3. Maus has always inspired debates about its genre-identity. Is it comics or graphic novel or graphic memoir? Non-fiction or fiction?
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Replying to @HeerJeet
4. One obvious answer is that Maus is based on non-fiction material artfully shaped into narrative form. The craft of shaping often ignored
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5. One way to understand Maus is to see that the structure owes much to hard-boiled detective fiction.
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6. Spiegelman has a longstanding affinity for hardboiled genre which is worth tracing before we talk about Maus.
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7. Prior to Maus, Spiegelman's longest work was "Ace Hole, Midget Detective" -- a parody of the hardboiled genre.
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8. Spiegelman and
@FrancoiseMouly named their son Dashiell, after the author of the Maltese Falcon2 replies 1 retweet 4 likes -
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9. Post-Maus, Spiegelman helped organize & edit comics adaptations of several hard-boiled inflected works including Auster's City of Glass
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10. So let's read Maus as detective novel. It's about Spiegelman trying to solve the greatest crime of the twentieth century, the Holocaust
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11. Spiegelman is the detective and the prime witness is his father Vladek. Every chapter of first book has Spiegelman interrogating Vladek
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12. Beyond the larger mystery of the Holocaust there is the particular mystery of Spiegelman's mom Anja, a survivor who committed suicide.
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13. Vladek Spiegelman is not just a witness but also a suspect. He destroys a key piece of evidence: Anja's diary.
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Replying to @HeerJeet
14. Volume 1 of Maus ends with Spiegelman distraught at learning of destruction of diary, calling his father a "murderer."
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15. Larger narrative arc of Maus is Spiegelman/detective realizing his first accusation (Vladek as murderer) was wrong
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