Son of Holocaust victim inspires listeners
Published April 18, 1997
Artist Art Spiegelman entranced a standing-room-only audience for two hours Thursday with tales behind the making of his book "Maus," a cartoon account of the Holocaust.
About 350 people packed into Allen Auditorium, many carrying their copies of "Maus" and "Maus II" in hand. Some students read the books for their classes, but Spiegelman said his works were not drawn as educational tools.
"The only person I was really trying to teach was me," he said. "I needed to pack it in tiny little boxes, row after row, to understand the story."
Spiegelman presented the Holocaust through animal caricatures: Mice are Jews, cats are Germans and Americans are dogs. Spiegelman said he used animals as masks because they fit the subject matter. They also distance his work from actual occurrences, giving him room for error.
His metaphor translated into a powerful account of his father's strife during the war as a Holocaust victim. The story originated from taped conversations with his father about the horrors of being a Jewish German during World War II.
"Maus" took 13 years to complete and became an unexpected success, to Spiegelman and his publisher. It is now published in about 20 languages in several countries. In 1992, Spiegelman was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for his efforts.
Spiegelman spoke about an interview with a German reporter just after "Maus" first was published in that country.
"[He] asked me if I thought it was in bad taste to make a comic book about the Holocaust," he said. "I said I thought the Holocaust was in bad taste."
Despite the harsh subject matter, Spiegelman kept a humorous overtone to the lecture, which audience member Tony Pace said was effective.
"I thought he kept it light-hearted, but still informative," he said.
Pace, a junior at Westminster College in Fulton, said the lecture was worth the commute.
Spiegelman said the most difficult task while drawing "Maus" was to make the images naturally flow into each other. He wanted to allow the eye to move across the page without stumbling.
He also aimed to give his characters a complexity normally not associated with comic books. In most comics, he said, characters are one-dimensional, either good or bad.
"I was interested in working with the general complexity of a person," Spiegelman said. "Only to a real person can you say, 'You're not yourself today,' and not make any sense at all."
MU graduate student Greg Sturgeon said the lecture reinforced what he learned in his Holocaust class this semester.
"A lot of what we do seems like guess work," Sturgeon said. "It makes you feel like you got it right."
Spiegelman now works for The New Yorker and has designed several front covers for the magazine. He also has taught at the New York School of Visual Arts.
