Video Excerpts - Art Spiegelman and Maus
Artist's Process (02:59)
Comics artist Art Spiegelman says he is inspired to create comics from disquietude and disaster. Each time he creates a strip, he dies and is reborn. He starts from the beginning, learning everything anew. Each comic strip is a reinvention.
Brief History of Spiegelman (03:24)
Spiegelman remembers very little of his first two years when his family lived in Sweden. As a young boy in the U.S., he gravitates to MAD Magazines. He studies them "the way some kids studied the Talmud."
The suicide of his mother, his own depression, and the deportation of his parents are treated in Spiegelman's "Breakdowns," a biographical portrait. In the last edition of "Breakdowns," Spiegelman talks about his beginnings in the underground art movement.
"Maus" is less about the Holocaust and more the story of a father and son trying to understand each other. Spiegelman's lengthy interviews with his father become the core of "Maus," a biography of his father, Vladek Spiegelman.
Second Generation (03:26)
Art Spiegelman relates his first experiences with the term "second generation," the children of Holocaust survivors. He comes to realize he is not in touch with his feelings.
"Maus" Publication (01:54)
In the late 1970s, Art Spiegelman learns that Steven Spielberg is making a more commercially acceptable story that is not far removed from "Maus." Spiegelman rushes his first "Maus" book to market before Spielberg's "An American Tail" is released.
The graphic novel 'Maus' by Art Spiegelman is based on the experiences of the author's father as a prisoner of the Auschwitz - Birkenau Death Camp during World War II. Using imagery and limited words, Spielberg has used the art form of cartoons to portray the horrors faced by the Jews and countless others deemed prisoners by the Nazi Regime. The novel also adresses the guilt and fear of surviors from the death camps and the subsequent impact on their children.
Originally published in 1991, Maus has had critical acclaim as not only as a literary work but also an important record of the holocaust. Art Spiegelman won the Pultizer Prize for Maus in 1992.
This guide will provide you with additional information and resources for your study of Maus.
Check out the trailer for the novel.
Guardian Article: Art Spiegleman "Auschwitz became for us a safe place." In this article, Spiegleman talks about his struggle to get published and his relationship with his father.