Attention!
artist has to reign supreme. If I
can help, I'd be glad to. But nev-
er by telling him what to do. I re-
spect art too much, both Art
Spiegelman as a person, and art
as an important expression of hu-
man endeavor."
With The Wild Party behind
him and Maus still gathering
devotees, Mr. Spiegelman, too, is
not quite sure what he'll be do-
ing next, although he can cer-
tainly walk away from the Maus
experience with one extraordi-
nary, almost heretic thought —
and two quirky, semi-amusing
anecdotes.
The Thought (and an unex-
pected indebtedness): "Maus was
made in collaboration with
Hitler. [Italics added] (Now will
I have to share my Pulitzer?) It
was the Nazis' idea to divvy up
the human race into species, into
Ubermenschen and untermen-
schen , to 'exterminate' (as op-
posed to murder) Jews like
vermin..."
Anecdote #1 (which may show
the extent to which the Maus
books have not exorcised any
Holocaust demons that plague
Mr. Spiegelman): In September
1993, Art Spiegelman did a two-
page comic strip for the New
Yorker about visiting children's
book illustrator/author Maurice
Sendak at his "idyllic Connecti-
cut estate."
"When parents give Maus ...
to their little kids," he told Mr.
Sendak, "I think it's child abuse.
I warma protect my kids. When
Nadja, my 6-year-old daughter,
was asked what I do for a living,
she said, 'Daddy draws mice."
"Art," responded Mr. Sendak,
"you can't protect kids. They
know everything.... I remember
my own childhood vividly. I knew
terrible things. But I knew I
mustn't let adults know I knew....
It would scare them."
Anecdote #2 (which may show
more feline sympathy than anti-
genocidal contempt): "The Ger-
man and Israeli translations of
Maus were well-received in Ger-
many and Israel. I got more
thorny reviews in England than
anywhere else. I sensed an odd
anti-Semitism in some of the re-
views. Some anthropologist who
studies animals, maybe
Desmond Morris or Ashley Mon-
tagu (if he's still alive), was up-
set on some radio show. They
said I had set back the cause of
cats 1,000 years." 0
The Maus That Spins
omits, the Holocaust
and Art Spiegelman
met the ultra-high-tech
computer age last Feb-
ruary when both Maus I and
II were brought out on CD-
ROM.
Dubbed "The Complete
Maus" (Voyager, Macintosh,
$49.95), the disc is, indeed, as
complete as can be. It includes
not only every page of the two
Maus books, but also two hours
of audio from Mr. Spiegelman's
original interviews with his
father that are the marrow of
the books' text; transcripts of
these recordings; family photo-
graphs; maps and period music;
5,000 preliminary sketches for
the books; reference materials
on the people and places en-
countered in Maus, including
maps of Auschwitz/Birkenau
and World War II; and
family trees of the author's
parents.
The disc even includes
a "home video" shot by
Mr. Spiegelman and
his wife on a 1987 trip
to Poland and Ger-
many.
The CD-ROM was
Mr. Spiegelman's way to
get out the full, definitive
version of Maus without re-
sorting to enticements from
Hollywood, which has ap-
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proached him numerous times
about turning the books into
films.
"I was not interested in ani-
mation or in licensing Maus,"
he said. "It would just be de-
stroyed. But 'The Complete
Maus' will allow for a lot of
extra information about the
original."
Extra or not, Mr. Spiegelman
still can't view the disc: He
doesn't have a CD-ROM drive
for his computer. In fact, he's
only recently gotten his feet wet
in the wonderful world of CD:
He finally bought an audio CD
player a few weeks ago.
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Maus on disc: Includes even
a home video trip to Poland.
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