blog post post-haste!

Sorry I didn't post yesterday as is customary, Talissa. I thought I could get a freebie for the week since I did an extra blog posting last Wednesday. Anyway, I feel very weird about writing recently, even more so than I have before. It must be the ultra-cool progressive essays we did recently. My mind's rather divergent, which is mostly a curse when it comes to me trying to piece a paper together, but I still had trouble wrapping my paper up. However, that may have been for other reasons, such as staying up on Halloween, fueled by Twix and turtle ice cream. It was delicious and I was surrounded by my awesome friend and her roommates, who are, might I add, also awesome, yet I always lose steam when I'm about to finish a paper. This time will be different. I know, it's a little late for making resolutions/early since it's nearing the end of the year. In any case, I'm going to do my best at working on this final paper as often as possible until the afternoon it's due.

And to work on that paper, I first need to find an argument I'm not ashamed of. I was thinking of writing about the dysfunctional-family aspect of Maus, but that has been done. --In every single article I looked at. It's all about Richieu being the one perfect child in Vladek's life and Art doesn't measure up to the perfect memory of that dear little boy. It's just that every scene with Vladek and Art talking reminded me of my mom and how she and Vladek are pretty much kindred spirits. I doubt they'd actually get along, though. They'd kill each other first. Now, I'm leaning towards immigrant parents and growing up in a household as first generation American-born. In high school, I used to talk to my club adviser about how screwed up my family is, and she, being used to--as much as humanly possible--her crazy Asian mom, knew that although my mom moved to the United States, she was still intractably an Asian immigrant in the worst way possible. But I'll leave the details for my paper.

So late the party has ended and I've spent all this time dressing up for nothing.

So I'm not sure what I should be saying. I'm not a brilliant conversationalist when it comes to blogging. However, I do wonder what direction this daunting final paper of mine will head. No offense to Equiano, but I am adamantly opposed to devoting an 8-10 page paper to narrative that seems often to cater more to the masses than telling the story how it is. Then again, the trouble with Maus is just... where to begin? It's at times difficult enough just working words, but pictures are another story. Like the old saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words," and boy I hope so, what with an 8 page paper (minimum) staring at me in the face. But in these thousand words, what am I to say? Actually, back up. What point am I even going for? Looking through the criticisms of Maus, they all eventually seem to end up saying the same things over and over: Holocaust and the aftermath, the past vs. the present, and the funky relationship between Art and Vladek. Honestly, that's the best I could probably come up with as well, much less something that is interesting and refreshing. I suppose the fact that Maus is a comic book makes it that much harder to begin; words, I'm used to when writing a paper since that's what my paper consists of. But pictures? And extracting an exact meaning from something so expansive and full of possibilities? Now that's just tricky... tricky indeed. I'm wondering if a picture is acceptable for the abstract then. What about a comic strip response to Maus? I promise it'll be 8-10 pages long!

Fashionably late

Ack! I forgot again! Sorry Talissa! I work Wednesday nights but given the nature of my job (cardswipe), that's hardly an excuse. So, onto my thoughts for this week. (I promise they're the same ones I had last night.)

I'm finding it hard to come up with an argument based on a graphic novel. It's strange that a medium that was so dear to me when I was younger now strikes me as foreign and critically impenetrable. I confess that I don't know how to close-read a comic book—I've never learned how. I don't even know what's fair game for analysis in Maus. I can't decide whether Spiegelman's visual style is deceptively simple or just simple. There's rarely very much to look at, which forces me to analyze the words—his father's story. But critically? Wouldn't that make me kind of a dick? OK, that was facetious, but still, my point is that since neither the drawings nor the text have much meat beyond their obvious meanings, then my last resort is to look at the interaction between word and image. I could trot out a lot of academic vocabulary at this point, but I don't want to tread water. The fact is that the relationship between the text and the pictures is pretty linear. Art's drawings are loyal to his father's narration; he never tries for ironic juxtapositions between what his father recounts and what he himself thinks. It is, after all, his father's story. Art is just the medium. Polysemy like whoa! But by God, I'm going to find something to write about. I'd sooner write ten pages about the significance of the scene with the rat in the basement than five pages on Equiano. Really.

