In the brightly lit Manhattan apartment where Art Spiegelman lives and works, there are cluttered shelves packed with piles of books and colorful framed illustrations and photos filling the walls. It is a vibrant contrast to the 2-D, black-and-white illustrations of Nazi cats persecuting Jewish mice during the Holocaust that the 74-year-old Spiegelman portrays in his graphic novel, Maus. Only two days before, on November 16, Spiegelman was honored at the National Book Awards with a Lifetime Achievement Award. He was presented with the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, an award he told Newsweek he felt "ambivalent" about...