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Though Art Spiegelman's Maus and Maus II are several decades old, both graphic novel accounts of the artist's parents Holocaust ordeal have reentered public consciousness recently. In the past several months, several state and local school districts have waged war on allowing the award winning books on library shelves.
I had read Maus many years ago. I got all the way through Vladek and Anja Spiegelman's attempts to flee the encroaching Nazi forces into Poland and Eastern Europe. Their story ended with the pair taking some bad advice about where to escape from the Germans and ended up as their captives.
For one reason or another, I didn't read Volume 2 for another 7 years. At first I was misinformed. A so-called comic and graphic novel expert told me that the edition I read was a combination of both books. I thought it odd that we never learned about the final fate of the Spiegelmans, but I went with the advice. By the time I figured out that whomever told me what they did about the complete Maus didn't know what they were talking about, the pandemic hit and more comfort food type reads took my priority. Thankfully this reading challenge and recent current events sparked renewed interest in completing the story.
I both love and loath this book. I hate the accounts of Nazi atrocities, rampant carnage and needless death. But I love this record of endurance, redemption and forgiveness. This book hits very hard for me. My wife is a Polish Jew. Her family too is from Lodz. Her immediate family immigrated around the turn of the century. But knowing that her family lost contact with numerous branches of her family treat after World War II and just visualizing her or her relatives having to face this- it just killed me.
In 2017, I went with my wife's family to the National Holocaust Museum in Washington. It was a soberly powerful experience. They say that smell is the biggest trigger of memory and I am a super recognizer. I'm great with faces and I can recall smells from memory with incredible detail. So when I read the account of Videk spending countless days on end in a train car with other Auschwitz prisoners left to die, my brain went back to the train car at the museum. There was the odd smell of meat that could have been appealing if not for my knowledge of what happened in that vehicle. And last night, recalling all that, I just lost it for a little bit.
In book one, Art Spiegelman's exploration of his parent's time during the Holocaust helped him to process his mother's suicide. In this volume, Spiegelman comes face-to-face with his surviving father. Vladek's abusive nature toward his second wife, his constant need have his son under his thumb and obsessive hoarding of materials and food are all brought about from the trauma of life in a concentration camp. Being as I use my exploration of pop culture and history to journal through my personal foibles, I can understand why Spiegelman completed these accounts, no matter how terrible those family histories were. Writing is therapeutic.
For this part of my reading challenge, I chose this book because I needed to read something that was on the New York Times Graphic Novels bestsellers list. As of April 13th, Maus is currently at #2. This book is #13. I wonder if Art Speigelman had any idea when this edition was published in 1991 that 31 years later, we would not only still be reading these books, but fighting for the right to carry them in both public school and community libraries. I don't think he expected there to be such a ruckus over these graphic novels. According to a scene in this book, people called for the original Maus to be banned as early as 1979-80. But unfortunately, the controversy behind the right for this work to be published, let alone read, continues to this day as well.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.
Completing this review completes Task #6 (Currently on NY Times Best Sellers List) of the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.
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