Mp3: Spiegelman speaks!
![](//thephoenix.com/BLOGS/blogs/phlog/artspiegelman3%C2%A9joevleak.jpg)
(Joel Veak)
It’s been
about five years since I’ve inhaled the delicious, nutty tang of a
second-hand cigarette puffed indoors — since I’ve reclined and watched while whorls of
smoke hover and shift and dissipate through the room’s still air. I’d forgotten
what a nifty bit of atmosphere it adds to a conversation.
During an interview
last month in a well-appointed room in the Hotel Commonwealth, legendary cartoonist
Art Spiegelman lit up Camel after Camel as he propounded upon his long career: from
zonked-out underground comix scribbler to aspiring fine artist to commercial draftsman
(he co-created Garbage Pail Kids) to Pulitzer
Prize-winner, for his 13-years-in-the-making Holocaust opus Maus.
We only had
room for about 15 percent of the transcription in this week’s paper, but we’ve uploaded
audio and text of the entire interview to ThePhoenix.com.
Ostensibly,
the chat was about Spiegelman’s new books — the augmented re-print of his 1978
debut collection Breakdowns:
Portrait of the Artist As a Young %@*&! (Pantheon), and an
intriguing foray into children’s lit, Jack
and the Box (TOON Books). But we ended up going on about subjects as
diverse as Mad Men, Max Beckman, Harvey
Kurtzman, MAD
magazine, MoMA, amblyopia, and the
“Faustian deal” whereby comics are thriving while also being saddled with outsized
expectations that they always be “art” and/or “literature.” Listen
for yourself.
DOWNLOAD: The Phoenix interviews Art Spiegelman [mp3]