Word: maus
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...Maus vols. I + II by Art Spiegelman (Pantheon; 1986) This history of the Holocaust as experienced by the author's father remains the best-known graphic novel ever published, and a major watershed in the "legitimizing" of the art form. The only graphic novel ever to win a Pulitzer, it also stands among the best works of Holocaust literature in any form...
Even then the terminology didn't really fit. "A Contract with God," was actually four short stories and not like a traditional novel at all. Art Spiegelman, author of the comix Holocaust memoir "Maus," recalled when "Contract" first came out. "I liked one of the stories very much but it didn't register with me as having anything to do with what I had already climbed on my isolated tower to try to make, which was a long comic book that would need a bookmark." In the past 25 years the meaning of the phrase has only gotten hazier...
...bottom line - dollars and cents. Most big bookstores, like Barnes & Noble and Borders, put all the graphic novels together in one place. Trade bookstores have become an increasingly important outlet for comic publishers so the strategy for selling them on the floor has become critical. Should Superman, manga and "Maus," sit side by side? Chip Kidd, among many others, can't stand this. "I truly believe that Spiegelman's 'Maus' should be shelved next to Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi, not next to the X-Men. Maus is a Holocaust memoir first and a comicbook second." Micha Hershman, the graphic...
...gateway drug," Spiegelman said by phone from his Manhattan studio. "[Comics] served to help our kids learn to love books as things as well as the ideas they contain." But after years of arguing that comics weren't just for kids, Spiegelman, author of the graphic novel "Maus," found himself in a peculiar position when trying to create "Little Lit." "[I]t was like finally some people were going, 'Yes! Comics are for adults,' and here we were kind of stupidly parading out into the battle zone going, 'Yeah but, wait, wait, comics aren't just for adults anymore...
America has a habit of "discovering" those extended comic books known as graphic novels every few years. It happened when Art Spiegelman published his shattering Holocaust comic Maus (and won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for it). It happened again in 2000, with the movie of Daniel Clowes' alienation epic Ghost World. And now we're coming back to the graphic novel yet again thanks to the film American Splendor, which is based on the autobiographical comic book by Harvey Pekar, who writes about life as a hard-luck, sad-sack, hospital file clerk in Cleveland, Ohio. He's no superhero...