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Summary: This book was fun to read all day!
Review: This book was very fun to read. I think that this book should be recomended to everyone that reads it. You really get hook on this book! I was so hook on it I read it all night. This book is Maus There this man that was in the Holocaust. He is telling about what happend to him to is son Artie. Artie make a comice about his fathers lift thourgh the holocaut and what happend to his other mother.This book start in Poland-Germany. Well Artie is telling all about his life so when he dies the history of is father will be pass on to childern that want to Know about the Holocaust.
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Summary: One of the most powerful books I've ever read
Review: One of the most powerful books I've ever read, MAUS is not a typical piece of literature on the Holocaust. Some might argue it's not even literature, since it is a graphic novel. Do not be fooled by its appearance, MAUS is a chilling look at the Holocaust, drawn/written by a son of a Holocaust survivor. As a result, it is two stories in one: Art's (the son), and Vladek's (the survivor). Since the book deals with an unspeakable evil, Spiegelman uses mice as Jews and cats as Germans. The end result is a fascinating account of the horrors of WW2 that deals with 'man's inhumanity' by portraying the characters as animals
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Summary: One man's manga of the Holocaust.
Review: A graphic (literally and figuratively) biography of the author's father. Maus relates Spiegelman's father's wartime experiences in comics form
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Summary: An ASTONISHING Tale...
Review: "Maus I" is a powerful and awe-inspiring experience. I have never read anything quite like it, I have to admit. It's really hard to comprehend the term "page-turner" until you read this very unique and intense tale of surviving one of the most terrible times in history.Written in comic book form, Art Spiegelman tells the tale of his father's hardships and survival in the Holocaust. Vladek Spiegelman (his father) was a POW, but managed to sneak out of one of the camps that held him, only to later have him and his whole family thrown into terrible death camps. Uncertain of what tragedies they would endure or when they may be the next to be sent to Auschwitz, Vladek was always certain that they would make it out alive, no matter what obstacles were thrown in their way. This is a survivor's tale, as well as a tale of how a son tries to patch up a damaged relationship with his father. The account we are given is absolutely horrifying, but at the same time triumphant. I literally could not put this book down once I started it. It's a very fast and easy read. This is a great advantage because this makes it easier for those who do not read a lot to be able to read it without any problems. It's an important tale that needs to be told and it is one that needs to be read by as many people as possible. The Holocaust is something we should never forget and it's something that needs to be taught to everyone. This book is a great way to get people aware of the situation who may not know a lot about that terrible time. The comic book structure and style really makes the story work. While this is something I could've read in plain text or in a regular novel, the drawings help you experience just exactly what is taking place. It makes it easier for you to want to continue reading without forcing you to strain yourself. The style and structure also insures that more people will give it a chance and read it. "Maus I" is an important tale of survival, hope, hardships and family. It's a tale worth being told, that much I can assure you. If you have never read this before, I strongly recommend that you pick it up sometime and give it a chance. It is an easy and fast read that will give you an experience like none you have ever encountered. It may be a sad and terrible tale to hear, but to know that somebody can survive such a horrendous scenario like the Holocaust and come out of it alive just goes to show you how strong a person can be, both inside and out. It is an important tale that deserves to be heard by as many people as possible.
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Summary: Subject matter overshadows a very mediocre work
Review: If one can truly see past all the cultural signifiers and content obeisance attached to Maus and simply judge the work on craft alone, one will find a fairly pedestrian work, well told, yet instantly forgettable. Spiegelman has crafted a shrewd piece of media here, he has mined the true-life experiences of his grandfather to fashion a non-fiction biographic tale of internment in a concentration camp, replacing the Germans with cats and the Jews with mice. Such a choice is guaranteed critic-proof simply because of the subject matter. Publicly, one is not allowed to dislike Maus or find it flawed in any fundamental way; it fosters a mild form of cultural fascism against the dissenter. Recently discussing Maus with someone who thought it profound, I found myself dodging bullets of anti-Semitism and callousness towards the human spirit. But we must understand that Maus the graphic novel has virtually disappeared, its place taken by Maus the "Holocaust for a new Generation" and Maus the "culturally significant signpost of human dignity."
