A valuable resource for the cottage industry of Maus research.
An omnibus of criticism attests to the enduring legacy of Art Spiegelman’s masterpiece.
Editor Chute, a scholar who specializes in graphic narrative in general and Spiegelman in particular, curates a collection that draws on works from around the world (including pieces translated from German and Hebrew for the first time) and different disciplines (journalism, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology). The book includes pieces from the 1980s, before Maus had been published in book form in 1992 (it was serialized from 1980 to 1991), and it extends into the current political climate, when it remains hailed as a cultural milestone but is also often threatened with banning from libraries and school curricula. The contributors examine an array of pertinent questions: What does it mean to translate such a uniquely devastating experience into the form of a comic? What is the relationship between the artist and his subject and between father and son? Is it unseemly for such a work to provide entertainment or even meaning in the wake of the Holocaust, not to mention profit and prestige for its creator? How can the creator re-create something he was too young to experience, despite interviews and extensive research? There is much information on Spiegelman’s successful request to have the book shift from the New York Times bestseller fiction list to the nonfiction list as well as the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize. The exhaustive obsessiveness of Maus criticism seems by now to have transcended the Joycean level, but the contributors present convincing cases that the work can bear such critical weight. From Ken Tucker’s visionary review of the early work in the Times through Marianne Hirsch’s introduction of “postmemory” to describe Spiegelman’s relationship to the material, the essays are sure to generate dialogue among literary historians, critics, and scholars as well as the legion of Maus mega-fans across the globe. Other contributors include Adam Gopnik, Philip Pullman, and Alisa Solomon.
A valuable resource for the cottage industry of Maus research.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-593-31577-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
PERSPECTIVES
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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