MAUS by Art Spiegelman (Read for Free)

I am posting an online readable copy of Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus in response to the ridiculous decision by the McMinn County Board of Education in Tennessee who voted 10-0 to remove the book from the eighth-grade English language arts curriculum saying without realizing the horrible irony that the graphic novel should be replaced, if possible, with another book without content deemed objectionable. The Holocaust is arguably the most objectionable violence ever taken against fellow humans by a despotic regime. 

Maus recounts the horrifying experiences of Art Spiegelman's father during the Holocaust, in which he depicts Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats. Spiegelman shakes us awake as he depicts the unspeakable through the language of cartoons and graphic novels. Maus is a story of survival and a study of the legacy of trauma.

Maus is presented here for readers of all ages. Welcome. 

1. The decision of a Tennessee county school board to ban Maus from the classroom is not an isolated incident

It is part of a much broader effort to censor history and literature being packaged under euphemisms like "parents rights"

Follow along if interested pic.twitter.com/Ciidqperrz

— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) January 27, 2022

This is a really powerful thread about Maus. What it is, what it’s about and the fundamental and intrinsic Jewishness of the narrative. And why you don’t replace it. https://t.co/HMfKKbxaWz

— Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) January 28, 2022

Great Read: Portraits: John Berger on Artists

Really enjoying John Berger's new book which collects many of his perceptive pieces on art and artists.

John Berger’s Portraits shows how art teaches us to see: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2015/12/john_berger_s_portraits_reviewed.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top … via @slate

Breath of Allah: Jamil Ahmad's "The Wandering Falcon"

by Gregg Chadwick

In his first work of fiction, The Wandering Falcon, Jamil Ahmad depicts a world caught between timeless paths of migration and geo-political modernity. Ahmad knits together a series of short stories that cover the life arc of one young man, Tor Baz - the wandering falcon of the title, as he journeys from infancy to manhood.

Inspired by his time as a civil service worker in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Ahmad writes of a world governed by clan and custom. During his time as a powerful emissary of the Pakistani government under the tribal region's frontier governing system, Jamil Ahmad simultaneously served as politician, police chief, judge, jury and executioner. Bits of this personal history are woven within the stories, including hints of Jamil's wife's German heritage. Environmentalist and activist Helga Ahmad was instrumental in encouraging her husband Jamil to move from  halting first attempts at poetry to richly crafted stories of people, place and borders.

The bleak landscapes in the book evoke a world of nomadic treks where human contact is brief and often violent, and where far western desert winds blows clouds of sand so thick that breath is priceless. The environment is unforgiving as is the justice doled out by tribe and government.

Jamil Ahmad finished The Wandering Falcon in 1973-74 but the stories did not find a publisher until this year. Penguin Books' decision to at last publish Jamil's stories is timely. Ahmad  believes that his stories evoke a vanishing world of tribes that the modern world must resonate and harmonize with: "Because frankly speaking, I still think that each one of us has a tribal gene inside, embedded inside. I really think that way."

                                                                         Jamil Ahmad

Jamil Ahmad hopes that deeper understanding of the tribes that once roamed freely between the far borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran could help end the wars that stain their mountains and valleys with blood. Reading The Wandering Falcon can help begin a process of understanding between the timeless nomadic life and the fragmenting borders of our post-modern society.

Our contemporary world has much to learn from the rhythms of the nomadic trail. I highly recommend Jamil Ahmad's magnificent book The Wandering Falcon.


Gregg Chadwick
Breath of Allah
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

More at:
The Wandering Falcon's Site on Penguin.com