The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael ChabonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-08-25
ISBN: 0312282990
Number of pages: 639
Publisher: Picador
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780312282998
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Book Review: Don't Fear the Comic Book Theme: This Is One Amazing Book
Summary: 5 Stars
Story Overview
After several attempts at writing my own summary of the book, I decided to go with the description on the back of the book so that I can just jump into telling you what I thought about it. So here it is:
Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories and art for the latest novelty to hit America--the comic book. Drawing on their own fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapist, the Monitor and Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men. With exhilarating style and grace, Michael Chabon tells an unforgettable story about American romance and possibility.
My Thoughts
There is so much I want to tell you about this amazing book that I barely know where to begin. So let's start with what was initially the biggest stumbling block for me: comic books. I knew before I read this that it dealt extensively with comic books. Chabon has admitted to being a "fanboy" of the form, and my initial reluctance to tackle this 636-page book was mostly because I've never been a comic book reader and it seemed like a subject that might not hold my interest. If you have similar reservations, put them aside now.
Chabon is such a gifted writer and the comic book theme is interwoven so skillfully into the narrative that you'll be utterly involved and absorbed in this book. In fact, Chabon does such a brilliant job evoking the pleasures and value of comic books that I found myself wanting to explore the form. (When I discovered that Chabon collaborated with various artists to create a series of Escapist comic books, I was thrilled. I found myself wishing for an Escapist comic to read as I was going along, and now I can get my dream realized. I suspect I shall be one of the few women in their 40s asking for an Escapist comic for their birthdays this year!)
The fact that Chabon uses the theme of escape in both the fictional comic book that Kavalier and Clay create and in the novel itself is pure genius. Everyone in this book is escaping something--whether it is the Escapist bursting out of heavy chains, Sammy trying to evade his sexual orientation, Rosa seeking a path out of domesticity, or Joe trying to sever the ties that bind him to Prague. I'm not a big fan of analyzing books; I tend to read for my own enjoyment and entertainment. But when a writer can so perfectly integrate a theme throughout a book, I find that it adds an additional layer of richness to the reading experience. I think every reader can relate to the concept of escape. We've all tried to escape from something in our own lives--be it a stifling home life, unrealistic expectations, a love affair gone bad, a political climate that oppressed us--so who among us couldn't relate to characters who struggle mightily to escape their own demons, choices and environments?
Excerpt: The night he offered her the chance to draw "a comic book for dollies," Rosa felt Sammy had handed her a golden key, a skeleton key to her self, a way out of the tedium of her existence as a housewife and a mother, first in Midwood and now here in Bloomtown, soi-distant Capital of the American Dream.
It is also easy to escape into Chabon's writing. When I was reading the book, I took notes for myself as I read. One note read: "It is like Chabon has every word in the English language at his fingertips ready for use." My first exposure to Chabon's talent with words was when I read his collection of essays Manhood for Amateurs earlier this year. I was blown away by his writing in that book, and it was this (more than anything) that encouraged me to get over my fear of the comic book theme to read this book. And I wasn't disappointed.
Chabon's writing is an amazing thing. He has a gift for putting words together in a way that is surprising, playful and utterly satisfying. I sometimes talk about candy bar books and how they go down so easily but make you a little sick afterward. Reading a book by Michael Chabon is like sitting down for a gourmet feast that satisfies your soul. Yet, at the same time, his writing isn't fussy and inaccessible. So, let me rephrase that: Reading a book by Michael Chabon is like sitting down for a gourmet feast of comfort foods ... like eating the best macaroni and cheese you ever had in your life and finding out afterwards it tasted so good because the chef used black truffle oil in it.
There's a blurb on the back of my copy from New York magazine that reads: "I'm not sure what the exact definition of a 'great American novel' is, but I'm pretty sure that Michael Chabon's sprawling, idiosyncratic, and wrenching new book is one." I have to say that I agree with this assessment. The book manages to incorporate the history of comic books, World War II, the immigrant experience, the "love that dare not speak its name," the power and value of art, and the feel of New York City and its growing suburbs yet wraps it all around the involving story of two cousins and the woman who binds them together. At its center, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is about love, and the warm, beating heart of this book is what ultimately makes this such a satisfying read.
My Final Recommendation
Don't let the comic book theme fool you, this is an accessible, satisfying, sprawling novel that will reward you with its brilliant use of the English language and a story that will simultaneously break and warm your heart. The theme of escape is interwoven brilliantly throughout the novel and makes for a rich, multi layered read. One of the closest contenders for the Great American Novel (Modern) that I've read.
Summary of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
This brilliant epic novel set in New York and Prague introduces us to two misfit young men who make it big by creating comic-book superheroes. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdiniesque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America the comic book. Inspired by their own fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapists, The Monitor, and Luna Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to both men.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is the winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay 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 The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys 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. --Mary Park
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