When I read a comic book, I sort of read at a fast pace because I feel like the action is non-stop. The action flows from one panel to another, and I have to read fast in order to keep up with the pace of the comic (or the pace I set for myself actually). However, this is a different type of comic that I have never read before. I used to read Sailor Moon, and most of the story is told through the pictures, with the occasional outbursts of dialogue and action words (i.e. POW). So it's kind of hard for me to keep up because there is so much information to absorb.

I found it interesting how Vladek disguised himself as a Pole by wearing a pig mask. I find it ironic because in reality, humans are the same species, yet people find differences and divide us into more categories. Just a thought.

Oh, and at the end of chapter 4, it was nice to hear a bit from Mala's story after hearing Vladek complain about her all the time. I can't wait to discover how they met and why they got married.

It seems that Vladek is not proud of Artie. Vladek lived through so much, and he barely escaped death so many times by using his resources. Later on, Artie had a better life in America, where he didn't have to go through suck evils as the Holocaust.

Yup, random thoughts for the week.

--tran

SO... I was thinking about the whole story-within-a-story bit and it reminded me (unfortunately) about the whole story-within-stories in Frankenstein. However, I think the two serve totally different purposes. In Frankenstein, I personally think that it was set up that way simply so that the reader could see the creature's reaction to Frankenstein's death, and give his agonizing 10-page monologue on how he has resolved to kill himself. However, in Maus, I think that Artie's story is just as important as Vladek's account, not matter how nearly non-existent it is.

Between Vladek's survivorship tale, we get little snippets of Artie's story, which are mostly about his awkward relationship with his father. Even the little into-comic before the first chapter tells us a little about their relationship: Vladek doesn't seem to really care that his son is crying, and asks him to hold the board tighter. He then teaches young Artie that the world is friendless, and that you can't put your trust in such "friends." Now that's what I call a healthy father-son bond.

Anyways, I think that Vladek is greatly neurotic towards Artie, as if as much as Artie succeeds it could never amount to all the Vladek had to endure (and I'm not saying that's not a bad thing), but also that anything Artie does, Vladek thinks that he can do it better. For example, he won't let him count his pills, being so stubborn that he does it himself saying, "You don't know counting pills...I'm an expert for this" (30). And then Vladek decides that Artie's jacket is just "Such an old shabby coat" and not to his tastes, and proceeds to throw it away. Vladek's controlling parenting screams for Artie to be able to break free from it, although he can only express himself through his relation to his father. Thus, this whole story-within-a-story is the only way that Artie can get his voice through, not just his father's controlling narrative.

As a kid I hated reading. I always would rather "read," or rather "look", at a picture book than read a novel. I think reading a bunch of words was tiring while looking at pictures was simple. As i read Maus, I tend to think the other way now. I would rather read straight text than read some dialogue and look at pictures. I find graphic novels harder because the flow is interrupted everytime i spend some time looking at the pictures. Rather than reading text and letting my imagination play it all out as I read, I have to read the text, look at the pictures, and tie the two together. But there are many advantages to graphic novels. They're easier to read, much less draining on the eyes, and shorter. Yet there is something valuable in reading novels and allowing your imagination to run wild with the words you read.

I feel as if words can better convey the situation than a graphic novel. With graphic novels, it is primarily dialogue with a few narratives here and there. The rest of the situation you are suppose to get from the pictures. In the case of Maus, the pictures dont tell me too much. So far, I feel like the pictures havent enhanced my understanding of the story except for a few frames. It could be his style of drawing though.

I wonder what Maus would be like if it was a novel...surely Art Spiegelman would have to directly say the species of animals that represents whatever ethnicity. Doing that could detract and result in an awkward novel. i.e. when vladik sneaks onto the train. it would be weird to say that the mouse took off a fake pig mask.