The power of Maus doesn’t require such exhaustive explanation and annotation, but those with a taste for it will find their...
Everything you ever wanted to know about the creation, impact and aftereffects of Maus.
The cultural significance of the Pulitzer Prize–winning work by Spiegelman (In the Shadow of No Towers, 2004) is beyond dispute. Not only did it establish the critical respectability and mainstream market for what have come to be called “graphic novels,” but its unsentimental account of family tragedy and dynamics showed a way that art could deal with death-camp genocide without descending into what the author terms “Holokitsch.” On the 25th anniversary of the publication of Maus I, this volume serves as the publishing industry’s version what the music industry markets as a box set—with extended bonus material, contextual analyses and previously unreleased cuts (some 7,500 drawings and sketches are but a small fraction of the offerings on the accompanying DVD). Included within the book are an exhaustive interview with the author by English professor Hillary Chute, shorter (but not short) interviews with his wife and their offspring on the artist and his art, plenty of illustrations from sketchbooks and inspirations, family photos, family trees, rejection letters (from major publishers), the source-material transcript of the author’s discussions with his father about the latter’s experiences in Auschwitz and Dachau and the original three-page version of “Maus” from 1972 that spawned the two-volume masterpiece. For Spiegelman, the key questions to address (at length) provide chapter titles: “Why the Holocaust?”; “Why Mice?”; “Why Comics?” The answers are intermittently fascinating and often provocative, though only an obsessive or an academic is likely to need a two-page response to the question: “You kept lots of pictures of mice and other animals around while you were working. Which ones were especially significant?” Yet the accompanying DVD will satisfy the insatiable appetite, with “a digital reference copy of The Complete Maus” (with audio and visual links) plus “MetaMeta” supplements that make the printed volume seem like an appetizer.
The power of Maus doesn’t require such exhaustive explanation and annotation, but those with a taste for it will find their appreciation enhanced.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-375-42394-9
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2011
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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