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A review by joelazose
Maus Now: Selected Writing by Hillary Chute
Did not finish book. Stopped at 12%.
I had such high hopes! I did my homework and reread Maus I + II immediately before in preparation. Both remain masterpieces.
This succeeds as a historical artifact, but not as a compelling set of criticism (or at least not a well-sequenced one). It collects essays from the last few decades, including first English translations of a few.
Initial reviews from the 80s are valuable curios, but little more than that. At this point, if you're reading Maus Now, you've read Maus. It's not novel to restate the plot. It's not novel to muse on how the people are depicted as animals, and it's not novel to observe the dispassionate and unflattering depictions of Vladek and the author. These are things you will already have considered, but they make up the first 50 pages, which will be deeply fatiguing.
It begs the question: who is this collection for? The observations of the first 50 pages would make someone curious if they had never read Maus -- after all, these would have been on-ramps to get readers interested in what was then a niche, underground comic. But the world of 2023 is one in which Maus has achieved relative ubiquity (thanks in no small part to bizarre bans). And again, if you're reading Maus Now, you don't need any convincing that Maus has artistic merit.
Possible that later essays bore out more interesting development. But for me, it was simply too big a lift to push through to them.
This succeeds as a historical artifact, but not as a compelling set of criticism (or at least not a well-sequenced one). It collects essays from the last few decades, including first English translations of a few.
Initial reviews from the 80s are valuable curios, but little more than that. At this point, if you're reading Maus Now, you've read Maus. It's not novel to restate the plot. It's not novel to muse on how the people are depicted as animals, and it's not novel to observe the dispassionate and unflattering depictions of Vladek and the author. These are things you will already have considered, but they make up the first 50 pages, which will be deeply fatiguing.
It begs the question: who is this collection for? The observations of the first 50 pages would make someone curious if they had never read Maus -- after all, these would have been on-ramps to get readers interested in what was then a niche, underground comic. But the world of 2023 is one in which Maus has achieved relative ubiquity (thanks in no small part to bizarre bans). And again, if you're reading Maus Now, you don't need any convincing that Maus has artistic merit.
Possible that later essays bore out more interesting development. But for me, it was simply too big a lift to push through to them.