Art vs. Tim

         I enjoyed reading Maus, more specifically I think because of the way in which the book itself was setup. I've never encountered that before with and I think that before actually delving more into the story caught my attention first. It's actually pretty ironic because both O'Brien and Spiegelmen tell both of their stories in ways that aren't thought of as orthodox story telling. Where Spiegelmen uses a comic book style formatted with illustrations to account for every scene, O'Brien tells his story in multiple short stories that aren't in a time sequence necessarily.
      More importantly what I noticed between the authors was the way in which both wrote their novels. From O'Brien we get what we're supposed to consider his personal account and his memories of story telling from Vietnam and the days leading to the war. O'Brien gives the allusion of both reality yet its skewed because at times as the reader you don't know if O'Brien is making up things to simply entice the reader for dramatics  Yet, in Spiegelmen's work I think it's more concrete. He uses his father's experience from the eras pre, during, and post war. He in no way tries to put his own personal imprint on his writing. He documents his father's memories and gives the reader the setting in which he is getting the information. I'm eager to continue with Spiegelmen's work. This is not to say I did not enjoy O'Brien's work as well. I just feel more sure about the specifics I'm given from Spiegelmen's work thus far. There seems to be more of a stringent realness to Spiegelmen's writing versus that of O'Brien and his not always sure recollection of events in Vietnam. But I honestly could be biased after hearing rumor that his actual platoon that he was stationed with never had to really experience the gravity of war while in Vietnam, and the majority of his stories are only from stories he heard from older soldiers. But hey, I'll need to do my own research on that specifically.