Nazi soldiers crushed the small children against a wall really resonated. That isn’t to say that I thought nothing of it before, but it had a greater impact this time over the other acts of cruelty.