SOURCE: "On Maus II," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 8, 1992, pp. 2, 11.

[Colbert is an American novelist and critic. In the review below, he remarks on the themes and innovative style of Spiegelman's Maus and Maus II.]

There is no question that the story of the Holocaust needs to be told and retold; but a very real danger is that too much retelling creates resentment, more than a barrier to remembering and understanding, a persistent ill will. "Many [younger Germans] have had it up to here with Holocaust stories," Art Spiegelman writes. "These things happened before they were even born. Why should they feel guilty?" Why should any of us feel guilt who, apparently, had nothing to do with the atrocities committed in Hitler's Germany?

But Mr. Spiegelman provides the answer to those questions: "I feel so inadequate trying to reconstruct a reality that was worse than my...