Granted the story is compelling. If Maus had been told as a straight prose work of non-fiction it would have most certainly been published and given average to good marks, quickly joining the legion of Holocaust literature. But should we elevate Maus to the ranks of the graphic novel pantheon just because Spiegelman is Jewish and he used his authentic Jewish roots to tell a story of the Holocaust in pictures? I counter arguments that posit Spiegelman's work as introducing the Holocaust to a new generation (sort of like re-inventing Shakespeare for the geek set?) with the idea that the generation itself should begin to question its own intellectual vigor when we must teach our children about the holocaust using a comic strip. In that case, forget the Bible, why not teach it through a graphic 'Chronicles of Jesus' format, allowing our children to get the story while abandoning the thorny arguments and contradictions that make reading any work of art a challenge to the mind? I repeat, do we give Maus credibility for simply choosing subject matter? If we do, then we must re-think the way we judge literary works. We must then judge every piece of holocaust literature to be superlative, and regardless of its actual merit, place it on a hallowed shelf above all other literature. We must then judge every piece of art or media the same. In this new critical paradigm, if a graffiti artist painted a series of stick figures across a barren factory wall but above them sprayed the name "Auschwitz," we should take care not remove them. However, if that same artist simply painted a wall full of stick figures, they should be removed post-haste and a steep fine levied against the artist.
I am tired of works being given credibility for subject matter and not for craft. Maus is not a bad book, and may well foster early discussions with children or adolescents about the holocaust. But judged by artistic merit and craft alone it hardly belongs on the same shelf as Watchmen, From Hell, or Miller's Batman writings. In those works, the writers crafted dense literary works that truly transcended the genre and used the form in novel and interesting ways. They did not rely on content alone to sell mediocre work.
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Summary: You Will Know Vladek As Well As Your Own Father
Review: Usually when I buy comic books (aka graphic novels) it is even more for the art work than for the story. However, the deceptively simple art work in "Maus" is perfect for the compelling, gripping story of author Spiegleman's father, Vladek, a Jew caught in Nazi Europe during World War II. The story concerns Vladek's survival of the Holocaust, even though being in a concentration camp, his love story with his wife, Anna, and his eventual life in America afterwards. More complex art work would have taken away from the story. This story has such epic, universal appeal that you want nothing to distract you from it. You hate to say that anyone has depicted stereotypes absolutely true to life but in World war II Europe, Spiegelman's depiction of the Jews as mice, the Germans as cats, the Poles as pigs, the French as frogs, and the Americans as dogs, can only be called dead-on accurate. The author was very lucky in one respect though. If his father Vladek was even a tenth as great in real life as the Vladek shown here, I would expect the son of such a person to be able to create this book.
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Summary: Outstanding
Review: This is one of the best books that I have ever read. It's a very hard book to define, as due to it being a graphic novel. The story is a very realistic and sad one, despite the story in comic book form. It tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, and his wife Anja, and their struggles to stay alive. It also tells about Vladek's troubles with his second wife and how he tries to patch things up with his own father. Very good story, it's one of my favorites, and I along with everyone else that has read it finds it good.
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Summary: The Best Book I've Ever Read
Review: I recently picked up a copy of Maus from my local book store and when I started to read it I could not put it down. If finished it in less than a day. Maus is easily the best book I have ever read, and I have read many books. Everybody should read a copy of Maus. Maus is touching, exciting, and captivating all in one. There is no reason why I would not recommend Maus to anybody. I give it five stars and if I could I would give it ten. I recommend Maus to anyone who enjoys reading about history and even to those who do not.
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Summary: Maus
Review: A rousing recounting of Spiegelman's father's time in concentration camp during the Holocaust
It depicts harsh times but the use of animals make it a lot more jovial or readable. I think there's a thing about how Jews are mice and Nazis are cats, I forget
The art is actually not that good but the work as a whole is, which is a testament to the power of its story
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Summary: Maus Review
Review: In the two volumes of "Maus," Art Spiegelman has captured the essence of the Holocaust. He focuses his tale on his own family's tragic history, using the strangely-appropriate medium of comic book drawing. Maus I tells the Spiegelman family story from prewar prosperity through the ghetto experience and an attempt to escape the Nazis.
Art is a tortured son of a tortured family. Mother and father lived through the Holocaust on their wits and good luck. Now that the war is over, they continue to live haunted lives, never free of the fear and mass murder that enveloped their youth. Art, their American artist child, just barely tolerates his father's obsessiveness and extreme miserliness. The father, while starving in Auschwitz, saved half of his morning rations for trading for shoes or clothes. Now that he is old, he continues to play every nook and cranny of the system in order to save a wooden match or to cadge a free bingo game. The sense of the man's weirdness (and his son's resulting lack of patience) is palpably sad and funny at the same time.
Spiegelman's art is deceptively innocuous, using a black and white comic book style. His tale alternates between the present story of his elderly, pill-counting father in the present and the past story of ghettos, cruelty and death camps. Spiegelman draws his humans with animals heads -- an ingenious way to portray ethnic and cultural differences that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. Jews are rendered as mouse-headed humans, Poles with pig heads and Nazis topped with heads of predacious cats.
Spiegelman's tale is part history, part expiation of guilt for resenting a brother killed during the war and part rage at a family member's suicide. The war never ended for those who endured it, and ripples through time to damage the next generations. That's pretty heavy for a comic book, but Art Spiegelman pulls it off brilliantly.
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