The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
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Book Reviews of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Book Review: A Sleight-of-Hand Narrative with no 'Prize' Inside
Summary: 2 Stars
[Note: There would be no need for this review if the novel had not received the Pulitzer.]
Michael Chabon sets his novel in motion through the eyes of Samuel Louis Klayman (a.k.a. "Sam Clay"), a 19-ish Jewish boy growing up in hard-scrabble Brooklyn in the late 1930s, pre-war America. In the first 13-pages of artful language, Chabon succeeds in taking the reader into the mind of a young man - a small kid with big dreams in a hard-boiled town - upon the timely arrival of his same-aged Czech cousin who tearfully left his family behind to escape Nazi-occupied Europe.
This looks like Sam's story, but Chabon artfully pulls the rug out from under the reader much like a magician rips a tablecloth from a table without disturbing the place-settings and deploys eighty pages of richly textured details of a perilous escape from Prague-under-seige through the eyes of young Josef Kavalier, erstwhile escape artist.
The details of the refugee's escape are so graphic, jarring and authentic that the reader might conclude that, despite its title, this book must be "Joe" Kavalier's story. Chabon reinforces this message by throwing the reader a mere 10-page Cliff-Notes summary of Sam's disjointed familial relationships that, we may assume, leave him scarred for life.
Sadly, Chabon's magic of redirection has already deceived the reader: we're treated to fifty pages of "escape from Prague" and then asked to `look over here in Brooklyn' and to pay no attention to the gap that fails to document the boy's travels ~East~ from Lithuania to Brooklyn by way of Siberia, the Japanese Empire, across the Pacific to San Francisco and finally to New York by way of Trans-continental Railroad. Move along folks, there's nothing for you to see here.
As a period-piece, Chabon's exhaustive research of the Holocaust, Talmudic lore, Houdini, comic books, Antarctic exploration and gay culture during the American Victorian period excludes insignificant details such as Stalinist Russia, Imperial Japan and the rise of McCarthyism in post-war America.
Chabon raises the reader's expectations with meticulous historical details and a feast of rich, authentic language (no doubt, these are the only passages actually read by the Pulitzer committee) only to let the plot escape by way of hidden panels and trap doors that feel at once contrived and premeditated rather than tragic and poignant.
It is as if the magician has moved on to the next trick leaving the audience wondering whatever happened to the wristwatch taken from the man in the front row: for a few moments, we cling to the hope that the performance will return to deliver closure when we least expect it and the man's watch will reappear in the deck of cards or at the end of knotted scarves, but after a few more diversions we're left with the vague suspicion that a subtle larceny has transpired.
Parts 2, 3 and 4 comprise about 350 rollicking pages during which the two young men, galvanized by complementary talents and a common interest in graphic art, stake their claim and succeed in attaining a piece of the American Dream during the golden age of comic books. As with Nazi-era Prague, Chabon's due diligence renders an authenticity to the narrative that borders on the obsessive and, at times sacrifices momentum for the sake of pacifying a subset of readers who regard themselves as hard-core comic book archivists poised to challenge the verisimilitude of their pet genre's portrayal.
Chabon employs a false bottom, yet again, to segue into the final third of the book that lacks, regrettably, any justification for Sam Clay's equal billing granted in the book's title.
The last 30-pages spiral into a hastily drawn ending more emblematic of a pulp romance novel (a.k.a. `women's ~escapist~ literature') than a painstakingly researched historical fiction, much less a Pulitzer-prize novel.
In the final requiem, after we've grown to love each of the characters who now find themselves in unconvincing `how did I get here' situations, we're treated to a Houdini-esque plot twist that yields an unconvincing resolution in which Chabon abandons the brilliant Clay, turning him into the side-kick of a side-show freak (Kavalier) and, ultimately, a two-dimensional casualty of the `times in which we live.'
This revelation comes to the reader not from the careful execution of plot development, but from the sudden realization that card we drew from the deck at the start of the show has found its way into our back pocket and, though we can't explain how the magician/writer did it, we know that we've been tricked without any magic at all.
