Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, Book I, My Father Bleeds History
It might have been a while since I reviewed a graphic novel, but I’ve continued reading them. In fact, over the Christmas holidays, I think I picked 7 new books via online shopping, including Spiegelman’s Maus II which I bought when I was barely halfway through this Book I.
I’d just finished reading through my own combination of Nazi epics, Eric Metaxas’ Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy (2010) and John Hendrix’s graphic novel about the same hero, The Faithful Spy (2018). When I finished those books about the terrors of Naziism and the Holocaust, I actually felt slight pangs of joy, obviously not because of the loss and crimes, but because the Nazis’ defeat and Bonhoeffer’s ultimate vindication, albeit through martyrdom. While I wasn’t longing to delve even deeper into Nazi atrocities, I certainly was prepared to view them further through the lens of a graphic novel.
Enter the 1992 Pulitzer Prize winning masterpiece: Maus: A Survivor’s Tale. In this first book, My Father Bleeds History, author and artist Art Spiegelman interviews his Jewish father, a Holocaust survivor now living in New York in the early 1980s, as the older man recounts what he and his family endured as unwanted Jews in a Poland overrun by Nazis.
It’s a raw book filled with violence and death, but its realism is hard to miss. Unlike any memoir you’ve read before, this book brings the harsh realities of the Holocaust to light in a painfully captivating way. The format moves swiftly between interview and recollection, and the characters are as human as can be—well, actually they’re mice, but that’s beside the point. This book is nonfiction, these stories are real, and despite those who seriously want to bury or erase history, the Holocaust was one of the darkest periods of human history. I deem it a must-read—but not for kids.
Spiegelman’s unique format in this book is worth noting. Easily overplayed if others tried to copy him too often, his method of interweaving the modern drama of an older couple and their son/step-son with the open-wound memories of lost love and life is the book’s key driving force. This isn’t “just another Holocaust story” (as if that were a thing). It’s the biography of the old foreign guy that lives in the apartment across the street who wears frayed clothes and complains all the time—and who’s seen things you couldn’t imagine and who’s endured hardships that very few Americans today could survive. It’s a slice of world history that reminds us that members of “The Greatest Generation” weren’t exclusively American, and that that same generation of WWII heroes and survivors also included some seriously bad apples.
Regarding the artwork in this book, it’s incredibly detailed, fitting mice, pigs, and cats with human proportions into human clothing and situations. I can’t really recall a time when animal tails or ears or noses distracted from the drama, and I actually really liked his ploy of showing Jews hiding in the open as Poles by having the mice don pig masks. If I had to make one complaint, it would be that Spiegelman’s lines are often so thick that the detail is lost. It’s like he used a full 1mm felt-tip pen at times, which results in a scene more of smudge than of detail.
Regarding the text, the book is well-paced and the dialogue is incredibly genuine. You find yourself thinking in the rhythm of an old Brooklyn Jew, not mockingly but authentically. It’s casual and captivating, and the way Spiegelman flits from the frustrations of home to the terrors of “life back then” just makes you not want to read to the bitter end.
I look forward to reading Maus II, even though I know that it will be an emotionally stirring book. I’m not a fan of having my emotions stirred, I guess (looking at my reading habits) unless it’s through the avenue of the memoir or biography. Real life ought to stir us, and it ought to change us. If a book like this doesn’t do it for you, well, I’d argue something’s wrong, and I don’t mean with the book.
©2024 E.T.