What sort of book makes a good candidate for multimedia "expansion?" The Voyager Company has found an ideal choice in Maus, Art Spiegelman's unique, two-book Pulitzer Prize-winning comix version of the Holocaust as told by his survivor father, Vladek.
Large sections of the Maus books, both of which are reproduced in their entirety on the CD-ROM, were based on tape recordings Spiegelman made of his father's recollections. Is Maus fiction or nonfiction? In the introduction, Spiegelman explains why he thinks it's a bit of both. He has much to say about techniques for artistic distancing, starting with his decision to portray Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, and Poles as pigs.
In creating The Complete Maus, Spiegelman strove to portray his father's version of events, even when that version conflicted with known historical facts. The multimedia expansion adds a second version: that of the artist-son at work. Additional material has been selected to show how he chose to tell the story: what he left out and how he shaped and framed his father's rambling remembrances to reveal the story's elemental power.
The multimedia version of Maus becomes a window into the cartoonist's artistic process. We can examine pages from his journals, videos he and his wife made at Auschwitz, doodles, beautiful color sketches. The documentary background material does not attempt to survey all Holocaust sources, but shows only what Spiegelman used along the way: prisoners' drawings, period documents, maps of WWII Poland.
Some multimedia "book expansions" are awkward efforts to reproduce on screen the possibilities inherent to paper technology. In the case of Maus, already a multidimensional work, multimedia treatment successfully adds several more. The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman: US$59.95. The Voyager Company: +1 (212) 431 5199.
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