The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Reading this book is sort of analogous to having a days-long therapy session; this is something I see as both a strength and a weakness. I don't think many people would deny Chabon's strength as a storyteller, but, like Quentin Tarantino's movies, his single-minded obsessions often come out as stronger than the characters would have realistically experienced them. Chabon is pretty good at hiding this sort of writing-as-katharsis impulse, but there are a few points in the book where you're reading about comic books, Jewish oppression, and homosexuals, and wondering if this is a book or a confessional.

As a story about two Jewish cousins who write comics, one of them a homosexual, this is a concern that runs through the length of the novel, even if the concern is a minor one.

I sometimes find myself swayed by the power of final pages and final sentences, and this book really delivered what I wanted. Satisfying, not entirely happy, not expected; strength at the same time as surrender. Chabon seems to understand the art of making near-heroes out of characters at one time both extraordinary and self-destructively passive.

Fabulous example of what fictions does best. Reading this intelligent, highly creative novel will introduce you to a cast of characters you would never have the pleasure of meeting in "real" life and take you to times and places you couldn't otherwise experience. The humor, sincerity, and inventiveness of Chabon's writing will capture your imagination from the early pages and sustain you throughout. Even at over 600 pages, you'll be sad to say goodbye.

A beautiful book about Sammy and Joe, two cousins who end up writing and drawing comic books together, the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a staggering tale of dedication, commitment, human frailty, perseverance, loyalty, and the many faces of the most powerful of all super powers, love. it shows the power of the love and appreciation of art, the power of family, the power of ethnicity, and the power of dreams. There is a riff early in Kavalier and Clay in which Sammy throws out ideas for heroes that is a hilarious send-up of super powers. Chabon knows that Sammy knows from the beginning that he has the power of his dreams, the power of his loyalty, and ultimately the power of love that will carry him through adversity to find happiness. Joe on the other hand must face the unimaginably grim reality of leaving everyone he loves behind to face the Nazi horrors. There is never a mystery about what Joe's loved ones face, and we feel along with him the guilt of his finding new people to love in the America of the mid-20th Century, a place of amazing opportunity and amazing charlatans. Chabon destroys the idea of nostalgia by exposing some societal norms that border on the Nazism that the characters set out to fight, each in his own way. The book is set in a particular time and Chabon does not glamorize that time, just portrays it honestly.

Normally I view the Pulitzer Prize as an enormous badge of mediocrity. Look how many books chosen for it have fallen from fashion, never to darken the door of literature beyond their meager days in the sun. Yet with Kavalier and Clay the pretentious puffer fish of the Pulitzer Prize committee plucked a plum. This novel will stand because of Chabon's marvelous wordcraft, and the most super of all powers.

I like the writing in this book. I like the characters in it. It took me to a different time and place. The characters are rich and complex. I cannot, however, recommend this book. It has many sub-stories within its main storyline. Many of them are never resolved. They just fade away. The book zig-zags all of the place. I finished four-fifths of the book and gave up. I got tired of twists and turns that ended nowhere.

Kavalier and Clay are Jewish cousins, Clay (morphed from Klayman) a short New Yorker crippled by polio, Kavalier a tall brooding escapee from Europe just before Hitler locked the gates and opened the extermination lines. The day after Kavalier's surprising arrival in New York, after his amazing escape from Europe via Japan and San Francisco, Sam and Joe launch the multi-million dollar earning Escapist comic book line in a combination of daring, talent, and brinksmanship bluffing.

The rest of the book is the story of how they survive success and conquer failure. The book reads quickly, with only an uncomfortable homosexuality subplot to ruin the enjoyment of the interaction between the cousins and the bubbling potboiling excitement of the early days of comic books in the 1930 and 1940s.