Maus is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman (pictured
in 2007), serialized from 1980 to 1991. It depicts Spiegelman
interviewing his father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The book
is self-referential and postmodern—most strikingly in its depiction of
Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and non-Jewish Poles as pigs. The
narrative consists mostly of flashbacks to the war years, framed by the
interview that takes place in 1978 in the Rego Park section of New York
City. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled
relationship with his father, and the impact of his mother's suicide
when he was 20. The book uses a minimalist drawing style with innovative
page and panel layouts, pacing, and structure. Maus was serialized as an
insert in Raw, an avant-garde comics and graphics magazine published by
Spiegelman and his wife, Françoise Mouly. It was one of the first
graphic novels to receive significant academic attention in the English-
speaking world, and in 1992 became the first to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1138:
English forces repelled a Scottish army at the Battle of the
Standard near Northallerton in Yorkshire.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Standard>
1639:
The East India Company bought a small strip of land on what is
today Chennai (modern skyline pictured), the capital city of the Indian
state of Tamil Nadu, from the King of the Vijayanagara Empire, Peda
Venkata Raya.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chennai>
1791:
A slave rebellion erupted in the French colony of Saint-
Domingue, starting the Haitian Revolution.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haitian_Revolution>
1910:
Japan annexed Korea with the signing of the Japan–Korea
Annexation Treaty, beginning a period of Japanese rule of Korea that
lasted until the end of World War II.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_under_Japanese_rule>
2012:
A series of ethnic clashes between the Orma and Pokomo tribes
of Kenya's Tana River District resulted in the deaths of at least 52
people.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%9313_Tana_River_District_clashes>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
angleworm:
(Northern US) An earthworm, used as or destined to be used as bait to
catch fish.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/angleworm>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full
of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it
Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist
/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican,
Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty
to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees
himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge
unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any
author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery
rhyme.
--Ray Bradbury
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury>