Conference taveng::bagels

    I'm convinced that this book is worth reading (for content).
    
    Ignorance again.   What is comic book format?   When I think
    of comic books, I see Superman picking up the Empire State
    building.   Are there animated illustrations, or is the physical
    book format like a comic book?
    
    Who is the publisher and when did this book see the light of day?

MAUS is available in the U.S. recently, paperback.  I'm not sure about
in Israel.

I don't remember the publisher.

By comic format, I mean that there are lots of little pictures, with the
text in each picture, about six or eight pictures per page.

The jews are illustrated as mice, sometimes even with tails, the Nazis
as cats, often with whiskers.  The book reads easily, and was quite
captivating.

It's also quite self-referential:  The author is Arthur Kriegerman,
the book opens with a father talking to his son "Artie" who we
soon realize is a comic book writer, and the father is recounting
his experience in the Holocaust.  Within the book, the father
discovers a comic book written by "Artie" called "Prisoner from the
Hell Planet", which comic is reprinted within MAUS.  Apparanetly, that
comic actually existed as an underground comic !

/Eric

First of all, the name of the artist is Art Spiegelman, not 'Kriegerman'.

A.S. is an avant-garde cartoonist, and much (maybe all?) of the
material in "Maus" had been published over the last x years in a
magazine he edits, whose name I forget.

What is avant-garde cartooning?  Basically, it's treating the cartoon
format as simply another mode of artistic expression, not inherently
inappropriate for dealing with any themes whatsoever.  This proposition
is surprising because most of us regard the cartoon format as a concession
to sub-literacy...as a tool for helping kids learn to read, or as a
'sweetened' way to tell childish stories to children.  But there is no
inherent reason why this should be so.  Novelists use words alone to
communicate, painters use images alone, and cartoonists use drawings +
words.  These are all just tools. It shouldn't be the tool that 
determines what subjects can be treated,
or the seriousness with which we read or view the product.

Naturally, if you only associate comic books such as Archie with 
the cartoonist's art, you are in for a surprise when reading "Maus".
I think most people will get over the shock fairly quickly, although
I have seen a few cases (I've been recommending this book to my friends
for 3 months now) where the knee jerk reaction "The Holocaust is the
most tragic and serious event I know of + Cartooning is not a valid art-form
because it's only used to entertain kids" combine to produce mind-block.
But so far that's been the minority reaction.

Finally, I think that the the real subject of "Maus" is not the Holocaust
per se, but rather the effects of the Holocaust on Artie, who is the
son of Holocaust survivors, and especially about his (very troubled)
relationship with his parents.  Along the way, A. S. does a fantastic
job of presenting his father's complex character, formed by his
pre-Holocaust experiences as much as by the things he suffered during
the Holocaust, and showing how his father deals with life
and how he manages his most intimate relationships (with his wives and
son) after the Holocaust.  It's a very good book; I hope you read it.

Kathy

    Yes, the texture of Holocaust (1st or 2nd generation) on cartoon
    type media seems outlandish.   But that won't stop me from reading
    the material.
    
    Much obliged for the book review.

    For those of you who need a source, I recently picked up "Maus"
    at a Caldor's Dept. Store. And it was even 20% off (Such a Deal!!!!!)

    Jack

    This just showed up on s.c.j this morning so I thought I'd pass it
    along. 
    
    			Fred
    ******************************************************
    
    Newsgroups: rec.arts.books,rec.arts.comics,soc.culture.jewish
Path: decwrl!pyramid!amdahl!ptsfa!ihnp4!homxb!houxm!mtuxo!mtgzz!leeper
Subject: MAUS by Art Siegelman
Posted: 19 Mar 87 02:56:32 GMT
Organization: AT&T, Middletown NJ
Xref: decwrl rec.arts.books:379 rec.arts.comics:1521 soc.culture.jewish:838
 
 
                    MAUS by Art Spiegelman
                    Pantheon, 1986, $9.95.
               A book review by Mark R. Leeper
                Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
 
     When I was growing up most comic books were about criminals being
chased by super-heroes, talking ducks, or mice being chased by cats.
Serious literature was when Superman defended a black kid being picked on by
a gang of white kids.  The comic medium has changed quite a bit since then.
I had not realized how much it had changed until I read MAUS.  This compact
gray book, assembled into six chapters from pieces that had appeared in the
underground comic book RAW, tells the story of a survivor of the German
Holocaust.  The true story was told by Vladek Spiegelman to his son Art.
Art then rendered the story into comic form and published the stories.
 
     As an odd concession to the comic convention, Jews are drawn to have
mouse heads, Nazis have cat heads, and almost everyone else has pig heads,
with an occasional dog thrown in.  A Jew traveling incognito is a mouse with
a pig mask.  Why Spiegelman chooses to use the animal heads on his
characters is not entirely clear.  Various critics have suggested that it
turns the story into a giant metaphor.  My suspicion is that they were just
easier to draw than human heads and somehow make the story a little less
imposing and formidable, though in no other regard does the author pull his
punches.  The text itself never mentions the characters as being anything
but human.  In fact, in one scene involving rats, Vladek tries to convince
his wife that the tiny creatures she sees are mice rather than rats.  It
seems incongruous since Anja is at least drawn as a mouse herself.
 
     The six chapters of MAUS cover fourteen years, from Vladek's origins to
his internment at Auschwitz.  (A sequel is promised.)  The story is covered
in roughly the same detail that a film would tell the story.  In the framing
story around Vladek's history we see Art's relationship with the elderly
Vladek and Art's stepmother Mala.  It adds some depth and drama to the story
as well as making a commentary on how the Holocaust has changed Vladek and
what he is like as an old man.
 
     In spite of the animal metaphors, MAUS is an effective reminder of the
terror of the German Holocaust.  Nobody who has studied the period will be
surprised at the extent of the terror and how bad things were during it, but
MAUS is as effective as a good film about the period--say, as effective as
the TV adaptation of John Hersey's THE WALL.  And that is a good deal
stronger than any "Superman" comic I have ever seen.  It ranks with
"Barefoot Gen," an autobiographical Japanese Manga comic about a survivor of
the Hiroshima bombing.
 
 
					Mark R. Leeper
					ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper
					[email protected]