
in 2003 my bookgroup selected spiegelman's maus books as one of the books for our year of reading. that year the us invasion of iraq dominated many of our thoughts and we selected war as the theme for the year. it was a difficult year of reading, without exception the women in my bookgroup can all be considered 'women of peace.' despite the depressing and discouraging nature of many of the books we delved into, the maus books were one of the highlights of the year. yes, the tale was depressing and despairing, but those emotions were balanced by the enormous power spiegelman displayed in telling his family's story during wwII as jews in poland trying desperately to evade the nazis. his family's tale was enhanced by his 'commingling' of image and text.
spiegelman continues to share his family's stories with the stories of our times. a few years ago he created In the Shadow of No Towers this time he directs his unique visual and storytelling gifts to explore the after effects of 9-11. the book considers both the impact on his family, who were living in the shadow of the towers before they fell, and the effect 9-11 has had on our nation. I look forward to his next book Breakdowns: The portrait of an artist as a young @#%! (or something like that). I agree with the the ny times magazine which stated that "Art Spiegelman... to the comics world is a Michelangelo and a Medici both, an influential artist who is also an impresario and an enabler of others."
if you haven't figured it out kimmelman is on the left, spiegelman on the right.
the spiegelman-kimmelman performance was just one of the wonderful events sponsored by cleveland public library - if you haven't figured it out yet, I am a huge booster of the cpl - to me it is one of the best things about living on the north coast! by far it is the best library system I have every experienced and I've been a library hound since childhood!
3 comments:
i like the changes you've made! looking good!
thanks pj! and merci buckets to julien for helping me out with tweaking the margins so I can put in larger pictures. now I just need to work on improving the resolution so the images are sharper.
I'm a librarian for the Cleveland Public Library, is there any way I could borrow one of your great photos of this event to post to our department blog? (http://www.cpl.org/finearts/)
If you would be so kind as to let me know at mdalby@cpl.org - Thanks!
Post a Comment