The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

by Michael Chabon

cozy with Stevenson, London, and Wells, dutiful about Wolfe, Dreiser, and Dos Passos, idolatrous of S. J. Perelman,

Sammy dreamed the usual Brooklyn dreams of flight and transformation and escape.

great commercial illustrators and cartoonists—Rockwell, Leyendecker, Raymond, Caniff—were

the great Caniff. He had knocked off Raymond in something he called Pimpernel of the Planets and Chester Gould in a lockjawed G-man strip called Knuckle Duster Doyle. He had tried swiping from Hogarth and Lee Falk, from George Herriman, Harold Gray, and Elzie Segar.

Gossips, busybodies, and kibitzers were the fiends of her personal demonology.

Burne Hogarth, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, and the other kings of funny-page draftsmanship,

Sammy’s gait was deliberate and crooked,

bankers, unions, bosses, Clark Gable, Catholics, Protestants, theater owners, sister acts, poodle acts, monkey acts, Irish tenors, English Canadians, French Canadians, and Mr. Hugo Wertz himself.

Rabbi Hanina’s delectable goat