Old art, new Art
October 8, 2008 at 6:19 pm by Helen Herbst in A&E
Yesterday marked the release of Breakdowns: Portrait of the Artist as a Young %@&*! by Art Spiegelman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Holocaust memoir Maus. Printed in large, 10-inch-by-14-inch format, Breakdowns is, for the most part, a re-release of a collection of strips printed in 1978 with an original run of 5,000. It’s a book within a book, with a facsimile of the original Breakdowns sandwiched between new material. It begins with an illustrated biographical introduction and ending with an afterword by Spiegelman himself — a kind of reflective essay about Breakdowns and how it came about.
From the afterword:
Although Breakdowns figures prominently in my life and my development as an artist, I was still startled when Pantheon expressed interest in re-issuing the book. I couldn’t help but worry that, once the scarcity factor was removed, Pantheon would be lucky to sell as many copies of this edition as I’d sold of the 1978 book. I didn’t want my editors to think they had some red-hot commodity on their hands — like, say, an Elvis Presley poster book — simply because of the success of Maus. In fact, it was the resounding lack of response to Breakdowns that led directly to the 300-page Maus.
Breakdowns contains Spiegelman’s original three-page “Maus” strip (and, in fact, the original book was subtitled From Maus to Now, though it was printed prior to the full-length Maus), as well as “Prisoner on Hell Planet,” a strip about the artist’s mother’s suicide, also reproduced in Maus. The different strips vary greatly in style (and comprehensibility), and it’s easy to see how Art Spiegelman became one of the most important artists of his time, changing both the memoir and graphic novel forever.
So here’s to you, Art Spiegelman. May your new old book sell more than 5,000 copies.
The author is currently on tour promoting the book (though not in Atlanta). To learn more about Breakdowns and corresponding events, visit Pantheon Books online.
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