Untitled Document<\/title> \n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=iso-8859-1\"> \n<\/meta><\/head><\/p>\n<body><\/p>\n"Murderer"<\/strong><\/font>: A fitting final utterance to Art \n Spiegelman’s novel, Maus<\/em>. <\/p>\nAll the brutality one expects in a poignant presentation of the Holocaust and \n Nazi evil is present in this book, this "remarkable work" that Jules \n Feiffer describes as "awesome in its conception and execution . . . \n at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir, and a comic book." \n As author\/mouse protagonist Spiegelman departs from his father at the end of \n Book I (subtitled "My Father Bleeds History")—briefcase in one \n hand, cigarette in another, head down—he utters this depressing final \n statement, "murderer." But he is not talking of the Nazis. His father<\/em> \n is the murderer, for Spiegelman has just learned that his father long ago, distracted \n by grief and confusion over his wife’s suicide, destroyed the journals she had \n kept of the war and Holocaust—journals she had intended to be a legacy \n to her son.<\/p>\nThus we end on a mighty ambivalence: the son exploding\/apologizing, the father \n exploding\/apologizing, the father shaken at the son’s disrespect, the son pleading \n for information, the son, mollified and leaving in peace but uttering alone, \n again, and finally, the word, ". . . murderer."<\/p>\nOf all the powerful dimensions of this work—its compelling stories, its historical \n sweep, its psychological layers—and of course all the issues of media, text, \n poetics, and rhetoric—it is the father-son relationship that I connect to foremost \n of all. Art’s relationship with his father is taut with mixed feelings: of annoyance, \n respect, understanding, awe, contempt, despair, pride, grief, and more. In this \n sense, the book is probably resonant to every child who had a father, or rather \n every child who had a father who was present as the child grew into adulthood. \n But there is something about the quality, or perhaps the actual content, of \n the relationship—both aspects, the positive and negative—that reminds me of \n my relationship with my father.<\/p>\nMy father could be a difficult man, but reading a book like Maus<\/em> makes \n me look to the Depression, World War II, and all the other stresses of the twentieth \n century as causes of that difficulty. And I should be honest: some of the difficulty \n stems from my personality, with its inward ways, much like Spiegelman’s. For \n I need but look at my brothers, Joe in particular, who has written most lovingly \n and accurately of our father’s uniqueness. <a href=\"http:\/\/english.sxu.edu\/bonadonna\/joe-remembering.html\">Take \n a look at his touching and fun memoir here<\/a>. But there is something in Spiegelman’s \n portrayal of his father that rings an eerie bell. The frugality, the directness, \n the aggressive care of both men are striking. Nothing of hesitation or shyness \n in either of these men. And yet at the same time, the shocking tenderness from \n time to time. Can these qualities be attributed, somehow, to the effects of \n living through the twenties, thirties, and forties and surviving despite it \n all? <\/p>\nOr is it just a matter of being in a family and taking what comes with the \n territory? Maus<\/em> raises questions of family dynamics of incredible and \n deep resonance. Spiegelman interweaves tales of marital discord, parental scolding, \n and typical family squabbles with episodes of unspeakable heroism, courage, \n and good and bad fortune. Through it all there is one given: survival. On the \n one hand there is an incredible closeness in this family (all families) that \n allows the most extreme circumstances just to be. It all hangs out there—in \n "dissolution," I’d call it: an agreement to look beyond the unresolved \n matters in a way that is completely natural in families, as it is nowhere else. \n On the other hand, there is the opposite of closeness and tolerance and acceptance, \n for here are people so different, so uninvolved . . . just so very \n different. Part of the magic of Maus<\/em> is its portrayal of two "aliens" \n sharing a space and entering into one another’s world. The father brings Art \n into his past—not only the war, but also his youth and life, including \n his early romances, his struggles to establish himself, his rhythms of life. \n And the son attempts to bring the father into the writer’s\/artist’s world he \n inhabits. That’s something I never attempted with my father, and I’m not sure \n I could, so I envy Spiegelman that expression and honesty.