The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

YES! A book that gives me an excuse to use ampersands! High fives, anyone? God, I love ampersands. Maybe not as much as semicolons, but it is a little more exciting to see an ampersand since they appear even less often. ...Uh, can we pretend none of what I just typed actually happened?


Anyway, as you can see, this book is right there in my 'Top Books' column. You know why? BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME. Way better than that other book of his I read which shall not be named (Theyiddishpoliceman'sunioncoughcough). It's about two boys in New York (one of them having immigrated--emigrated?--to escape the ominous hints of war on the horizon) who have a dream to make comic books. The book is about a year--yes, a good portion of the book only happens in a year, a fact that left me reeling when they actually bring it up--creating these books and making it big, though eventually it goes through the following years much faster and faster, eventually giving you kind of snapshots--and then pulling back. Does that make sense? No? Good. I'm doing my job correctly!





"'Never worry about what you are escaping from,' he said. 'Reserve your anxieties for what you are escaping to'" (37).


Josef Kavalier is the boy who emigrated--though his first attempt fails; he was cut off at the station because he was supposedly missing a stamp. So he shows back up at his teacher Kornblum's--teacher of escapism--flat, determined to find a way to get to the US. "'What am I saying--"if I am going"?' He spat a flake of tobacco at the ground. 'I have to go.' 'What you have to do, my boy,' Kornblum said, 'is try to remember that you are already gone'" (43).


Kavalier at one point observes a crate that contains a sword-cane. YES PLEASE.


"'Maybe it was supposed to be female,' Josef suggested as he watched Kornblum zip the Golem's fly. 'Not even the Maharal could make a woman out of clay,' Kornblum said. 'For that you need a rib'" (61).


When Kavalier and (Sammy) Klayman are attempting to think up superheroes: "They began to go through the rolls of the animal kingdom, concentrating naturally on the predators: Catman, Wolfman, the Owl, the Panter, the Black Bear. They considered the primates: the Monkey, Gorillaman, the Gibbon, the Ape, the Mandrill with his multicolored wonder ass that he used to bedazzle opponents. 'Be serious,' Joe chided again" (93). Hehe. They end up coming up with the Escapist, a hero who utilizes--what do you expect?--escapism. With him eventually arises a whole other slew of heroes.


"'He was all muscle. No heart. He was like Superman without the Clark Kent'" (120). Sammy is describing his father, who was a travelling strong man that eventually left him behind.


"'What's so bad about Hitler?' said Davy. 'Just kidding.' 'Maybe you ought to call it Racy Dictator,' said Marty" (142). This quote exists here mostly for Kelly's reaction upon my texting it to to her: "I'm a racy dictator." (The racy thing is because popular comic books of the time were entitled things like Racy Science, Racy Adventure, et cetera.)


Kavalier, hiding his Jewishness or at least in an attempt to not admit it outright tells Sammy's friends that he's from Japan. "'And you have to tell us how's come if you're from Japan, you could be Sammy's cousin and look like such a Jew,' Davy O'Dowd said. 'We're in Japan,' Sammy said. 'We're everywhere.' 'Jujitsu,' Joe reminded him. 'Good point,' said Davy O'Dowd" (143). Again, insert some mad chuckling here.


Well, I don't have much to say till a lot later on. At this point, the Escapist has made quite a name for himself and his creators, and there is talk of a radio show being created. The boys are at a party, one which features Salvador Dali who almost suffocates in a diving outfit (a story which is based on an actual event, believe it or not) and anyway. A man named Harkoo asks Josef to take a picture of him. Just some pretty words, here, again. "'How do I focus it?' Joe asked him, lowering the camera. 'Oh, don't bother about that. Just look at me and push the little lever. Your mind will do the rest.' 'My mind... The camera is... Telepathic.' 'All cameras are'" (233).


"A surprising fact about Bernard Kornblum, Joe remembered, was that he believed in magic. Not in the so-called magic of candles, pentagrams, and bat wings. Not in the kitchen enchantments of Slavic grandmothers with their herberies and parings from the little toe of a blind virgin tied up in a goatskin bag. Not in astrology, theosophy, chiromancy, dowsing rods, seances, weeping statues, werewolves, wonders, or miracles... What bewitched Bernard Kornblum, on the contrary, was the impersonal magic of life, when he read in a magazine about a fish that could disguise itself as any one of seven different varieties of sea bottom, or when he learned from a newsreel that scientists had discovered a dying star that emitted radiation on a wavelength whose value in megacycles approximated [Pi]. In the realm of human affairs, this type of enchantment was often, though not always, a sadder business--sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel" (265). There's a lot of fluff in here, but there's still a lot of good things going on too...


