Yesterday I finished Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Spiegelman. This two-part graphic novel mostly tells the story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, who along with his wife survived Auschwitz through both guile and luck — probably more luck than guile. The book is also the story of Spiegelman’s attempts to come to know his father, a seemingly bitter man who despite great business success has become so miserly that he will actually attempt to return partially-eaten groceries to the store for credit. Spiegelman seems to be trying to come to terms with his mother’s suicide some years before, although this is never stated outright.

What makes the book so interesting is its metaphoric construction. Jews are not depicted as people, but as mice (hence the name, Maus). The Germans are portrayed as cats, the French as frogs, and so on — the effect being a sort of Animal Farm construction, as well as a commentary on how so often people only seem to fill in “roles” rather than live distinct lives of their own. In several parts of the book, instead of actually showing the people of his book as mice, for example, he instead depicts them as humans wearing mouse masks — suggesting not only the continuation of past antagonisms into the present, but also reinforcing the idea that so much human suffering is a result of a failure to look beneath our real masks and glimpse what lies beneath. It is worth noting that Vladek Spiegelman’s bitterness, born in the depths of the worst of human atrocity, is passed on to a son who has grown up privileged and healthy in America. And yet the subtext is woven throughout the book, because of Anja Spiegelman’s suicide, that great pain always exists beneath the outward calm of our lives. The overriding emotions of the book are fear and anger, with sadness only placing third, and the book’s most angry moment comes not in one of the concentration camps but in the present, when Art learns that Vladek has long since destroyed his mother’s diaries. “Goddamn you!” Spiegelman cries, and then he calls his father a murderer — because what he has done is to kill the memories that his mother left behind.

Unlike, say, Schindler’s List, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale does not end on a hopeful note. It does not reassure us that heroism is possible even in times of greatest darkness, nor does it reaffirm that life goes on — unless it concedes the point through its main message, that pain endures. Toward the end of the book, Vladek reacts with unbelievable anger because Art’s girlfriend, Francoise, picks up a black hitch-hiker. Francoise is incensed, wondering how someone who has been through the horror of the Holocaust can still be a racist. Vladek fires back, “Do not even compare the blacks to the Jews.” The point is not belabored, nor is it expanded. Spiegelman is not endorsing his father’s disappointing racism, nor is he rejecting it; he only reports it, matter-of-factly, as if to say, “This is the world we have created.” And the book does not end with any sense of closure or understanding; it simply ends. It’s been a long time since I read a book that I would call “haunting”, but that seems the best descriptor for this one.

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Art Spiegelman is currently a features editor for The New Yorker, and frequently produces covers for that magazine.

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Apparently not even death can stop some people from something stupid.

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Now that May Sweeps are over, television is officially a wasteland of reruns, unsold pilots, unending NHL and NBA playoffs, and the like. This year’s glut of nostalgic “reunion” shows was endearing at first, but by the time ABC decided to air a That’s Incredible! reunion, whatever bloom the nostalgia rose had had was completely gone.

Anyhow, here are some thoughts on the season finales of shows I watch. (My thoughts on the series finale of The X-Files will appear in a separate article.)

:: ER. This season ended rather strangely, I thought. The whole “death of Dr. Greene” storyline really wasn’t handled very well, in my estimation. The episode where the ER staff learns, via faxed letter, of Mark’s passing was superb, and that really should have been the season finale. Dr. Greene’s actual death episode felt limp to me; we had to endure forty-five minutes of tortured attempts to connect with the rebellious teenage daughter. The acting was fine, but this really wasn’t anything we haven’t seen in any number of other television dramas. The last portion of the episode, where Mark finally dies, was very well done indeed — although I must admit that when I saw every cast member in attendance at Mark’s funeral, I couldn’t help thinking: “Who is running the ER right now? What if there’s one of those multi-car pileups that floods the ER with patients at least once a season right now?” And then, the actual season finale — in which the spectre of smallpox was raised — felt perfunctory (although it was nice to see the show finally start to fulfill the chemistry that exists between Noah Wyle and Maura Tierney). The last few episodes of the season tried to emphasize that with only Wyle remaining from the show’s first season — Sherry Stringfield doesn’t count, having departed for four years in the middle of the show’s run — a page has been turned and a new chapter begun. Unfortunately, the episode that best captured that feeling was the one that aired two weeks before the season actually ended.

:: Friends. The writing certainly isn’t as sharp as it once was, being too willing to descend these days into farce. The character’s carefree lifestyles are getting more unbelievable as time passes. It’s probably a good thing that the coming season — the show’s ninth — is set to be its last. But I still enjoy the show. It still delivers more laughs on a consistent basis than any other (The Simpsons has become very inconsistent lately, and FOX doesn’t air Futurama enough to qualify), and the writers do still know how to deliver a nifty twist on a story — if only NBC would ever stop with its incessant “You won’t believe the last five minutes!!!”-style promos. (NOTE TO NBC: A great part of the pleasure of a surprise ending is that there is a surprise ending at all, not just the surprise event of the ending!!!) In the case of Friends, Ross is heading to Rachel’s hospital room to propose marriage — except that Rachel thinks that Joey has just proposed (and Joey, in true Joey fashion, has absolutely no idea what’s going on). I’m looking forward to next season.