<\/p>\nThe depictions of the family ambivalences are not all as poignant and disturbing \n as the heart-wrenching final word of Volume 1. Some of the narration is borderline \n humorous. There is the episode when Art, at the conclusion of one interview \n session can’t find his coat. We soon find that the father—who is a renowned \n miser, (a stereotypical Jewish miser, Art fears)—has thrown out Art’s \n coat. For the father has (1) bought himself a new coat, (2) decided that Art’s \n coat was shabby, and (3) decided to give Art his old coat. Art is incredulous: \n "Oh great, a Naugahyde windbreaker!" And here is a case where Spiegelman’s \n artistic talent comes to the fore: for the depiction of Art\/mouse in the puffy \n jacket conveys the archetypal embarrassment every child has suffered at the \n hands of parents who find ingenious ways to exert control and inflict humiliation.The \n expression on Art’s face as he walks home, slouched in the puffy jacket (it \n should be noted he is thirty years old at the time), is priceless, as is his \n comment: "I just can’t believe it. . . ."<\/p>\nIn the context of such disbelief and anger and frustration, Spiegelman tells \n his father’s story. Compassion, awe, and tender love are thrown into the telling \n in a way worthy of the complexity of family life and the suffering of a terrible \n World War. In all, Maus<\/em> is a "survivor’s tale" that takes \n us into unexpected dimensions of just what survival is. In its seamless interweaving \n of tales—further complicated by our own connections to them—we are \n often, like Art himself, left incredulous, but we are grateful for the experience, \n the honesty of it, the reality of it—all in a comic book about a family \n of mice that escaped the exterminator.<\/p>\n<\/body> \n<\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Untitled Document "Murderer": A fitting final utterance to Art Spiegelman’s novel, Maus. All the brutality one expects in a poignant presentation of the Holocaust and Nazi evil is present in this book, this "remarkable work" that Jules Feiffer describes as "awesome in its conception and execution . . . at one and the same time a novel, … <a href=\"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/archives\/44\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading Difficulty, Toleranance, Love, Survival: Fathers and Sons In, Out, and At War<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-life-in-general","category-thoughts-on-teaching-and-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":44,"date":"2005-07-27T02:01:37","date_gmt":"2005-07-27T07:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/english.sxu.edu\/bonadonna\/blog1\/?p=44"},"modified":"2005-11-28T04:23:19","modified_gmt":"2005-11-28T10:23:19","slug":"difficulty-toleranance-love-survival-fathers-and-sons-in-out-and-at-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/archives\/44","title":{"rendered":"Difficulty, Toleranance, Love, Survival: Fathers and Sons In, Out, and At War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n
\nUntitled Document<\/title> \n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=iso-8859-1\"> \n<\/meta><\/head><\/p>\n<body><\/p>\n"Murderer"<\/strong><\/font>: A fitting final utterance to Art \n Spiegelman’s novel, Maus<\/em>. <\/p>\nAll the brutality one expects in a poignant presentation of the Holocaust and \n Nazi evil is present in this book, this "remarkable work" that Jules \n Feiffer describes as "awesome in its conception and execution . . . \n at one and the same time a novel, a documentary, a memoir, and a comic book." \n As author\/mouse protagonist Spiegelman departs from his father at the end of \n Book I (subtitled "My Father Bleeds History")—briefcase in one \n hand, cigarette in another, head down—he utters this depressing final \n statement, "murderer." But he is not talking of the Nazis. His father<\/em> \n is the murderer, for Spiegelman has just learned that his father long ago, distracted \n by grief and confusion over his wife’s suicide, destroyed the journals she had \n kept of the war and Holocaust—journals she had intended to be a legacy \n to her son.<\/p>\nThus we end on a mighty ambivalence: the son exploding\/apologizing, the father \n exploding\/apologizing, the father shaken at the son’s disrespect, the son pleading \n for information, the son, mollified and leaving in peace but uttering alone, \n again, and finally, the word, ". . . murderer."<\/p>\nOf all the powerful dimensions of this work—its compelling stories, its historical \n sweep, its psychological layers—and of course all the issues of media, text, \n poetics, and rhetoric—it is the father-son relationship that I connect to foremost \n of all. Art’s relationship with his father is taut with mixed feelings: of annoyance, \n respect, understanding, awe, contempt, despair, pride, grief, and more. In this \n sense, the book is probably resonant to every child who had a father, or rather \n every child who had a father who was present as the child grew into adulthood. \n But there is something about the quality, or perhaps the actual content, of \n the relationship—both aspects, the positive and negative—that reminds me of \n my relationship with my father.