Since I’ve not done this for a few weeks, here’s a Random Friday posting. This is what happens. I go to random.org, and get a random number between 1 and 1680. These numbers correlate to the books in my library on LibraryThing. I then match the random number to the relevant book in my library, and talk about it.

Today’s random number is 1410, which corresponds to The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman.

This seems to be the graphic novel that, if you own any graphic novel at all, it’ll be this one. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, this is Art Speigelman’s rendering of his family’s experiences during the Second World War. Here’s an overview, pinched straight from Wikipedia, I’m afraid:

The book alternates the stories told by Spiegelman’s father Vladek Spiegelman about life in Poland before and during the Second World War with the contemporary life of Art, Vladek, and their loved ones in the Rego Park neighborhood of New York City. Vladek’s embedded story, often framed as a dialogue with Art, recounts the struggle of Vladek Spiegelman living with his family in Radomsko, Częstochowa, Sosnowiec, and Bielsko in the late 1930s and his tragic odyssey during the war which ultimately led him to Auschwitz as prisoner 175113.

Throughout the book, Art Spiegelman confronts his difficult relationship with his father. For example, Vladek exhibits racial prejudice against blacks despite his own experiences of anti-Semitism. He is also presented as stingy and a person who makes life very difficult for those around him, including his first wife Anja (Art’s mother, who committed suicide) and his second wife Mala, themselves concentration camp survivors. Spiegelman presents the Vladek he knows and contrasts him with the man in the concentration camps and comments within the books about his difficulties presenting history and Vladek’s remarkable personal story accurately.

This is where I confess that I haven’t actually read it yet. I bought it on a bit of a whim some months ago, and I do keep meaning to get around to it, but… you know how it is. What is clear, though, is that this is an important book with a formidable reputation. I don’t know about you, but the idea of reading a graphic novel feels like a very different sort of experience compared to your standard book. Will it take a big shift in mindset? I don’t know. I must pick it up and find out.