The following reviews are about books that can be considered a little... grim. They aren't for small children, and they don't involve super-heroes. They are very important pieces of literature, though, and I sincerely believe that they should be read. By everyone.
Fax From Sarajevo is a book that records events that should not have been allowed to happen. I wish I had enough money to put copies in every high school history room. Like Maus, it is a reminder of man's inhumanity to man, and a testament to the human ability to survive even in the harshest environment.
In 1992, war broke out in a place called Bosnia. The 1984 Winter Olympics that were held in Sarajevo were nothing but a memory to most Americans, and the fighting and death happening there was so distant that many people didn't even realize what was going on. A man named Ervin Rustemagic was there, through the siege of Sarajevo, with his family. The only reliable means of communication was his fax machine, and he sent out faxes to his friends out in the sane world... including artist Joe Kubert.
This book is a combination of the original faxes, photographs of the city, and a narrative in artwork by Joe Kubert. It tells how Ervin lost nearly everything, and was one of the lucky who got out alive with his family. The art, done in Joe Kubert's sketchy war comics style, brings out the images of death and destruction starkly against a backdrop of innocence inherent in the art.
An ad for this book reads In 1945, we told the world "Never Again." In 1992, we forgot our promise. And now, as the fighting continues, years later, it seems we still refuse to remember.
Art Spiegelman asked his father, a survivor of the Holocaust, about his experiences. He recorded the conversations on audio tape and in notes, and then used those tapes and notes he made to convert the story into graphics. The result is a deeply disturbing account of the events that lead up to the capture of Spiegelman's parents by the Nazis, then of their time in a concentration camp.
The first volume of this story sold tons, changed the way people thought about comic books, won awards, and disturbed its creator immensely. It is a family story, and deals with very real events... the same events that we swore to never let happen again. It's about the Holocaust, but it's also about life.
This book isn't for the weak of heart, but it's also not nearly as painful as I was afraid it would be. I am wary of information about the Holocaust, because I don't want the memory of the people who died to become cheapened or simplified. I fear books about it, because it was something that shouldn't have happened. All of humanity should be shamed by it, and every time I read about it I cringe in some deep reflex of racial guilt.
Art Spiegelman does simplify the story somewhat by using iconic animals to represent differing ethnic groups in the story. It can be argued that he did harm by turning all Jews into mice, and Germans into cats. But the story itself, of Spiegelman's father, is so powerful that the distancing from real humans was necessary.
And in the end, what Spiegelman produced is something that people should read. It's a tale that needed to be told, another piece of a horrific story. And something that we should never forget.