:: That 70s Show. This season ended in similar fashion to Friends: Eric is planning to tell Donna that he loves her, but before he can the possibility is raised that Donna may end up with Kelso. This show is still hilarious — the addition of Tommy Chong to the cast as perpetually-stoned Leo was brilliant — and the writing still sharp, although the show’s 1970s focus has faded somewhat recently.

:: Ed. Yet another series that ended its season with an unresolved love triangle: Ed is in love with Carol Vessey, who is at this moment going to spend a summer with boyfriend Dennis Martino. Much of the season finale dealt with Ed’s inability to tell Carol how he feels, though just before she leaves for her trip he surprises her with a passionate kiss. The tone of Ed, on the whole, tends toward the bittersweet, so I suspect that the show will acknowledge that when “love triangles” appear in real life, one of the three people involved usually ends up hurt. The show has been fairly unflinching on this point, refusing to make Dennis Martino a mere foil or plot-device designed to delay the moment when Ed and Carol will come together — Dennis is a well-rounded character in his own right, and the show does not ignore his feelings whilst exploring Ed’s and Carol’s.

:: The West Wing. In the episodes leading up to the season finale, a known terrorist — meant, probably, to be the Yasser Arafat in the show’s world — is coming to the United States to visit with the President, and President Bartlett must decide whether or not to have the man assassinated on his way home after a foiled plot to attack the Golden Gate Bridge is traced to this particular person. As a storyline, this was less involving by far than last year’s plotline involving the President’s disclosure of his multiple sclerosis, although its resolution was nicely done — the assassination is carried out while the President attends a play about England’s Wars of the Roses, a period where violence was more often than not the vehicle by which power was transfered from one King to another. Less well-done, though, was the storyline about CJ Cregg’s stalker and the romance between her and the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her. The resolution to the stalker storyline is handled off-camera — CJ’s agent gets a call on his cell phone that the stalker has been arrested — and then the Agent walks into an armed robbery in a New York City store, foils one of the robbers, fails to notice the other, and is shot and killed. The manner of the agent’s death was surprising, even if the fact of it was not — Mark Harmon was not announced as joining the show’s cast for next season, so clearly something had to happen to him — but we are left wondering what the whole reason for the storyline was in the first place. Is Aaron Sorkin merely illustrating the idea that “There but for the Grace of God go we”? Or will this serve as some kind of turning-point for CJ? As it is, the whole stalker story seems pointless. Two additional comments: Lily Tomlin’s addition to the cast, as the replacement for Mrs. Landingham (the President’s beloved secretary, who was killed last year in a car crash), is very welcome — although her introduction, in this year’s finale, felt odd — why would a major new character be introduced in the last episode of the year? Nevertheless, I’ve always like Lily Tomlin and look forward to seeing her next year. Not so Mary Louise Parker, though. She’s a lovely woman, but something about her voice has always bothered me — no matter what I’ve seen her in, she seems to always deliver her lines in a flat monotone, and she doesn’t enunciate very well. I’d rather see Jennifer Jason Leigh in this role.

:: CSI. It was a standard episode for the show, an effective mystery solved through science and deduction. There is the revelation that Grissom is losing his hearing, which ended the show on something of a down note, but this is still one of the most entertaining hours on television. (I’m looking forward to the spinoff next year, if only for a weekly dose of Emily Procter, whose West Wing appearances were too few.)

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The recent history of Marvel Comics has not been rosy. Hopes are high that better times for Marvel may be in the offing, with the company’s fortunes being jumpstarted by the resounding success of the Spiderman movie, the establishment of The X-Men as another cinematic franchise, and other Marvel silver-screen adaptations (The Hulk, The Punisher) in development. There is an interesting article on Slate today about Marvel’s future and the pitfalls that may await.

I stopped reading comics on a regular basis about the same time I went to college; when my budget reached a point where a pizza from Domino’s was an extravagance, I quickly realized that reading twenty or twenty-five comics titles on a monthly basis was simply out-of-the-question. I’ve started reading comics again in the last year, albeit in trade-paperback compilations as opposed to the monthlies, and I’m coming to appreciate comics as the most unfairly-castigated medium for storytelling currently in existence. If movies help Marvel to keep comics afloat, then more power to them. (These well-wishes of mine, though, are subject to withdrawal if Marvel should ever attempt a Power Pack movie.)

