The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon

Picador
2001
Michael Chabon’s imaginary tale of two revolutionary comic book creators in the late ’30s/early ’40s has a wealth of pleasures for the comic book fan. Those who know their history, from Superman and the hero boom up through to the Wertham hearings of the 1950s (the comic book industry’s own McCarthy trials) and beyond to the birth of Marvel, will smile to see how Chabon fits Kavalier and Clay into this timeline and not step on any toes.
The novel moves quickly, jumping from Joe Kavalier’s magical flight from Prague as the Nazis close in, rooming with his cousin Sammy Clay in New York City, and the birth of their comic book character the Escapist. Chabon’s imagery and metaphor is simultaneously surface-level and subconscious. Joe’s escape from the Nazis directly leads to the creation of the character that will make Empire Comics millions, but as the novel progresses, both characters find themselves struggling against their own mind-forg’d manacles. Joe feels survivors’ guilt over his family, and eventually runs off to escape his failure, joining the armed forces to fight the Nazis. Sammy meanwhile is trapped by his sexuality, becoming trapped in “the closet.” Then there’s Rosa, Joe’s love from almost the first time he sees her (naked, by accident, who winds up trapped by circumstance.
Celebrity cameos dot the novel (as somebody noted somewhere, it’s a sign of post-modernity that only by including celebrities into historical fiction do we feel the character exist in “reality”) from Orson Welles (K&C attend the premiere of Citizen Kane) to Salvador Dali and Max Ernst. By this section–where Chabon suggests that the radical storytelling used in Welles’ film influences K&C, and Kavalier becomes a sort of amalgamation of Will Eisner and Gil Kane–I was starting to lose interest. Clay discovers his sexuality when he falls in love with the radio star playing the Escapist for broadcast. Kavalier foils a bomb plot by an anti-Semite. Then Chabon throws Pearl Harbor in the mix (we know it’s coming, but we don’t see it coming) and the section of the novel where Kavalier goes slightly batty stationed in Antarctica. This turned out to be my favorite part, actually–something about humans in extreme situations are always suspenseful, and also because it reminded me of one of my favorite movies, “The Thing” (John Carpenter).
The rest of the novel follows the fallout from this central episode, where Kavalier can finally indulge his own superhero fantasies of battling Nazis, and finds himself wanting. And once again the themes of lost fathers and father-figures comes full circle.
It took me a bit longer than necessary to get through what is actually a book that demands a quick read, but every moment I spent with it was, well, pure escape.