Recommendations from Mr. Clinton
Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
I was introduced to Vonnegut in high school by a teacher I still remember to this day, Mr. Hamilton. Mr. Hamilton was a tall Lincoln-esque man with a quick temper and no patience for students who didn’t at least try to “get it.” I wasn’t a very good student and therefore was tracked into the lowest level classes, but Mr. Hamilton recognized something in me that I did not. He introduced me to the uncomfortable words of Faulkner and the inspirational, contradictory revolutionary language of Malcolm X, but what stuck by me most was the wry, cheekiness of a man who became my favorite of all favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut. The less I say about the book the better as a description would only confuse and could never make the point that just reading the thing would. If I had to sum it up though I would call it an “absurdly cheerful little tale about the end of the world by Ice 9,” In other words, just read it! |
Maus by Art Spiegelman
I can’t begin to describe the quiet devastation of Maus, Art Spiegelman’s epic horror story of the Holocaust (as well as a parallel one about family and memory) as told in anthropomorphic symbolism that sneaks up on you and haunts you. Mr. Speigelman, after producing a three page strip called Maus, decided to speak to his father about his experiences before and during World War II. The result is a story that has resonance far beyond that of historical fact, fiction and drama. It is a story not only of the horrors of the attempted mass genocide of a people, but of a father and a son whose troubled relationship is framed and in some ways resolved through the reliving of these events. Maus is complex, as when Mr. Spiegelman shows his father as a latent racist. Maus is also not for the faint of heart, as it not only explores the inhuman horrors the Nazi Regime, but also the tortured relationships of the people affected by it. At several points, I was sobbing while reading this amazingly told “cartoon” that is so much more than recollections of the horrors of man’s inhumanity, but also of a son grappling with a mother’s suicide and a father’s intractability. Cats, Pigs, and Mice serve as gateways and symbols and draw you in as no human characters rendered could, creating just enough distance, and just enough familiarity to tear through even the hardest heart. Though it hardly serves as light summer reading, I highly recommend Maus. |