SOURCE: Rothberg, Michael. “‘We Were Talking Jewish’: Art Spiegelman's Maus as ‘Holocaust’ Production.” Contemporary Literature 35, no. 4 (winter 1994): 661-87.

In the following essay, Rothberg discusses the themes of Jewish-American identity and consumer culture in Maus, asserting that Spiegelman utilizes the visual medium of the comic book to critique representations of the Holocaust that have become commodities of popular culture.

Prologue

He's dying, he's dying. Look at him. Tell them over there. You saw it. Don't forget … Remember this, remember this.

Jan Karski, speaking in Claude Lanzmann's Shoah

In the final comic set piece of Philip Roth's novelistic memoir about his relationship to his father, Patrimony: A True Story, Herman Roth attempts to cajole his author-son into helping one of his card-playing buddies from the Y get his memoirs of World War II published. Philip is understandably resistant—especially as his father has regularly asked him over the years to...