Art Spiegelman, creator of the comic book "Maus," spoke about the meaning of his book and what its creation meant to him to an overflow crowd in Cook Auditorium last night.
Spiegelman's book tells the story of his father Vladek and how he survived World War II.
The book portrays the Holocaust through the lens of the comic strip, and the characters are animals, not people.
The Jews are drawn as mice; the Nazis, cats.
Spiegelman explained his unique choice of medium, saying he was simply turning the Nazi de-humanization of their victims "on its ear."
"Many times I've joked that Hitler was my collaborator on this book ... this was his metaphor," he said, adding that the caricatures of Jews before the war in Germany all portrayed them as less than human.
He also said it was the natural way for him to tell the story.
"This is the language I know -- my vernacular," he said.
Spiegelman shied away from accepting the praise critics have heaped upon the book.
"I never did it to teach anyone anything except myself," he said.
Spiegelman said the book should be read in its historical context. He warned the reader away from martyring any of the characters.
"It's not about guilt or innocence," he said.
Spiegelman also spoke about what the book meant to him.
The book is actually a story within a story -- the narrative jumps back and forth between Vladek Spiegelman's recollections of the war and Art Spiegelman's conversations with his father as he relates his story.
Spiegelman said writing the book was somewhat cathartic for him and helped him come to terms with his troubled relationship with his father.
"As an adult the only time I could speak with Vladek without it exploding was when he would tell me [about the war]," he said.
Spiegelman ended the lecture by playing an audio tape of the interviews he conducted with his father.
His father's voice told a story while Art showed the corresponding panels from Maus.
Throughout the nearly two-hour lecture, Spiegelman described the problems inherent in his medium.
Using slides to show excerpts from the book in comparison to what he considered good and bad comics, he explained some of his dilemmas.
"Reality is too complex for comics," he said.
Important in the comic medium is the idea the balance between visual images and text, he said.
The words cannot dominate the page, but in a book like Maus, words are important, he said.
"You have to work with the efficiency necessary in comics," he said.
Despite its somber topic, Spiegelman managed to keep the lecture light with his off-beat characterizations and his insistence that he be allowed to smoke though it is prohibited in the auditorium.
When an audience member pointed this out, he said, "well, then its gonna be a short lecture," and continued to smoke.
Spiegelman's work frequently appears in The New Yorker. He also created the Garbage Pail Kids, the series of collectible stickers introduced in the 1980s.
