Some Animals Are Equal.(Book Review)

The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman; Penguin, 2003, $29.95.

THIS IS THE REISSUE of the 1970s Pulitzer Prizewinning graphic novel, here in its two parts: "My Father Bleeds History, mid 1930's-winter 1944" and "And Here My Troubles Begin, from Mauschwitz to the Catskills and Beyond".

For those readers who have not yet met American cartoonist Art Spiegelman's harrowing yet comic, sad and yet tenderly burlesque, and always deeply human, illustrated account of his father Vladek's experience of the Holocaust, this book tells the story of that terrible time, and its repercussions into the future, in an unusual way--not only through the New World medium of the "comic", but reaching deep into the deepest of Old World allegories, the beast-fable. In this vision, the Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats, the Poles are pigs, the Americans dogs, the French frogs, the Scandinavians deer, the gypsies butterflies, and so on.

Yet these beast-masks, as in Animal Farm, only serve to reinforce the complex and divided humanity of the characters. You'd think it would dilute the tragedy and evil of what happens; but not at all. And nor does it make it more bearable. It also allows for an immense delicacy of observation and understanding. It is astonishing how much is conveyed in those simple black-and-white drawings, and that compressed narration of speech bubble.

The book doesn't only delve into Vladek's past, but into his present, especially his fraught relationship with his son Art and his second wife Mala, herself also a survivor from "Mauschwitz" (Art's mother Anja had committed suicide in Art's youth, something Art never really forgave his father for). Vladek Spiegelman is no angel; as conveyed by his son, he is both extraordinary in his toughness and stoicism, and possessed of many unpleasant qualities too--he is cantankerous, ...