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 1992 Pulitzer Prize Winning Author Art Spiegelman |
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SURVIVOR'S TALEMY FATHER BLEEDS HISTORY ___________________________ The Pulitzer prize winning author of Maus and Maus II, Art Spiegelman was born in Stockholm Sweden, and grew up in Rego Park, New York. He is also the co-founder/editor of "Raw", the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comix and graphics and the illustrator of the lost classic The Wild Party by Joseph Moncure March. Spiegelman's work has been published in more than sixteen languages and has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, and Playboy, among others. He has been a contributing editor and cover artist for The New Yorker since 1992. He is currently comix editor for Details magazine. "Maus"
is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of
Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to
come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying
story, and History itself. Moving back and forth from
Poland to Rego Park, New York, "Maus" tells two
powerful stories:
Spiegelman attended the High School of Art and Design in New York City and SUNY Binghamton and received an honorary doctorate of letters from SUNY Binghamton in 1995. He began working for the Topps Gum Company in 1966, an association that lasted a little over twenty years. There he created novelty cards, stickers and candy products, including Garbage Candy, Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids. He began producing underground comix in 1966, and in 1971 moved to San Francisco, where he lived until 1975. His work began appearing in such publications as East Village Others, Bijou and Young Lust Comix. In 1975-76, he, along with Bill Griffith, founded Arcade, The Comic Revue. His book, "Breakdowns", an anthology of his comix, was published in 1997. Spiegelman moved back to New York in 1975 and began doing drawing and comix for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Playboy et al.. He became an instructor at The School of Visual Arts from 1979-1987. In 1980, Spiegelman and his wife, Francoise Mouly, started the magazine Raw. It was there that "Maus" was first serialized. In 1986, Pantheon Books published the first half of "Maus" and followed with "Maus II" in 1991. In 1994 he designed and illustrated the lost Prohibition Era classic by Joseph Moncure March, The Wild Party. Art Spiegelman has received The National Book Critics Circle nomination in both 1986 and 1991, the Guggenheim fellowship in 1990, and a special Pulitzer Prize in 1992. His art has been shown in museums and gallery shows in the United States and abroad, including a 1991 show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He and his wife live in lower Manhattan with their two children, Nadja and Dashiell. |
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| Reviews From
"Maus"
"A
remarkable work, awesome in its conception and
execution...at one and the same time a novel, a
documentary, a memoir, and a comic book." "All
to infrequently, a book comes along that's as daring as
it is acclaimed. [This] is such a book." "A
quiet triumph, moving and simple - impossible to describe
accurately, and impossible to achieve in any medium but
comics." "Maus compels us to bear witness in a different
way: the very artificiality of its surface makes it
possible to imagine the reality beneath" |
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The
first is Spiegelman's father's account of how he and his
wife survived Hitler's Europe, a harrowing tale filled
with countless brushes with death, improbable escapes,
and the terror of confinement and betrayal. The second is
the author's tortured relationship with his aging father
as they try to lead a normal life of minor arguments and
passing visits against a backdrop of history too large to
pacify. At all levels this is the ultimate survivor's
tale - and that, too, of the children who somehow survive
even the survivors. 