I loved Michael Chabon’s family drama set in the milieu of the Golden Age of comic books from 1938 until 1954. And not even because of the comic book connection.
The story follows Josef Kavalier and Samuel Klayman (aka Sammy Clay). It begins in Prague, just after the Germans annexed Sudetenland and essentially took over the rest of Czechoslovakia. Restrictions on Jews started soon thereafter. Kavalier is scheduled to leave, but his exit visa is revoked at the border. Subsequently he seeks out a former teacher of his, the magician Bernard Kornblum to help him escape. Using their skills in magic, they manage to ship Kavalier eastward, and he makes his way to his cousin’s place in New York City. That cousin is Sammy Clay, who works for a novelty company drawing brochures and advertisements. But Clay wants to get into comics, which shortly before took off with the advent of Superman in Action Comics. Kavalier took art in Prague, and so he and Clay propose a new comic book to the owner of the novelty company, Sheldon Anapol. Anapol agrees, and that beings a long and fruitful collaboration between Kavalier and Clay. But Kavalier’s true goal is to rescue his remaining family from Nazi Germany. It’s an obsession the threatens to destroy him.
The first major positive about the book is the incredible research Chabon must have put into the settings. There’s the Jewish Prague of 1939, the comic book artist and writer scene of New York City, the upper-crust of New York as well, military bases in Antarctica during World War 2, and the suburban expansion of the 1950s. Chabon brings you right into the thick of these societies with detailed descriptions that match up with everything I’ve read of these eras.
On a related note, Chabon has an awesome flair for description. Often times, I detest overly wordy description as needless fluff. Not in this case. Take this excerpt describing the apartments of Jews in Prague:
In many apartments, there was a wild duplication and reduplication of furnishings: sofas ranked like church pews, enough jumbled dining chairs to stock a large café, a jungle growth of chandeliers dangling from ceilings, groves of torchères, clocks that sat side by side on a mantel, disputing the hour. Conflicts, in the nature of border wars, had inevitably broken out. Laundry was hung to demarcate lines of conflict and truce.
Chabon’s description and use of words is superb. I recognize a large number of words. Yet at least a dozen times Chabon managed to pull out words that I had to look up. It’s almost a bit much, like someone trying to impress you, but it works.
The last major plus I want to highlight is the characters. The book really rests on the characters. All of the characters become real. There’s about a billion layers to Kavalier and Clay, and Chabon even fleshed out the secondary characters like Anapol and Rosa Saks (Kavalier’s girlfriend and Clay’s wife). Oh yeah, I intended to let out that little tidbit. It’ll make things interesting.
Title: The amazing adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Awards: 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Author: Michael Chabon
Imprint / publisher: Picador / St. Martin’s Press / Holtzbrinck
Format: Paperback
Length: 636 p.
Publication date: 2000
ISBN-10: 0-312-28299-0
Subject: Comic books, strips, etc. — Authorship — Fiction
Subject: Heroes in mass media — Fiction
Subject: Czech Americans — Fiction
Subject: New York (N.Y.) — Fiction
Subject: Young men — Fiction
Subject: Artists — Fiction
LC classification: PS3553.H15 A82 2000
