Kavalier, Clay, and Escape!

Tonight I finished the Pulitzer Prize Winning book by Pulitzer Prize Winning novelist Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. So I decided to do a little mini-review and critique. Now to start off some quick statements: This is the first Chabon I've read, but I have a passing familiarity with Wonderboys because I've seen, like, five minutes of the movie, and know a little about his background having read a few interviews with the man. So any statements I make in the following about his themes needs to be taken with that grain of salt.

Now, on to the main review. The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a superbly crafted piece of work. Chabon is able to put words together in ways that ways that make you aware of the size of Chabon's vocabulary while avoiding the sense that Chabon sleeps with a thesaurus and by God you will appreciate his pretty words. Chabon frames his sentences in a way that his obvious love of language draws readers in, instead of leaving them scratching their head trying to figure out what the sentence is saying. Chabon's command of language is always used in service of presenting the characters and themes of the work, and making that presentation as engaging as possible.

Beyond the obvious skill of Chabon's sentence construction, Kavalier and Clay presents Chabon's loves and themes, bouncing them against life in New York in the 1930's. Chabon has written extensively about both his love of comic books(which is how I found him), and his disdain for literary critics division of literary and genre fiction. Both ideas are at play in Kavalier and Clay, with the two protagonists building their careers around comics and genre fiction. Chabon even stacks the deck against the critics through his protagonists: Sammy Clay, a closeted homosexual who spends the entire book in denial about himself, his desires, and constantly thwarts his own ambitions, frequently calls comics "crap" and "for kids." His partner Joe Kavalier, a combination of Houdini and Steranko's escape artistry and Will Eisner and Jack Kirby's comic book experimentation, is forever arguing that there is no such thing as a debased medium. Just because comics haven't produced work worthy of adults does not mean they cannot. Beyond the literary merits of comics, though, is Chabon's continual defense of escapism itself as a worthwhile endeavor.

Which brings us the the truly clever part of the book. Escape. It's the overarching motivator of the piece. Hell, it's right there in the name of their character. The Escapist. Kavalier and Clay's answer to Superman, the impossible man no chain can hold, no barrier stop. I'd hit you over the head with this, but Chabon has already gotten there. Throughout the book Kavalier and Clay, and to a lesser extent Kavalier's girlfriend Rosa Saks are all trying to escape from their lives across the years of the novel. Klay's need to escape from first his ghetto life, then ultimately the fake life he has built around himself to hide from his homosexuality fuels the creation of the character, while Kavalier's needs soon find expression through the Escapist. Kavalier first uses the comics to gain the money he needs to free his family from the oppression of the Nazis, then comics from the denigrated ghetto the rest of the world desires to leave them in. As the needs of the two creators change, so to does the Escapist, becoming a reflection of the two boys as they are changed by the world around them. It's an easy hit on young writers to write about writing, how writer's block is kicking their ass or the problems with getting their genius novel published, or other intensely navel gazing endeavors. Chabon avoids that problem in Kavalier and Clay, by using the character to comment on the creators. He first is simply a reflection of Kavalier's training in escapistry, then later an outlet for his rage against the Nazis'. The novel ends with the death in litigation of the Escapist character at the exact moment both Kavalier and Clay are able to escape the traps of their own pasts; the Escapist is no longer needed, as his creators have outgrown their need for him.

I could go on about the historical details Chabon presents, and whether they line up. It was strange for me seeing figures from the early comics period, people whose works I've read and enjoyed alongside the fictional career of Sammy and Joe. Their use gives the project a verisimilitude that whole fictional stand-ins would lack, but it is still strange to see Stan Lee and Joe Simon show up, or read about Sammy's testimony during the Wertham hearings, the transcripts of which are readily available. It further clashes when The Escapist stories start to mirror Eisner's formal experiments in his Spirit strip. All of these are easily forgiven, as I don't expect most people to be as utterly nerdy as I am.

All told, there's a good reason The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was awarded the Pulitzer. Chabon's love of the period and his obvious talent make for compelling reading, with just enough formal trickery to engage readers critical faculties in addition to their emotional investment.