Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.

Spiegelman, Art (author).

Related Features

With this stunning addition to Holocaust literature, the American cartoon strip as a vehicle for nonfantasy content takes an impressive step forward. Like Harvey Pekar in American Splendor (1986), Spiegelman takes his own life for subject matter. But whereas Pekar is a realistic humorist, Spiegelman’s forte is grim self-observation. In Maus, he queries his cantankerous father about what it was like to live through the Nazi occupation of Poland and the death camps. So this decidedly unfrivolous comic book is, first, the father’s story, and, second, the portrayal of the son’s edgy relationship with the old man. In physical decline—he has a harrowing heart seizure during one of their conversations—Vladek Spiegelman seems permanently shocked by his experiences into a personal psychology of hardship. He can give nothing but his story. His son writes and draws it forcefully. He uses a simple iconographic device to evoke the terror of his father’s times: the Jews all have mice’s heads; the Germans, those of cats. A follow-up volume is forthcoming.