Maus

Graphic novels are not something that I'm going to try and pretend to be hugely knowledgeable about, but they are something which I wish I was more involved with as I gingerly make my way through its panelled worlds. It started with 'Watchmen'; continued on to 'Kick Ass';  next was 'The Umbrella Academy'; then of course the 'Scott Pilgrim vs the World' series; then I had a bit of a lull and didn't really pursue this interest any further. However, after watching a crazy long French film called 'Blue is the Warmest Color' (which I've reviewed elsewhere), I immediately bought the graphic novel off of which it was based and thus my interest in this particular medium of storytelling was piqued again. After finishing that, I moved on to 'The Brown of Nao', which I finished earlier this week; which leads me to 'Maus'. 'Maus' was one of those novels that whenever I ventured into a bookshop, which is often, I would always pick it up and pine hopelessly over it, but I could never justify buying it. That is until the other week where I decided I couldn't put it off any longer, I needed to buy it, I needed to own it and I needed to read it. Let me tell you, it was a wise investment indeed.

Deceptively simple artwork, extraordinarily effective.

Maus depicts the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, as his son, Art Spiegelman, interviews him about his life; specifically about his experiences during the war. The story is about a lot more than that though: it's also the story of a complex and extremely tense relationship between a father and son, and between a man and his parents in general. Maus reaches some extremely meta moments (something which happens a few times throughout the novel, but I'll go into more detail about that later on) when it reveals an equally tense relationship with Art's mother and how he copes after her suicide when he was in his twenties, long before the story begins.

The whole thing is drawn in black and white, which I thought
was a great choice.

Straight off the bat, I'm going to say that I absolutely loved this book. I tore through it in about two days, which may not sound impressive for a graphic novel, but Maus (the combined volumes, which is what I am referring to throughout this review: Maus I: A Survivors Tale and Maus II: And Here My Toubles Began) is a pretty hefty piece of work and I could not put it down, so if you're planning to read it, make sure you have a few days to dedicate to it, because you won't be able to stop once you've began. The fact that the characters are represented as animals doesn't take long to get used to and certainly didn't interfere with my suspension of disbelief, which was something I was worried about. However it does get a little confusing at times for a few reasons, firstly that the faces of all the animals are pretty much the same, save for maybe a pair of glasses or a hat or something along those lines, so telling characters apart is sometimes a little tricky, but is easily resolved by checking the dialogue and seeing names. It's easy to tell them apart during the present day as they are all wearing different clothing, but does get confusing during the flashbacks when they're all in uniform.

My main confusion stems from trying to wrap my head around the animal world that the characters live in. In this world, Jews are represented by mice (the rodent metaphor having been taken from Hitler's own propaganda), Nazi's as cats and non-Jewish Poles as pigs. There is also a rouge Frenchman as a frog. It all sounds pretty straightforward until, in a segment where Vladek and Anja (Vladek's first wife and Art's mother) are hiding in a basement, Anja notices a rat and cries out in horror. I was able to look past this at the time, figuring it was perhaps a self-loathing or self-fear representation of being a Jew. But there are also attack dogs that the Nazi's use, which throws into question the whole animal thing, considering that dogs also represent Americans in the latter half of the book. It can all be rather bloody confusing, but if you don't think too hard about it, then it shouldn't really present itself as an issue.

For some reason Blogger is being a piece of shit,
so the layout is going to be straightforward and all the pictures in the middle.

That's not the only time that the world in which the characters reside gets blurred with reality; Maus is a biography, autobiography and historical memoir, and it certainly doesn't shy away from crossing that line between the world of the characters and the world of the author. Of course as part of it's autobiographical nature, the characters are real world people as well, so Art in the book is also a comic book writer. The reader gets treated to a comic that mouse-Art wrote (the above Prisoner on the Hell Planet), which is also a comic strip that person-Art actually released in 1973, exploring the aftermath of his mothers suicide. Art in the novel also vocalises his uncertainty of what animal to draw his French wife as - a frog, because she is French or a mouse because she is Jewish (who converted to please Vladek) or an entirely different animal altogether. At another point Art says, "in real life, you'd never let me talk this long without interrupting."

There is also a segment at the start of And Here My Troubles Began which depicts real world Art wearing a mouse mask (as does everyone else) and talking about his experiences after the phenomenal success of Maus I: My Father Bleeds History. Rather than these moments of self-referential awareness taking me out of the story, it actually hammers home the message that this one man's experience of what happened and everything that he saw was real. This is not a story of fiction, all the horrible events truly did take place, even down to words that Vladek speaks in broken English.

How I imagine all of you would sit, totally in awe as
I told you all of my thoughts on Maus.

Maus is an extraordinary novel about a man's first hand experiences during the reign of Hitler and an almost therapeutic exploration of a father and his son - Art does not paint his father as a hero during this book, he simply is what he is. The flashbacks are all authentic and from Vladek's point of view, but in the real world panels, he comes across as stubborn, manipulative, cheap and racist. Art discusses how he is worried about this portrayal of his father and how he might come across as the racist caricature of a Jew, as cruel and miserly. He and his wife (Françoise) are also flabbergasted that a man who suffered so much from prejudice and racism could display these same attitudes towards black people. It is interesting seeing this change in Vladek from the flashback world and the real world; during the war, certain traits that may have helped his survival of Auschwitz only annoy his family in the present day. Art shows little sympathy for his father at the start of the narrative but does begin to soften as it progresses and Vladek's story unfolds. All in all, it's a wonderful piece of work and truly deserving to be the winner of a Pulitzer Prize. A definite must read in my opinion. 

That's all from me for now, till next week!