MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic by Art Spiegelman (2011, Other, Mixed media product)

Synopsis
Maybe he was just getting tired of answering the same questions, or maybe he really did want to investigate the significance of his ground-breaking, career-defining, Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel MAUS. But regardless the impulse, with META MAUS, an informative and self-reflective work, Spiegelman offers many answer to many questions and provides deep insight into his own process and the bigger cultural narratives within which he was working-- both in terms of the history of comics as a medium and in terms of the history of genocide, oppression, and immigration of Jewish people. META MAUS looks at the specifics of Spiegelman's masterpiece, but it also offers thought-provoking commentary on the broad topic of creativity and cultural production. Accompanied by two DVDs--one that includes a digital version of MAUS with hyperlinks to be used for reference while reading META, and one that contains a wealth of interviews, documents, and critical discussion.

Key Details
Author:	Art Spiegelman
Language:	English
Publisher:	Pantheon Books
Format:	Other
ISBN-10:	037542394X
ISBN-13:	9780375423949

Size
Length:	299 pages
Thickness:	1.2 in
Weight:	32.8 oz

Publisher's Note
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archive of audio interviews with his father, memories of his mother by those who knew her during the war, home movies, historical reference materials including survivors’ drawings, essays about cartooning, scholarly essays about Maus, thousands of preparatory sketches and drafts, scans of his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.