"The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place" (339).

Well... hmm... I guess there's no choice but to introduce spoilers. Sorry, this one is kind of sparse, I guess. Well, Kavalier still has family across the ocean, you remember. And he uses a good portion of the money he garners to get his brother passage to the US. The ship is sunk, and Kavalier leaves for the military, specifically the navy. His girlfriend at the time is pregnant--though he is unaware of it, and Sammy marries her. I only bring this up because Emma will recognize an unconscious parallel to it... sort of... sometime in the future... Uh. Well, anyway, after this it picks up to many years later first starting around Kavalier and Rosa's son, Sammy.

"'You can't walk me to school,' Tommy said... 'Mom, you can't possibly. I would die. I would absolutely die.' 'He would die,' Sammy told Rosa" (476).

At one point a few comic book artists talk about some comics Sammy worked on--one of which is Lone Wolf and Cubby, which I thought was funny and had to be a reference to the actual comic Lone Wolf and Cub. I've never read it, but I hear it's fantastic. They sell shirts for it at Old Glory. (But it seems like those guys like everything, really.)

"'You were watching my fingers. Don't watch my fingers. My fingers are liars. I have taught them to tell lies'" (511).

Kavalier eventually does come back, the reason why it took him so long is because he didn't... quite... know how to do it. He was scared, he didn't know how he would explain himself or what had happened, how to apologize for what he had done, and so on. One of the sweetest moments in its own strange way is Sammy's response: "'Christ, Joe, you f--king idiot... We love you'" (558). Okay, I thought there was something oddly sweet about it.

"'God is a madman. He lost his mind, like, a billion years ago. Just before He, you know. Created the universe'" (564).

"...The usual charge against comic books, that they offered merely an escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually to be a powerful argument on their behalf" (575).

Rosa says at one point that even though bacon is pork, it is okay--because of one passage in the Talmund--to eat. A rudimentary inspection of Google tells me that you can get struck down for eating bacon along with the followers of Baal, however, there is bacon made of ducks and others available for Kosher consumption. And apparently it's okay in some respects, as long as you're not an Orthodox Jew. (I feel like the rules regarding proper slaughter come into effect, as turkey isn't considering Kosher unless you 100% know it was slaughtered in the proper fashion.)

Now, if you'll recall, Sammy's father abandoned him and then later died. Sammy in the future is brought to court for his works (as are other comics creators) and one of the things brought up is his often adding boy sidekicks to comic book heroes' repertoires. This is meant to be a homosexual charge and although (spoiler alert which is kind of unnecessary since I know Emma has read this) Sammy is actually gay, he imagines it more as a yearning for what he hadn't had: a close father who he could rely on and was always around to protect him and interact with him. Poor Sammy.

Tommy, going through his real father's possessions finds Joe's very first sketch and attempt at a superhero during Sammy's original pitch... a Golem, the Golem of his home. It's a touching moment via drawing though perhaps not the most--Joe's brother sent Joe to the US in possession of a drawing of Harry Houdini falling from the sky drinking tea completely unworried, as though he had all the time in the world... I believe about three times it is mentioned, though its run finally ends with Joe's military service, when he leaves it behind in his post.

"'This is feeling very strange to me,' Rosa said. She was gripping the pillowcase filled with Joe's old sheets in one hand, like a sack, and dabbing at the tears in her eyes with the other. 'It's been strange all along,' said Sammy" (636).



...Well. I guess this was really sparse, sorry... I guess I'm still kind of drained from Ulysses and Connecticon and my first visit ever to a 7-11. Well, the book is awesome is what you need to know, and that you should read it. Really. (The only bothers me thing about the book is sometimes Chabon's writing style really bothers me, but most of the time I'm fine with it.)



Answer to last post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: Spitting Venom by Modest Mouse

This post's cryptic song lyrics for Emma: I cannot turn to see those eyes as apologies may rise; I must be strong and stay an unbeliever