Wronglabel

The Stranger, even though I no longer live in Seattle, still keeps me informed. And today, Paul Constant blogged that Yann Martel, author of LIFE OF PI, signed a book deal for “an allegorical story about the Holocaust featuring talking animals.” I’m going to steal the Stranger’s blockquote:

“I’ve noticed over the years of reading books on the Holocaust and seeing movies that it’s always represented in the same way, which is historical or social realism,” Mr. Martel, 46, said in a telephone interview from his home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. “I was thinking that it was interesting that you don’t have many imaginative takes on it like George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ and its take on Stalinism.”

Yann Martel shits on Art Spiegelman’s head, looks down, realizes he shit on Art Spiegelman’s head and then does it again.

“You don’t have many imaginative takes on it,” Martel observes. He probably realizes MAUS exists, but that it exists in a still-marginalized medium and that he can, perhaps safely, get away with a blatant ripoff.

Except, as we can see in the image accompanying the Stranger’s article, Martel seems to forget that MAUS won the Pulitzer Prize.

I read MAUS recently. It was sobering and depressing to realize that I’d looked at the book for more than 20 years without reading it. It always looked like it would be worth reading, I just never got around to it until Monica bought it and it was sitting on my bookshelf, waiting patiently for me to pick it up. The books did not disappoint. If you haven’t read MAUS, I recommend going to the bookstore or the library and getting it right now. Read it with your kids, if you have them. Read it with your partner or your parents. It does a better job than most movies of dealing with the Holocaust–illustrating its brutal, methodical progression over the physical and psychic geographies of Europe.