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Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1992,The Pulitzerprize Committeedecided to Finessethe Issueof Genre

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Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1992,The Pulitzerprize Committeedecided to Finessethe Issueof Genre Thomas ArtSpiegelman's Maus: Graphic Art Doherty andthe Holocaust In presenting a "Special Award" to Art Spiegelman's Maus in 1992,the PulitzerPrize committeedecided to finessethe issueof genre. The memberswere apparently befuddled by a project whosemerit they could not deny but whose medium they could not quitecategorize. The obviousrubric (Biography) seemed ill-suited fora comicbook in an age whenever-larger tomes and ever-denser scholarshipdefine that enterprise. Editorial cartooning didn't quite fit either,for Maus illustratednot the news of the day but events of the past.The classificationproblem had earlierbedeviled the New York TimesBook Review, where the work had criss-crossed the Fiction and Non-FictionBest Seller Lists. Originally, Maus was placedon theFic- tionList, a decisionSpiegelman protested in a wryletter to the editor: "Ifyour list were dividedinto literature and non-literature,I could gracefullyaccept the compliment as intended,but to theextent that 'fiction'indicates a workisn't factual, I feel a bitqueasy. As an author,I believeI mighthave lopped several years off the thirteen I devoted to mytwo-volume project if I couldhave taken a novelist'slicense while searchingfor a novelist'sstructure."1 In a tinybut telling blip on the culturalradar, the Timesobligingly moved the volume from the Fic- tionto Non-FictionBest Seller List. The veracityof the image-even thecomic book image-had attainedparity with the word. Fromits first appearance in 1980 in the comic magazine Raw ("High Culturefor Lowbrows") to the complete two-volume edition issued in 1991,Maus presented an unsettlingaesthetic and scholarly challenge, notleast to print-orientedpurists who scoffed at thenotion of comic bookartistry and bewailed the incursion of pop culture into the under- AmericanLiterature, Volume 68, Number1, March1996. Copyright C) 1996by Duke UniversityPress. CCC 0002-9831/96/$1.50. 70 AmericanLiterature graduatecurriculum. In the handsof cartoonist Spiegelman, a con- ceit obsceneon its face-a Holocaustcomic book-became solemn andmoving, absorbing and enlightening. Occupying a landscapethat crossedGeorge Orwell with Max Fleischer,where Nazis were snarl- ingcats, Jews forlorn mice, and Poles stupidpigs, Maus redrewthe contractualterms for depictions of the Holocaustin popularart. As a graphicreaction to theaesthetics of Nazism and a newmode of in- quiryinto the past, it offered a media-wise vision whose rough images puttraumatic history into sharp focus. Spiegelmanissued his cartoon biography in two volumes published in 1986 and 1991respectively.2 Maus Part I: A Survivor'sTale: My FatherBleedsHistory tracks Vladek, the artist's aged father and oedipal muse,from the thriving Jewish culture of prewar Poland to thegates ofAuschwitz. Prodded by his cartoonist son Artie, Vladek flashes back toa youngmanhood in which his experiences are alternately mundane (workand courtship) and monstrous (mass executions and casual bru- tality).Maus PartII: A Survivor'sTale: And Here My Troubles Began findsthe old mansicker and crankieras he divulgeshis strugglefor survivalto Artie,himself now given to spasmsof guilt (natch) over thecritical and commercial success of the first volume of Maus. In goodpostmodern fashion, the interview sessions between father and son-and the artist'sbehind-the-scenes scaffolding-are incor- poratedinto Vladek's narrative. Parallel lines intersect as Artiede- terminesto makeVladek's memory speak and to depicthis ownen- tanglementsas son and artist.Yet the conflations-writer/illustrator ArtSpiegelman drawing mice Artieand Vladekfor a comicbook biographyof his real lifefather called Maus-never get too cuteor convoluted.Nor does Spiegelmanallow the kvetching of an American babyboomer to detractfrom or comparewith his father'spassage throughhell. As theartist confides to his shrink,"no matterwhat I accomplish,it doesn't seem much compared to survivingAuschwitz" (MausII, 44). Finally,though theirs is a father-sonrelationship of un- usualbitterness and anguish(Artie's wife Franqoise seems the only non-neuroticin Vladek's contemporary orbit), the artist is faithfulto his father'slife and memory.To the realVladek, who died in 1982, Artieis a goodson. The inherentaudacity of the projectearned Maus an extraordi- naryamount of popular attention in thepress, and, by andlarge, the responsewas rhapsodic.In additionto the PulitzerPrize, the work ArtSpiegelman's Maus 71 garnereddozens of laudatory reviews and inspired op-ed pieces in the pages ofthe major metropolitan dailies, a suresign of its statusas a culturalas wellas a literaryevent. By thetime a consumer-friendly packagededition