MetaMaus

Art Spiegelman reenters Maus- the modern classic that has been haunting him ever since it was first published twenty-five years ago. The result is a visually and emotionally rich companion book (plus DVD) that is as groundbreaking in its form and content as the masterpiece whose creation it unveils. The cartoonist re-enters the book that consumed him for thirteen years to talk about his survivor parents, the oxymoron of picturing life in a death camp, his guilt-ridden success, racist imagery, and his beloved medium. Witty, intimate, and revelatory, MetaMaus tells the story of how and why a work of art is made, as it grapples with the questions that Maus has most often evoked: Why the Holocaust? Why mice? Why comics? In this book and its accompanying DVD, Art Spiegelman provides the wealth of information we expect in the digital age, including an onscreen reference copy of The Complete Maus linked to a large archive of audio interviews with his father, memories of his mother by those who knew her during the war, home movies, historical reference materials including survivors' drawings, essays about cartooning, scholarly essays about Maus, thousands of preparatory sketches and drafts, scans of his private Maus notebooks, and much more. A brilliant deconstruction of one of the most important works of art and literature of the twentieth century, MetaMaus is an essential work about the creative process for the twenty-first century.

Art Spiegelman has been a staff artist and contributing editor at The New Yorker, as well as the cofounder/coeditor of RAW, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics. In addition to Maus—which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and twice nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award—he is the author of Breakdowns and In the Shadow of No Towers. He lives in New York City with his wife, Françoise Mouly . . . and a cat.