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Art Spiegelman – The Complete Maus | Review

April 25, 2016 danecobain

Title: The Complete Maus

Author: Art Spiegelman

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 296

Rating: 10/10

Art Spiegelman – Maus

Maus could very well be one of the best books I’ve ever read, and it’s certainly the top graphic novel – put simply, it’s a masterpiece, and literally everyone should read it. You’ll find out why in a second.

See, Maus is Spiegelman’s account of the story of his parents as they endured the Second World War – as you might have guessed from the author’s name, his parents were both Jewish, and they endured the unimaginable at the hands of the Nazi party during Hitler’s reign of terror. Essentially, Maus has turned his father’s monologues into the war days into one of the most incredible testaments to the sheer brutality of the Holocaust that I’ve ever seen.

Not only is the writing top notch, but the illustrations are fantastic as well – it’s impressive that Spiegelman did both, and the attention to detail is downright alarming. Spiegelman portrays different races as different species, so the Nazis are cats and the mice of the title are the Jews; on top of this, there are plenty of visual tricks, like paths that look like swastikas if you look at them in the right way.

But really, the best thing about this book is the fact that it’s a testament to truth – Spiegelman has captured both his father, and his father’s stories, in a way that really brings them to life, and no other medium could compete with it. This book should be taught on school curriculums across the world, and read by everyone – I’m not exaggerating here. Go and buy it, and make sure that you get the complete collection so that you get the full story. Go, go!

Art Spiegelman

Click here to buy The Complete Maus.

Charles Bukowski – What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire | Review

September 1, 2013 danecobain

Authors A-E (By Surname)Poetry

Title: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Author: Charles Bukowski

Type: Poetry

Page Count/Review Word Count: 409

Rating: 8/10

Charles Bukowski – What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Bukowski is back with another epic collection of idiosyncratic poetry. The poems published in the collection were written between 1970 and 1990, and they were part of an archive that the great poet left behind to be published after his death.

As always, it’s fascinating to see the way in which Bukowski used simple (and often profane) language in such a powerful way – his poems don’t read like Shakespeare, they read like Bukowski talked, and that’s what gives them their power. Bukowski wasn’t a poet or a novelist – he was a storyteller, and it barely matters whether you’re reading his prose or his poetry.

Take the first poem in the collection, for example – ‘my father and the bum‘. Bukowski had a troubled relationship with his father, who used to bully him as a child – here, we see his father’s pride, and the way in which the opinions of his friends weighed heavy on him. Bukowski says: “My father believed in work. He was proud to have a job. Sometimes he didn’t have a job and then he was very ashamed. He’d be so ashamed that he’d leave the house in the morning and then come back in the evening so the neighbours wouldn’t know.”

Charles Bukowski

Of course, it’s no secret that Bukowski hated his father – you would have too, the man, by all accounts, was a bastard. Just how extreme that hatred was is shown by his depiction of his father’s cruelty: “My father caught the baby mice – they were still alive and he flung them in to the flaming incinerator, one by one. The flames leaped out and I wanted to throw my father in there, but my being 10 years old made that impossible.”

But let’s get back to the book as a whole. It was published by Black Sparrow Press, the legendary poetry firm that was formed by John Martin, ostensibly to publish Bukowski’s work. According to Wikipedia (and Born in to This, a documentary about the poet), John Martin offered Bukowski $100 per month for life on the condition that he’d stop working for the post office and write full time. Bukowski agreed, and shortly afterwards started work on Post Office, his first novel which was inspired by his time with the company.