What Book to Read?

My previous post was about Jewish male experience in Americain part during and after the Second World War, courtesy of Philip Roth, in American Pastoral. This post is also about Jewish male experience in America during and after the Second World War, but this time it is courtesy of Michael Chabon – and it couldn’t be more different. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000), which is on the list of my all-time favourite books, is a complete joy – funny, sad, and intricately plotted; nothing like having Philip Roth sitting on your face ( – see the previous post for an explanation of that one).

It is 1939. Sammy Klayman and Joseph Kavalier are cousins, both seventeen, both budding artists. Joe has literally escaped from Nazi controlledPragueand come to live with his cousin inBrooklyn; the rest of his family remains inPrague. We learn enough about Joe’s former life there, and the indignities and cruelties the Nazi regime is now inflicting on the Jews of Prague, to understand why he is desperate to get his family out ofCzechoslovakia. For this he needs money. Together, the young men dream up a comic book hero, the Escapist, which they manage to sell to Sam’s boss. The demand for comics seems insatiable, and Sam and Joe’s creation rapidly becomes a hit. But there are many difficulties ahead; amazing adventures do not always end happily. It makes a very satisfying story.

Chabon writes as if his account were true. ‘I have tried to respect history and geography wherever doing so served my purposes as a novelist’, he says, ‘but wherever it did not I have, cheerfully or with regret, ignored them.’ He knows a lot about the history of comic books, and seamlessly fits the creations of Kavalier and Clay – Sam’s ‘professional’ name – into this history, even down to the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, which in 1954 zeroed in on the pernicious effects of comic books on American youth. He also visits the broader cultural history ofNew York; for example, Joe is introduced to Rosa, who becomes the love of his life, at aGreenwich Villageparty her father holds for Salvador Dali. This air of verisimilitude is achieved partly through the use of well placed footnotes, and partly through clever reference to real people, as well as, of course, to real events. I had to remind myself not to check for the Escapist on Wikipedia.

The story is relatively straightforward, but Chabon has given it depth by the web of connections and allusions between characters, comic book characters, and events. Joe uses his comic book heroes to fight the Nazis; this is set against his own wartime experience. The comic book characters occasionally take on a life of their own, and one character – very ineffectively – acts out the part of a comic book villain. Joe is saved twice by a Golem; once in reality and once metaphorically. These inter-relations – and there are many more of them – give the book strength and richness.

Though the story is sometimes sad – even tragic – the subject of comic books lends itself to comedy, and Chabon writes with wry humour. Ashkenazy, part-owner of Empire Comics, is doing very well out of Joe and Sammy’s hard work; ‘he no longer looked like a racecourse tout, with his chewed cigar end and his thumbs in his waistcoat. Now he looked like a big-time gangster with a fix on the third atBelmont’. Mostly it is gentle humour; you get the impression that Chabon really likes his characters, and this makes it easy for the reader to like them too.  

I’ve said that the book is about Jewish experience, and Joe’s identity as a Czechoslovakian Jew is central to the story. Many of the other characters, including of course Sam Clay, are also Jews. But Chabon doesn’t reflect on the Jewish immigrant experience in Americain the way Roth does in American Pastoral. The slice of American life he describes is Jewish, but is only occasionally analysed as such.

One thing the book does, however, have in common with American Pastoral is that they both won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.  I’m not the only one who thinks Chabon is a terrific writer.

You can find out more about him here.