Meta Mouse

The original book was one I grew up with. My mother always had a focus on the second world war and the German history bound to it. Well, maybe “ had a focus” is a bit of a too strong term. Let’s say she didn’t try to cover that part of history or refused to tell about it.  So I remember this book lying around on the living-room cupboard, next to the TV beside a lot of other books (which were quite boring). And though I was about 12 or something, I read it a couple of times. Even years after it.  Maybe it was the way the story were told, maybe it were the drawings, maybe something else. I was already familiar with that topic of the holocaust, but I always took this book as a less exhausting way of talking about that topic.

I didn’t know it was award winning, I didn’t know it was that famous. It didn’t matter to me. Sometimes you read some piece of world literature and  you don’t even know it. The drawings made it easier for me to deal with that book and to deal with those historical facts. Actually, I wonder why we never talked about this book at school or had a look at this though we covered the second world war roughly about three times during all those years, I’d say.

Yesterday the author Art Spiegelman published a book telling the story behind the book: MetaMaus. I’m seriously considering getting either that one or the original Maus book.

I feel a bit like my past is lately trying to catch up to me.