Art Spiegelman, Maus (1980-91)

To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. Theodor Adorno

[T]he representation of a horrible event, especially if by drawing upon literary skills it achieves a certain graphic power, could serve to domesticate it, rendering it familiar and in some sense even tolerable, and thereby shearing away part of the horror. Irving Howe, ‘Writing and the Holocaust’

Biography Autobiography Fiction History ? If your list were divided into literature and non-literature, I could gracefully accept the compliment as intended, but to the extent that ‘fiction’ indicates a work isn’t factual, I feel a bit queasy. As an author, I believe I might have lopped several years off the thirteen I devoted to my two-volume project if I could have taken a novelist’s license while searching for a novelist’s structure. Art Spiegelman to the New York Times bestseller list compilers Biography Autobiography Fiction History ?

“Scopophilia”