false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1226235457m/3985.jpg 3985 31 Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, <I>The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay</I> is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses and even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages brimming with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy, and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equalizer clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains!" Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicenter of comics' golden age. But Joe Kavalier is driven by motives far more complex than your average hack. In fact, his first act as a comic-book artist is to deal Hitler a very literal blow. (The cover of the first issue shows the Escapist delivering "an immortal haymaker" onto the Führer's realistically bloody jaw.) In subsequent years, the Escapist and his superhero allies take on the evil Iron Chain and their leader Attila Haxoff--their battles drawn with an intensity that grows more disturbing as Joe's efforts to rescue his family fail. He's fighting their war with brush and ink, Joe thinks, and the idea sustains him long enough to meet the beautiful Rosa Saks, a surrealist artist and surprisingly retrograde muse. But when even that fiction fails him, Joe performs an escape of his own, leaving Rosa and Sammy to pick up the pieces in some increasingly wrong-headed ways. More amazing adventures follow--but reader, why spoil the fun? Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as <I>The Mysteries of Pittsburgh</I> and <I>Wonder Boys</I> have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged, and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could." Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out, in other words, of a world gone completely mad. Comic-book critics, Joe notices, dwell on "the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life." Indeed. <I>--Mary Park</I> 2693329 2000 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay total:30679|5:14260|4:10470|3:4237|2:1223|1:489| 30679 128826 40474 3389 1 99 false false Wed Sep 26 19:29:02 -0700 2007 Wed Sep 26 19:29:49 -0700 2007 Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman are drinking Peet's coffee and eating zampanos in front of the Cheeseboard on Shattuck Avenue.

MC: Ayelet, I'm trying to think of a new idea for a novel. It's gotta be fresh, bold.... Something nobody's ever thought of before!

AW: Wow, Michael,...more...]]> 1 11 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon May 05 14:04:37 -0700 2008 Mon May 05 14:14:35 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 10 false false Sun Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu May 24 11:26:38 -0700 2007 Tue Jul 24 17:42:42 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 10 false false Tue May 20 15:15:28 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 25 17:03:10 -0700 2008 3 10 false false Sat Aug 18 04:03:13 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 28 19:27:19 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 3 false false Wed May 07 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Apr 27 18:15:45 -0700 2008 Tue May 06 20:03:47 -0700 2008
Chabon is now one of my three favorite contemporary writers (others are David Foster Wallace and Neal Stephenson) with his graceful, elegant prose, extensive vocabulary, and entertaining plot. While the book was not "fall-on-the-floor-funny" as one reviewer says,...more...]]> 5 6 false false Sat Apr 26 15:58:22 -0700 2008 Wed Apr 30 14:28:41 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Sun Mar 23 14:08:06 -0700 2008 Thu Mar 27 15:33:28 -0700 2008
Is it just me or do you hate it when you can see how a book is going to end and you don't want it end that way? With 100+ pages to go, I lowered the book and sulked. Sulked in that way I knew that Maria would ask what was wrong. She did. She never fails me.

Do you not like the...more...]]> 3 4 false false Tue Jul 29 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Dec 02 20:25:43 -0800 2007 Tue Jul 29 10:48:59 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 3 false false Sun Aug 03 23:27:29 -0700 2008 Wed Dec 17 22:59:53 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 2 false false Sun Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Fri Apr 11 09:16:03 -0700 2008 Fri Apr 11 10:58:08 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 2 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2000 Fri Nov 02 11:19:00 -0700 2007 Thu Mar 06 23:21:06 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Thu Oct 04 15:25:26 -0700 2007 Fri Jan 18 08:34:45 -0800 2008 Book Review: Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, (Harper Perennial, London, 2005)

When I chose to study my Twentieth Century American Literature module, I did so in spite of this book, rather than because of it. The idea of a book about comic books did not ...more...]]> 3 2 false false Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Fri Jul 27 09:02:12 -0700 2007 Mon Jul 30 11:47:11 -0700 2007 In terms of writing, scope of imagination, and peregrinations of plot, completely deserv...more...]]> 3 2 false false Wed Jun 27 17:31:04 -0700 2007 Wed Jul 11 12:44:47 -0700 2007
(LATER THAT MONTH) sitting in the car on monday night, i had a long discussion with my novel dealer ...more...]]> 1 3 false false Thu May 29 08:30:23 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 16 18:31:40 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 3 false false Wed Oct 24 19:15:50 -0700 2007 Wed Oct 24 19:25:16 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 2 false false Thu Jul 12 08:10:55 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 01 09:53:30 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 3 false false Thu Jun 28 07:08:47 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 22:12:05 -0700 2007 0 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 08:40:17 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 08:40:17 -0800 2009
Amazing, indeed. The title of the novel so...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3985