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, that's a tough one. There have been so very many novels written over the years, it's hard to come up with something new that's never been done before....

MC: Yeah, I need an idea that's totally original..... Maybe I should a More...

Whenever I mentioned the name of this book to a friend, a huge grin broke out of their face. This was a universal reaction. As were the words: "I LOVE that book. That book is GREAT." Not just how good it was, or skilled writing (though those things are also very true), but just how in love with it they were. You can't fake that. And now I know why!

I read it in two short spurts, covering about three days each, and I was done. Once you pick it up, its hard to put it down for around another hundred More...

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is amazing. Well, some of it is. To be specific I found it fairly amazing up until about page 429. Then it got slightly less amazing which was sad really because, prior to that it was zipping along so nicely like Superman with a new stream-lined cape sliding in and out of the slip stream. After page 429 it became a bit more like Superman trying to erratically jump over tall buildings with Dr Octopus tied to one leg and the Juggernaut tied to the other. More...

I’m a fan of Michael Chabon even though he carries a man purse.

Joe Kavalier is a young artist who had also trained to be a magician and escape artist in Prague. When the Nazis invade in 1939, Joe is able to escape to America with the plan that he’ll find a way to get the rest of his family out. In New York, he meets his cousin Sam Clay. Sam is an artist of limited talent who has been doing drawings for the ads of a novelty toy company, but the recent boom of superhero comics thanks to the newly More...

In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Chabon asks one of the oldest questions asked in stories, and gives us the oldest answer. But, you know, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that because, really, the oldest answer is the right one. What’s the question? It’s the one asked by ever since man started telling stories: What is a hero? And his answer is, “It’s not the guy who goes out there with fisty cuffs and guns blazing. It’s the guy who goes out there and comes back every night More...

In the street

“Hey!”

“Huh? me?”

“Yeah – you. You wouldn’t know great American literature if a pigeon pooed it all over your anorak.”

Wow – that was surreal… who the hell were those guys?

At the office

“The boss wants to see you.”

Oh my… that’s Mrs Higgins sitting there with Mr Duthie – she’s from the HR department! What’s going on?

“Paul, hi, sit down, yes. This is… rather awkward. You see, it has come to our attention that you’ve been, well, how can I put this delicately, heard to say… hmmm…that Micha More...

Originally posted in In Lesbian with Books



WOW!
To tell you the truth, I tried reading this book earlier last year (around March—I was supposed to bring this with me to Singapore but settled with The Eyre Affair instead) but I gave up after 3 chapters. I was having hard time adjusting to Chabon's narrative (I think he overused the comma or maybe that's just me).

I don't know how I will start my thoughts about this book because I don't want to start gushing about how great his book is, but really, More...

"Absolutely, gosh ,wow" (cover quip) on his sentences? Yes, very yes. Chabon can flat out compose sentences. Think Dickens, Pynchon, Tolstoy. But that's it. You keep waiting for the sentences to compile some meaning but they never seem to achieve any depth. He uses the backdrop of the comic book heydays, WWII, and magic acts, his neither here nor there Jewish-ness, to stitch together an overly long book that basically explores the relationship between two male characters who are caricatures them More...

I did not get this book. First of all, there was too much gay rape. Second, not enough cocaine. Also, I do not like cartoons. This book could be renamed Superman Had Daddy Issues and nobody would know the difference, except the people who read it, who wouldn't care anyway, 'cause they'd all be too shocked about the gay rape. Ban this useless book from Good Reads.

NC

This book might eventually merit a new shelf: stuff I keep trying to read and put aside because while they are good and everyone raves about them I just jump at the chance to read almost anything else.
In terms of writing, scope of imagination, and peregrinations of plot, completely deserving of its Pulitzer, but there's a self-congratulatory facility, a "look how I make a marginalized hobby into an academic metaphor for life and growing up in America and I TALK ABOUT THE HOLOCAUST TOO" feeling More...

Eh?

I have started reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay with certain expectations - if not great, then at least considerable. I have seen Chabon's name pop up on this site pretty often, reminding me of the fact that I have not yet read anything by him - this seemed like an obvious choice. At 634 pages it stands proudly as the author's magnum opus, and proved to be a critical darling by winning the Pulitzer in 2001. When you can, aim for the greats!

So what's the big deal? The book More...

Classic novels eh? We've all seen adverts at train stations and the tube. We all get nagged to read latest "buzz book" or the recommendations from friends/colleague/acquaintance/social board pseudonyms that are guaranteed to be the most amazing collection of words committed to paper and will change your life. Sometimes we get burned by these tips: Heart of Darkness, On Chesil Beach, Brave New World and most significantly for me, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/. More...

Aaron and I are starting a club for people who hated this boring, boring book. Anyone want to join?

I know I'm totally an outlier on this one. But I tried four times, literally four times, to read this and could never get past page 50. It's extraordinary enough for me to give a book a second chance after flunking my 50-page rule, but a third and a fourth? That was enough for me. And I love comic books, too. So go figure.

Awesome (4.5)--

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, it certainly was entertaining and beautifully written. I really was floored by many of his metaphors.

Many reviewers complain of Chabon's narration that does a lot more telling than showing, which makes it more difficult f More...

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 book?