Book Review: A vast achievement in realistic and fantasy narrative
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an epic book, covering a turbulent time in Europe and United States prior to, during, and after World War II. In many ways it relates this story through the eyes of the Jewish community, contrasting the lives of Jews in the United States as compared to those in Germany and the countries German dominated prior to and during the World War. Historic characters such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Orson Wells are woven into the fabric of the novel, giving it a sense of time and place. It is also well written with beautiful language and a plot that is extremely well crafted and air-tight so that discrepancies are certainly not evident. Chabon has a wide vocabulary which he uses to great effect in this novel. However, having a dictionary nearby will help with such words as `spavined' and `flense'. The book captures, in the character of Joe Kavalier, the frustrations that must have been experienced by the Jewish community in the United States as they gradually learned of the horrors being inflicted upon the Jewish people. Joe releases these frustrations in many ways but primarily in his art as a cartoonist. One unique aspect of the book is that several times in the book chapters were inserted that were narratives of the comic book stories Sammy Clay was writing and that Joe Kavalier was illustrating. These chapters do not differ in style from the rest of the book but the subject matter, being fantasy, actually reflections on the longer more realistic narrative of the book. In addition to the themes of the holocaust, there is another theme involving magic tricks and escapist showmanship that is often used by Chabon as a commentary on the limitations of human existence and the unfortunate way that expectations are rarely met in life by reality. The use of magic was in some ways akin to the emotional development of Joe, for a lifelong fascination with magic helps Joe realize what he can and cannot achieve. This is very evident in the characters created by Sammy and Joe, where heroes have magical or super-human powers in a world where vast evils lurk. The rise of Nazism in Germany and Europe was certainly a vast evil, but no super heroes come to the rescue. Yet, Joe does confront a real evil in the person of a member of the American Nazi party who has real evil intentions against the US Jewish community. Joe's struggle with this monster reflects that of the fictional characters in his comic books. Chabon captures New York City, especially the Empire State Building where much of the action occurs. The novel also captures a time in America in which the comic book was a vast cultural craze and kids of all ages were reading these graphic stories. Chabon even is able to relate to the reader the ways that a just society may still tolerate injustice. An example is that the publishers of Empire Comics have contracts with Sammy and Joe that make the publishers very rich on the creative abilities of their employees. Joe Kavalier and his cousin Sammy Clay seem to be characters looking in opposite directions. Joe looks toward Europe and the family he left behind in the path of the Nazis. Sammy is fully American and looks toward the future and toward all opportunities. This is ironic in that when Sammy is offered the greatest opportunity of his life, he backs away, never moving forward. This is in contrast to his cousin Joe, who may often be self-destructive and impulsive, but one who does try to make the best use of opportunity. Like the character in Chabon's "Mysteries of Pittsburg", bisexuality or same sex attraction is dealt with realistically in every aspect. Chabon is able to integrate same sex attraction and sexuality into a story without it becoming sensational or out-of-place. The role of women is explored also in the primary character of Rosa Luxemburg Sax and the fictional Luna Moth. We are told that Rosa is actually a technically better artist that is Joe, yet her work never rises to the level of national attention as did Joe's Escapist alter-ego character. The chapters are very short which a blessing is in a long novel of over 600 pages. Chabon is a master as this massive novel would indicate. Broad historic and personal themes are explored and offered through several world views, including other-worldly views. The vastness of scope and flawless integration of reality and magic make this a considerable literary achievement.Book Review: A Fascinating Comic Tale
Summary: 5 Stars
I am going to take a little different approach to reviewing this novel. The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay is a Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Michael Chabon about two Jewish men during World War II who tap into the comic book craze by inventing a Nazi killing super hero called the Escapist. There are many subplots within this book, dealing with a vast array of issues, but in the end it's mainly a book about family and the extremes a person will go to try to protect them. Chabon pins this simple concept in to an incredible and often complicated tale full of action and humor.
Now, as a person who is mostly a popcorn reader, who tends to stay away from acclaimed literature, I was hesitant to pick up any Pulitzer Prize winner. Now, as a reviewer, I ask who am I to judge a novel that has receive the ultimate of literary achievement. My greatest praise fore this book is it was highly readable, not pretentious and had some of the more intriguing characters I have met within the walls of a novel for a while. If you are intimidated by the size, or by the acclaim of this book, don't be. It is as accessible as any other well written novel for the masses.
