Art Spiegelman: Maus: A Survivor's Tale

[veggiedog]

I remember I liked this one too. The details are little blurry--it's been a couple of years--but I remember adoring it. I ought to read it again, if I ever get the time. It's amazing how one book can be horrifying, fascinating, and amusing all at once.

I haven't read part 2 yet either. Better get to it.

 

[Dmitri Dmitriev]

Whenever I think of Maus, I always remember this one particular scene first.

Art, his fiance, and his father are in the car and they stop to pick up a black hitchhiker. His father gets very upset about having a "colored" in the car. Later, Art and his fiance get angry and say, "How can you be so racist when you survived the Holocaust?" To which his father replies, "It is not the same."

... Or something to that effect...? It's an odd scene to remember, but the jumbled wiring in my brain always makes me remember it.

Ah, also I love how in Maus, Spiegelman makes it instantly recognizable what a person's culture or religion is. I know it draws a strong relationship between the Nazi-kitties and the Jewish-mice, but I just like how the Jews pretending not to be Jewish would wear a Polish-pig mask, or how Francoise, once a French-frog converted and became a mouse instead. It's a detail that I love, and Maus wouldn't be the same without it.

 

[Soraya]

"p.p.s. I can't help but feel that Vladek couldn't resist at maybe embellishing some details - i.e. his first girlfriend who grabbed his leg, etc."

Yes, that is exacly how I felt at certain points. I recently finished reading another book that made me feel the same way about the main character, but after I finished it,just like this one, my overall opinion was positive and was worth the read.