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My mother had a sneaky way of getting me to read when I was a kid. Whenever I did something that warranted being taken off television for a while (more often than I care to admit), she always had some book conveniently lying around which I would then be required to read in its entirety before I could watch any more television. (And more often than not, the books she chose were initial books in a series. She knew what she was doing, all right.) One of the authors to whom I was thus introduced was John Bellairs, a wonderful writer of gothic novels for children. Bellairs died in 1991, but an author named Brad Strickland has carried on his characters in new books. (Strickland also finished a couple of works Bellairs had going at the time of his untimely passing.) Bellairs had three main series: the Lewis Barnavelt books, the Johnny Dixon series, and the Anthony Monday series. The first books of each series, respectively, are: The House with a Clock In Its Walls, The Curse of the Blue Figurine, and The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn. All of Bellairs’s books are wonderful, full of interesting detail and quirky, memorable characters. And some of these books are downright scary, but never violent or gory — Bellairs is a master of atmosphere and creating a sense of malice. They are a great alternative to those Goosebumps books, and will also come in very handy now that it’s looking like the fifth Harry Potter book will be longer in coming than originally thought.

For more information on Bellairs, check out The Compleat Bellairs.

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Rick Norwood, a film and TV reviewer for SFSite, has written this review of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones. He likes the film, and says so in a lot less words than I did. Ah well….

(He also likes Spiderman, which I have yet to see — despite the fact that Spidey has always been my favorite superhero. I probably spend too much time blogging….what a good thing I swore off newsgroups.)

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IMAGE OF THE WEEK

“The Lady of Shallott”. Oil on canvas, 1888, John William Waterhouse. (Click on image for enlargement)

In Victorian-era England there was a great resurgence of interest in the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, which was felt as high as England’s great poet laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson. His Idylls of the King are one of the indispensible tellings of the Matter of Britain (along with Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King), and his earlier poem “The Lady of Shalott” is also one of his most famous works.

The fascination with Arthurian legend was also felt by the visual artists of the time, including Edmund Blair Leighton and John William Waterhouse (1849-1917). Biographical information on Waterhouse can be found here.

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POETICAL EXCURSION #3

“The Ruins of Time”, by Luis de Gongora (1561-1627)

This chapel that you gaze at, these stern tombs,

the pride of sculpture…Stop here, Passer-by,

diamonds were blunted on this porphyry,

the teeth of files wore smooth as ice. This vault

seals up the earth of those who never felt

the earth’s oppression. Whose? If you would know,

stand back and study this inscription. Words

give marble meaning and a voice to bronze.

Piety made this chapel beautiful,

and generous devotion binds these urns

to the heroic dust of Sandoval,

who left his coat of arms, once five blue stars

on a gold field, to climb with surer step

through the blue sky, and scale the golden stars.

(translated from the Spanish by Robert Lowell. From the collection World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time, edited by Katharine Washburn and John S. Major.)

I read this poem a week or two ago, skimming it fairly quickly. Since then I’ve kept coming back to it. There is something compelling in the way de Gongora directly addresses the reader and forces him to pay tribute to the one interred within the tomb on which these words are inscribed. The poem appears to be an epitaph for the Duke of Sandoval, a patron of de Gongora’s. (I am not sure on this point; my attempts to locate information specific to this particular poem were not successful.) In any event, de Gongora uses the physical characteristics of the tomb itself to pay tribute to Sandoval’s greatness. We are told nothing of Sandoval’s deeds or acts or qualities as a person; all we know is that this is man who warranted the “blunting of diamonds” and the “wearing smooth of files” on the marble of his tomb. All this is done, de Gongora tells us, to give meaning to blank stone and voice to mute bronze. Also notable is the reversal of the color in the last portion of the poem. Sandoval has died, leaving behind his coat of arms — blue stars in a gold sky — to walk amongst the gold stars set in the blue firmament of Heaven. Luis de Gongora is one of the most important Spanish poets of the baroque era; his works were deemed praiseworthy by Cervantes. And to think, until a week or two ago I had never before heard of him.

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NPR had a trio of stories about electronic gaming today on All Things Considered. First was this story about some colleges that are offering degree programs in game design. Second is a report on the Los Angeles Electronic Entertainment Expo, a big trade show where the big gaming companies (and some smaller ones) unveil their new wares. And third comes a profile of voice-over actor Charles Martinet, who is now the voice of the Super Mario Brothers.

Also, this week’s TIME Magazine has an article about the new wave of “world-immersion” games — EverQuest, Final Fantasy, The Sims — that are more and more popular, branching out into online gameplay that can involve thousands of users at a time. Read the article online here.

Some of these games really look cool, but somehow I wonder if we’re not missing out on the old magic of walking into the arcade with a pocketful of quarters and seeing that, by some miracle, there is no one playing Defender just now….

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According to VH1, the greatest one-hit-wonder of all time is….(drumroll please)….”The Macarena”.

Uh, sure.

Personally, I’d go with “99 Luftballoons” or “Come On Eileen”. or maybe “Walkin’ On Sunshine”. or “Take On Me”. Or….

(Sean found this one.)

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