<\/p>\nMy father could be a difficult man, but reading a book like Maus<\/em> makes \n me look to the Depression, World War II, and all the other stresses of the twentieth \n century as causes of that difficulty. And I should be honest: some of the difficulty \n stems from my personality, with its inward ways, much like Spiegelman’s. For \n I need but look at my brothers, Joe in particular, who has written most lovingly \n and accurately of our father’s uniqueness. <a href=\"http:\/\/english.sxu.edu\/bonadonna\/joe-remembering.html\">Take \n a look at his touching and fun memoir here<\/a>. But there is something in Spiegelman’s \n portrayal of his father that rings an eerie bell. The frugality, the directness, \n the aggressive care of both men are striking. Nothing of hesitation or shyness \n in either of these men. And yet at the same time, the shocking tenderness from \n time to time. Can these qualities be attributed, somehow, to the effects of \n living through the twenties, thirties, and forties and surviving despite it \n all? <\/p>\nOr is it just a matter of being in a family and taking what comes with the \n territory? Maus<\/em> raises questions of family dynamics of incredible and \n deep resonance. Spiegelman interweaves tales of marital discord, parental scolding, \n and typical family squabbles with episodes of unspeakable heroism, courage, \n and good and bad fortune. Through it all there is one given: survival. On the \n one hand there is an incredible closeness in this family (all families) that \n allows the most extreme circumstances just to be. It all hangs out there—in \n "dissolution," I’d call it: an agreement to look beyond the unresolved \n matters in a way that is completely natural in families, as it is nowhere else. \n On the other hand, there is the opposite of closeness and tolerance and acceptance, \n for here are people so different, so uninvolved . . . just so very \n different. Part of the magic of Maus<\/em> is its portrayal of two "aliens" \n sharing a space and entering into one another’s world. The father brings Art \n into his past—not only the war, but also his youth and life, including \n his early romances, his struggles to establish himself, his rhythms of life. \n And the son attempts to bring the father into the writer’s\/artist’s world he \n inhabits. That’s something I never attempted with my father, and I’m not sure \n I could, so I envy Spiegelman that expression and honesty.<\/p>\nThe depictions of the family ambivalences are not all as poignant and disturbing \n as the heart-wrenching final word of Volume 1. Some of the narration is borderline \n humorous. There is the episode when Art, at the conclusion of one interview \n session can’t find his coat. We soon find that the father—who is a renowned \n miser, (a stereotypical Jewish miser, Art fears)—has thrown out Art’s \n coat. For the father has (1) bought himself a new coat, (2) decided that Art’s \n coat was shabby, and (3) decided to give Art his old coat. Art is incredulous: \n "Oh great, a Naugahyde windbreaker!" And here is a case where Spiegelman’s \n artistic talent comes to the fore: for the depiction of Art\/mouse in the puffy \n jacket conveys the archetypal embarrassment every child has suffered at the \n hands of parents who find ingenious ways to exert control and inflict humiliation.The \n expression on Art’s face as he walks home, slouched in the puffy jacket (it \n should be noted he is thirty years old at the time), is priceless, as is his \n comment: "I just can’t believe it. . . ."<\/p>\nIn the context of such disbelief and anger and frustration, Spiegelman tells \n his father’s story. Compassion, awe, and tender love are thrown into the telling \n in a way worthy of the complexity of family life and the suffering of a terrible \n World War. In all, Maus<\/em> is a "survivor’s tale" that takes \n us into unexpected dimensions of just what survival is. In its seamless interweaving \n of tales—further complicated by our own connections to them—we are \n often, like Art himself, left incredulous, but we are grateful for the experience, \n the honesty of it, the reality of it—all in a comic book about a family \n of mice that escaped the exterminator.<\/p>\n<\/body> \n<\/html><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Untitled Document "Murderer": A fitting final utterance to Art Spiegelman’s novel, Maus. All the brutality one expects in a poignant presentation of the Holocaust and Nazi evil is present in this book, this "remarkable work" that Jules Feiffer describes as "awesome in its conception and execution . . . at one and the same time a novel, … <a href=\"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/archives\/44\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading Difficulty, Toleranance, Love, Survival: Fathers and Sons In, Out, and At War<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-just-life-in-general","category-thoughts-on-teaching-and-learning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonadonna.org\/sites\/wordpress\/bonadonna\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}