Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Review revue: The New York Times reviews Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers:

"It is a testament to Art Spiegelman's uncompromising vision that In the Shadow of No Towers -- his account of 9/11 and its aftermath -- makes no effort to contain or domesticate the surreal awfulness of that day. But while the volume seems meant as a kind of bookend to his two Maus books (which memorialized his father's experiences at Auschwitz and his own efforts to understand his father), it lacks those earlier books' hard-won intimacy, their layered complexity and metaphorical weight.

"No Towers is ultimately a fragmentary, unfinished piece: brilliant at times, but scattershot, incomplete and bizarrely truncated."