So, my approach to reviewing this novel was a little different. I decided to check out the Amazon reviewers and see what the masses had to say. For the most part the reviews were glowing, yet, about 100 of the 500 or so reviewers rated it one or two starts out of five. I was intrigued by there reasoning, so I tried to find common reasoning behind the negative reviews. So here were what most of them boiled down to.
Group One: The Whackjobs. A few reviewers where upset that with the novel's attempt to make us feel for the main characters plight to save his Jewish Family who were living in Nazi controlled Prague. These reviewers found this to be another attempt by ??? at propaganda and exploiting the holocaust. These reviewers reminded us that there where much larger cases of genocide in history. To me that's like telling one family not to mourn the death of their child, because another family had two children die.
Group Two: The Conservatives. I don't mean this as a value judgment, but some people cannot handle, for whatever reasons, the inclusion of a homosexual as a main character. Some people are too put off by this inclusion to be able enjoy the many other aspects and subplots of this novel.
Group Three: The Observant. Some people complained that this book was "all about comic books." While you should have been able to pick that up by reading the back blurb, I can understand what your saying. I loved the comic book business aspects, even as a non-comic book reader. Beypmd that this book had comic bookesque sequences of the fantastic, similar to books like Winston Groom's Forrest Gump. Yet, this book, was a fantasy cloaked in reality, and these bits of the fantastic may have put off many who strive for reality or lack imagination.
Group Four: The Anti-articas. Within the nearly 700 hundred pages of this novel, filled with Gollems, escape artists, and a vast array of fantastic comic characters what most people seemed to most hate was a 70 page section where the main character enlists in the army and becomes a radio engineer stationed in a remote base in Antartica. While, I can't find any proof that such a base ever existed (who cares if it did) there have been plenty of rumors of Nazi interest in Antartica. While this wasn't the best sequence within the novel, it worked well to symbolize the utter desire for isolation the character desires. This is a frequent literary device Chabon uses, settings symbolizes emotion. New York stood for freedom, The Empire States building symbolized success, Pre-war Eastern Europe stood for oppression and the suburbs stood for settling and futility. These themes pepper this tale which is why, for me, sending a character who wants to isolate himself from the world to Antartica worked.
Group Five: The "I couldn't finish it." Finally, there are just some people who this book just wasn't right for. That's fine. While I loved it, nothing is for everyone.
Book Review: This is one adventure worth taking!
Summary: 5 Stars
I honestly don't know if I have the words.
There are rarely times when I'm left speechless. I mean, if you've read my long winded reviews you would know that, unless I find something so utterly horrible that I lack the ability or care to render it a proper lashing, I generally tend to find a lot to say about everything. I think that I mentioned once before that, when something is so good that it is practically perfect, it can be hard to review because there really isn't a lot to say other than "OMG that was amazing". I hate sounding redundant. When I say that I'm not sure I have the words, I am referring to the fact that this novel is so marvelous and so moving and so, dare I say, perfect that finding the vocabulary to do it any justice is something I may struggle with.
I'd hate to do this novel a disservice.
I looked at `The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' as a rather daunting read. Sure, I've read lengthy novels before, but this was a novel about comic books and, at over 600 pages, it looked pretty wordy. I just had this feeling that it was going to take forever. It took me two weeks, and that's because I work. If I had a solid weekend to devote to my reading I probably would have knocked it out in two or three days. It may be lengthy, but it is so engrossing it is actually breezy. That isn't to say that it doesn't have meat on its bones, for it really runs the gamut of powerful content (from love, loss, religion, war, drive, parenthood, acceptance), but Chabon's construction here is so lyrical (poetic even) that one finds the hours flying by as they burry their head in this beautifully written book.
I don't read comics, but that didn't matter.
The story revolves around two cousins, Sam and Joe. Sam is a young man with big dreams. His father basically abandoned him, and he never really got over that. He buried his emptiness in comic books where the caped crusaders provided him the faux fatherly figures he so longed for. Joe came all the way from war torn Prague where his family sacrificed all to send him to America in order to provide him a better life. Trained in the art of escape (which came in handy getting to America) as well as art, Joe provides Sam's ideas the pen they need to become something truly special.
Thus, The Escapist is born.
