From letters rejecting Art Spiegelman’s Maus, sent by editors at publishing houses to his agent in 1983. MetaMaus, a collection of interviews and documents about the development and publication of the book, is out this month from Pantheon. The two volumes of Maus became the first comic to win the Pulitzer Prize and have sold more than three million copies.

I must admit I’ve had a real battle with myself over Maus. I enjoyed the novel-in-comic-form and got involved enough in the story to read it through to the end. But I’m sure you realize the difficulty of…