METAMAUS
Art Spiegelman
Pantheon, 2011
Maus is one of the great classics of the contemporary Jewish world, retelling the story of the Holocaust in comic book form. It depicts not only the struggle between Jewish mice and the Nazi cats seeking to destroy them, but also how the Holocaust’s legacy gets internalized and relived by succeeding generations of post-Holocaust Jews. In MetaMaus, Spiegelman offers up Maus-related sketches, notebooks, and rough drafts, alongside interviews with editor Hillary Chute. The original Maus is enclosed on a DVD. Spiegelman is a master of self-exploration, and in this new volume the reader is startled by the degree of brilliance in his quest to connect to his battered survivor father. In conversation with Chute, he gets to shine again. Yet don’t be surprised that the greatest pleasures of this book come from indulging in the beauty of Spiegelman’s art for Maus and the opportunity to experience once again the joys and sorrows that came with the first reading of that amazing book.
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