Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!
by Art Spiegelman
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Book Summary Information
Author: Art SpiegelmanEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-10-07
ISBN: 0375423958
Number of pages: 72
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!
Book Review: Spiegelman
Summary: 5 Stars
Like many others, I only read this book because I like Maus. And while Maus is far superior, this book is a very interesting one. It sort of presents the journey of the artist to making Maus. There are a couple of worthy short stories and there are a couple one-pagers that aren't very interesting in story but interesting in style. The introduction changes the attitude of the work presented and is necessary to changing Spiegelman's tone throughout the book. One example is reading how his mother raised him and then later reading how he denied her love which led to her suicide. So, I argue that the introduction is there for a reason, actually, a couple of reasons.
If you liked Maus, know that this isn't as good, but is still a necessary read for a Spiegelman fan.
Summary of Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!
The creator of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus explores the comics form...and how it formed him!This book opens with Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*!, creating vignettes of the people, events, and comics that shaped Art Spiegelman. It traces the artist's evolution from a MAD-comics obsessed boy in Rego Park, Queens, to a neurotic adult examining the effect of his parents' memories of Auschwitz on his own son.
The second part presents a facsimile of Breakdowns, the long-sought after collection of the artist's comics of the 1970s, the book that triggers these memories. Breakdowns established the mode of formally sophisticated comics that transformed the medium, and includes the prototype of Maus, cubist experiments, an essay on humor, and the definitive genre-twisting pulp story "Ace Hole-Midget Detective."
Pulling all this together is an illustrated essay that looks back at the sixties as the artist pushes sixty, and explains the obsessions that brought these works into being. Poignant, funny, complex, and innovative, Breakdowns alters the terms of what can be accomplished in a memoir.
For the last 40 years, comics artist Art Spiegelman has been influential in both pushing the limits of the medium, as well as bringing underground "comix? to the forefront of popular culture. He's perhaps most famous for Maus, the story of his parents' experience in the Holocaust, which earned him a special Pulitzer Prize Letters award in 1992. More recently, his work has appeared in the New Yorker--including the stunning, somber post-9/11 cover--and he was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2005. We sent him a few questions about Breakdowns, and he was kind enough to respond with this handwritten document. See the full image with more questions and answers. [JPEG, 389K]
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