of bothvolumes appeared in storesfor the 1991 Christmasseason, Maus had enteredthe nationallexicon. In Febru- ary 1994the VoyagerCompany issued a multimediaCD-ROM ver- sionentitled The Complete Maus, an elaboratehypertext that includes preliminarydrawings, journal entries, home movies, and tape record- ingsfrom the interview sessions between Spiegelman and his father.3 Thoughdenied by the artist, rumors of a forthcomingfeature-length, animatedmotion picture version (not by Walt Disney) persist. Significantly,though, the tentacles of corporate synergy have thus farstopped short of the manufacture of a lineof Maus-inspired toys forchildren. Even theforces of commerce recognize that when the Holocaustis the subject,neither the marketnor expression is free. No matterhow austereand reverentthe tone, no matterhow tradi- tionalthe format, any representation ofthe Holocaust attracts a spe- cialmeasure of critical scrutiny and, if judged lacking, earns a severe measureof opprobrium. The usualcriteria for literary and cinematic excellence-originality,wit, formal innovation, and the sundry "plea- sures of the text"-are suspendedfor depictions of the Holocaust. Saul Friedlanderexpresses a consensussuspicion of "the trap of self- feedingrhetoric or ofsheer camera virtuosity" in literaryand cine- matictreatments of the destruction of European Jewry. "The issueis one ofindiscriminate word and imageoverload on topicsthat callfor so muchrestraint, hesitation, groping, on eventswe areso farfrom under- standing."4Itremains one event in twentieth-century history in which poeticlicense and tolerant forbearance are notgranted automatically. Froma traditionalistvantage point, the readilyaccessible, easy- on-the-eyecomic-book format of Maus wouldin itselfdisqualify and indictthe work. Spiegelman's medium is associatedwith the madcap, the childish,the trivial.By its verynature it seems ill-equippedfor themoral seriousness and tonalrestraint that have been demanded ofHolocaust art. But-also by itsvery nature-the cartoon medium possessesa graphicquality well-suited to a confrontationwith Nazism andthe Holocaust. The mediumis notthe message, but in the case of Maus themedium is boundup withthe message, with the ideology of Nazismand theartist's critique of it. Spiegelman'sartistic style and animatingpurpose are shaped by the two graphic media whose images 72 AmericanLiterature makeup thevisual memory of the twelve-year Reich-cartoons and cinema.Both arts are intimately linked to the aesthetic vision and his- toricallegacy of Nazism. From this perspective, cartoons become not justan appropriatemedium to renderthe Holocaust but a peculiarly aptresponse to a genocidalvision. Followinga lineof inquiry first marked off by Hans-JurgenSyber- berg'sOur Hitler (1978), Spiegelman sees Nazismnot only as a force of historybut also as an aestheticstance. To the Nazis, art was more than an expressionof a totalitarianethos; it was the ratio- nale forit. The Nazi aestheticcelebrated perfection in formjust as Nazi ideologydemanded purity of bloodlines. Official pronounce- mentscondemned abstract impressionism and othermodernist ex- pressionsas entartete"Kunst" (degenerate "art") sprungfrom dis- eased mindsand foistedon Germanyby Bolshevikart criticsand Jewishgallery owners. Adolph Hitler, the Reich's most powerful art critic,inveighed constantly against modernist expressions of all sort- "Dadaistsensationalists, Cubist plasterers, and Futurist canvas smear- ers."5 For theNazis, matters of aesthetics were not the esoteric domain ofa smallcoterie of artistesand buffsbut a compellingstate inter- estto be overseenand regulated by the full-blown Reichsministry for PopularEnlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels. In Munichon 18 July1937, an officiallysponsored twin bill of Nazi- approvedand Nazi-forbidden museum shows put the Reichministry's aestheticson fulldisplay: the GreatGerman Art Exhibition of 1937 and its ostensibledoppelganger, an exhibitionof "DegenerateArt" whichopened the next day in the same city (to much larger crowds). The exhibitions'guidebooks condemned the misshapen visages and contortedphysiques of abstract impressionist portraiture and African- influencedsculpture as a defilementofthe Aryan ideal; the Reich was threatenedby an "endlesssupply of Jewish trash."6 Forbidden to en- visionthe human body in anyway short of perfection, artists no less thanadministrators expunged the sick, the infirm, and theretarded fromtheir sight. As Susan Sontagobserved: "Fascist art displays a utopianaesthetics-that of physical beauty and perfection.Painters andsculptors under the Nazis often depicted the nude, but they were forbiddento showany physical imperfections.... They have the per- fectionof a fantasy."7Always, the theoreticians of Kunst and Kultur abettedthe thugs. ArtSpiegelman's Maus 73 The visionof physicalperfection was expressedmost vividly in film,the high-definitionmedium
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