Art Spiegelman, Maus Art Spiegelman's classic graphic novel Maus -- published in two parts, in 1986 and with a sequel five years later in 1991 -- depicts not just a "survivor's tale" from Auschwitz as advertised in the subtitle, to a certain degree the "survivor" of the title is also Art Spiegelman himself, who seems to be wondering throughout the text how it is that he has made it thus far in life without asking all the crucial questions of his father (about his parents' survival in Auschwitz and escape afterward to the Rego Park of Spiegelman's youth). The somewhat difficult structure of the piece -- especially when viewing the two pieces as a whole, since Maus 2 seems written to deliberately complicate and problematize the reader's own sense of the first volume -- presents us with not so much a story about survival in Auschwitz done up in the format of a graphic novel (like...

But I hope to demonstrate how Spiegelman's depiction of Vladek's survival in Auschwitz indicates some crucial points not merely about this own piece of testimony, recorded in a unique way in this work of art, also indicates some general facts about the reception of the Holocaust generally among Americans of Spiegelman's (and Vladek's) generation.
Spiegelman's original stand-alone first volume of Maus -- it is unclear whether he planned a sequel from the beginning, or if the structure of Maus itself indicates that…