While the hero they create, and their ambitions in the world of comics, play a major role in the unraveling of the novel (there are even detailed chapters dedicated to the stories they tell) it is not the comics that we really remember. No, it is the boys who fathered them. Chabon astonishingly creates two very different yet equally engrossing characters in Sam and Joe. Both have their own set of demons (Joe's more obvious, Sam's more haunting) and they both deal with them similarly, even if it doesn't appear that way. The main subject represented in this novel is that of escape. The character they create is a man skilled in the art of escape, using his powers to help those oppressed escape and both Sam and Joe spend their whole lives (well, the decade plus that we get to know them) trying to escape their own prisons.
Whether we are in New York, visiting the premiere of `Citizen Kane' or we are in a secluded bedroom getting to know a lover or we are in Antarctica, chasing down Germans (yes, it goes there) or we are in a courtroom, trying to defend our happiness, `The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay' take you there with brilliantly layered and textured scenes that linger in the mind and invest themselves in your heart.
The final chapter left me in tears, for so many reasons.
If you read anything this year, make it `The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay'. There are few novels that completely engulf you, taking you to places you've never been. There are few novels that capture the characters as vividly and as emphatically as this one has. I couldn't have been more pleased.
Book Review: Very, very disappointed...
Summary: 2 Stars
I was eagerly awaiting to read Chabon's latest novel. I am a fan of his work, but once it won the Pulitzer Prize, I was more anxious than ever. So the moment it came out in softcover, I snatched it up. The premise, of which I had already been aware, is simply brilliant: the story of two Jewish young men living in New York City during the time of the Holocaust who create a comic book superhero whose purpose is to liberate the oppressed people of the world. Every week, they symbolically beat up the Nazis, as they long to be able to do in real life.I have this to say about the book: the characters were beautifully and lovingly created. They are three-dimensional human beings and I fell in love with them. The plot is also very good, and for most of the book, I was completely captivated.
Why, then, do I give it such a poor rating? Because, after being completely in love with this book for over 600 pages, the ending let me down. Not only did it completely betray the characters and the story, but it took what is a very original story and put it into the realm of cliche. Literally, with one paragraph (the last), my love for this book was gone. I feel deeply disappointed in Mr. Chabon for his ending, which, for lack of a better word, really was a sell-out. I cared about these characters and loved these characters enough to read an almost 700-page book on them, so when I reach an ending that I find to be such a compromise and such a travesty, it ruins the entire reading experience for me. I will not spoil the ending for those who have not yet read it, but suffice it to say, that it fit more into the mold of a B-movie melodrama (i.e. Stella Dallas comes to mind) than the awe-inspiring book I had read up to that point.
I am convinced that Mr. Chabon could not figure out the proper way to end his book, and so took the easy way out. In so doing, I believe, he did a grave injustice both to the character of Sam Clay and to his adopted son, Tommy.
Before I read the last chapter, I was ready to begin this book all over again. After reading it, I would return my copy if I could. I gave it two stars because of the brilliant writing up to the ending. Sure, it had a few flaws: Sam and Joseph, the main characters, about whose friendship the book was purportedly about, were actually in very few scenes together. For long stretches at a time, I felt Sam's character was neglected. Also, after the two do not see each other for a few years, I found their reunion scene to be surprisingly unemotional. If you hadn't seen your best friend for 12 years, wouldn't you at least give him or her a hug? I overlooked these flaws while reading the book, though, because there was so much else about it I loved so much, especially the creation of the comic book heroes, and the tale of how Joe fled from Prague, with a Golem. I also loved the way superheroes were described as golems for America.
The last chapter left me very cold, however, and made me question a great deal that I had earlier liked about the book. After reading Sam's final actions, I would question whether the two ever were such good friends in the first place. I also question the structure and plotting of the book. Is this what Mr. Chabon was leading up to all along, or is it, as I figured, a tacked-on ending from a writer desperate to finish his story? I'm sorry if this review rambles on or repeats itself, but I am just trying to verbalize just how deeply disappointed I am in this book. It will make me think long and hard about ever reading another one of Mr. Chabon's works again. I feel that he really betrayed his characters and his readers.
Then again, maybe I'm wrong. He did win the Pulitzer Prize, after all. But then again, maybe that's what I dislike so much about the book. He made an ending that I'm sure the judges would have found deep, profound, and moving. I call it a compromise, and a fatal one at that.