I did. I loved the book. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon is a wonderful book. Maria's kids wanted to buy their father a book for his birthday and had picked one of the "3 for 2" pile. In a More...

this is a bit of a rant. i liked this book, but it just did not live up to my expectations. what to say. not quite sure. it opens great. sammy's background with his father and joe's escape from prague are a wonderful set up. but in some ways, in particular joe's very adventurous beginning, the beginning is unbalanced. we never really see that kind of adventure again. but nor do we want to, because the beauty of this novel is that "the amazing adventures" of these two men are not super-hero like More...

THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY BY MICHAEL CHABON: Michael Chabon, author of Wonder Boys, brings us the Pulitzer Prize winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. A riveting novel of the comic book world set against the backdrop of the Second World War. Its two heroes, Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay, fight through the world of color, ink and writing, to compete with the likes of Superman and Batman - the result is an amazing story that has never been told.

This is a coming-of-age More...

I hated this book. For me the characters were not only unlikeable but lifeless. The whole thing was contrived and pretentious and painful to read from start to finish. I am dumbfounded by people's enthusiasm for this book. Dumbfounded.

[Spoilers]

This is the best book I have read of 2012.

Before I go into details about why, though, I'll introduce a little of the book itself.

Joseph Kavalier has always been able to escape, even if it meant smuggling himself out of war-torn prague in a coffin. He's fascinated by magic, particularly the magic of his own imaginative, which is the ultimate escape from the horrors of leaving his family behind. His skill and partnership with his cousin, Sam Clay, leads him into his first career as a c More...

Bloated with historical detail, it reminded me why I never liked reading history textbooks: no matter how salient the facts, external detail just can't move me in the way that empathetic, developed internal detail can. I think Chabon should have either written a creative non-fiction work about the comic book heyday (for which he obviously has a strong passion) or focused more on writing a gripping novel. I imagine that if you're as enthralled with comic books and their place in American history More...

An odd thing about Chabon - when I'm immersed in the middle of one of his books, I'm as fully engaged as with just about any work by anyone else I've ever read. But, inevitably, as I near the end of his novels, I sense a growing distance, and somehow, upon reaching the end, I'm disengaged, and no longer have that compelling urge and desire to want to know more, as you might in a book you don't wish to end; nor do I find the sense of completion that works its way into being at the completion of o More...

I read this book mostly because I had heard that Chabon has mad writing skillz (when someone has skills with a "z" it's pretty impressive). Chabon certainly has a way with words. This book only earned two stars from me for two reasons. The first being that the book was altogether too long. I felt several parts could have been stricken from the book and the story would not have suffered for it.

The second, and more controversial reason, is that I did not care for the graphic, in my opinion anyway, More...

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 exactly enamour me. I'm not a fan of the genre (the main reason being the amount of time it would take to go back and become up to speed with it all).

At 636 pages of rather small (although very easy on the eye) print, t More...

i couldn't help it! one day i went down to the fiction floor of the library when i was supposed to be doing something industrious and boring and ended up with this in my hand. we'll see...

(LATER THAT MONTH) sitting in the car on monday night, i had a long discussion with my novel dealer and confidante the Frog about michael chabon's writing. here was my experience with this book. i felt informed, interested and edified about the world of pre-wwii prague that chabon vivified, about the process of More...

I recently heard an interview in which Michael Chabon compared his plotting skills to Bob Dylan's singing skills -- Chabon feels he is not a naturally gifted plotter, but he enjoys a good plot so much that he is willing to work hard to find his own voice, so to speak. What most struck me about the plot of Kavalier and Clay are the risks Chabon is willing to take -- moving the action to truly unexpected places. Some of the routes he takes to get to his destination feel a bit circuitous, with the More...

TAAOKAC is, in my mind, lumped in with Eugenide's Middlesex, in that they were both hugely hyped and awarded books that were published at the beginning of this century, and in that they were both middling affairs at best and undeserving of acclaim.

Both novels had virtuosic prose, huge winding, nuanced plots and subplots, but both were ultimately boring (I felt).

TAAOKAC the physical book is designed to look like a rip-roaring adventure through the golden-era of New York City, with brilliant ideas More...

This is the slowest take-off I've ever endured and not given up. Prague, gay Jews, World War II, and ...I don't care about any of them. How did this get a Pulitzer?
Maybe 5 paragraphs that sang; the rest of it was, ehn, okay, but I really don't get how this can be anybody's favorite book. A lot of "I have a thesaurus and I'm not afraid to use it." A lot of "refreshing adjective" descriptions that really didn't add anything ("the color of cold coffee" is.... what color? How different from "strong" More...

michael chabon has co-opted the rich history of comicdom's golden age to produce his signature melodrama. in choosing to totally squander the potential of said history to tell a trite, glitzy story of successful Jewish boys torn apart by war and their love for a woman, he's making light of his superior source materials in a way that's frustrating for anyone who has grown up with serious appreciation for comics. it's clear chabon has read comics and that he likes them, but i'm not altogether sure More...

This is a compromise rating. This book will appeal to different readers in different ways. There were times this was (to me) a 4 star book while at other times I found it a 2 star read.

Now why each? The story here involves an interesting take on human nature. We look at the reaction of two young men to the situations of their lives (one a Jew who fled the growing threat of Nazism in Europe having had to leave his family behind. The other is an American Jew who is straining, planning and working More...