The New Canon focuses on
great works of fiction published
since 1985. These books
represent the finest literature
of the current era, and are
gaining recognition as the new
classics of our time. In this
installment of The New Canon,
Ted Gioia reviews The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon.
great works of fiction published
since 1985. These books
represent the finest literature
of the current era, and are
gaining recognition as the new
classics of our time. In this
installment of The New Canon,
Ted Gioia reviews The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
The period leading up to World War II was the Age of Heroes in the
United States. During this era, Americans were introduced to Buck
Rogers (who first appeared in Amazing Stories
in 1928), Dick Tracy (1931), Flash Gordon
(1934), Roy Rogers (first film appearance in
1935), the Green Hornet (1936), The Phantom
(1936), Superman (1938), Lassie (1938), Bat-
man (1939) and Captain Marvel (1939). And
then the real age of heroism began, with young
American men going overseas to fight against
the Axis powers, in a struggle that was per-
ceived by the general public as a similarly un-
ambiguous confrontation of good versus evil.
We should not be surprised, then, that Michael
Chabon’s exploration of heroes and villains, The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, should be set primarily during this
same period. Much of the appeal of this fascinating book stems from
Chabon’s ability to blend the sometimes heroic (or mock heroic)
exploits of his characters with the feverish pop culture heroism of
this period in American history. These different levels of heroism
get hopelessly muddled in the course of the novel, but they never
lose their charm. As Chabon realizes, even today we are all suckers
for a story of truth, justice and the American way.
Not just his readers, but sometimes Chabon’s characters get
confused between real and fictional heroism. Josef Kavalier, an
exile from the Nazi occupation in his native Prague, arrives in New
York in 1939 and soon finds himself enlisted by his Brooklyn cousin
Sammy Clay in a scheme to create a new comic book. Their hero,
the Escapist, becomes a huge success, largely because he is the one
caped crusader who is not offering mere escapism: current events
permeate his adventures, and the first issue of the comic book stands
out for its cover depicting the Escapist delivering a haymaker to
Hitler’s mug.
Kavalier’s own life imitates, in eerie fashion, the comic book tales he
illustrates. Early in his life, Kavalier had been an aspiring escape
artist himself, and even performed with a mask. Later in the book he
actually dons the costume of the Escapist in pathetic imitation of his
imaginary alter ego. But he is a flawed superhero, capable of
harming those he loves through his theatrical attempts at stylish
exploits. But in other settings, Kavalier proves capable of true
heroics, although without a cape and mask: he serves in World War
II, and—in perhaps the strangest interlude in a book full of peculiar
twists—single-handedly defends Antarctica against the Axis threat.
On the home front, he engages in fisticuffs with the Nazi head of the
Aryan-American League. And (all too fitting in this sometimes
surreal novel) he rescues Salvador Dali from drowning . . . at a
fashionable party. It is all too telling that the latter incident is one of
the more straightforward moments in The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay.
But Kavalier and Clay, for all their dramatic exploits, carry with
them an aura of tragedy. Despite relentless efforts, Kavalier fails in
his attempt to bring his brother Thomas to the United States, and
out of the grasp of the Nazis. Indeed, one feels the heavy hand of
fate throughout these pages. In their relationships with others—
friends, lovers, associates—both Kavalier and Clay tend to let events
guide them, with a passivity that is surprisingly out of step with the
“Wham! Bang!” theatrics they celebrate in their comic books.
Real and contrived heroes also dance around the periphery of this
highly stylized, artfully written novel. The Old World golem
becomes both a prototype for the Escapist, and an actual means of
escape for Kavalier, in his labyrinthine journey to America. Even
earlier Kavalier is mentored by Bernhard Kornblum, a real life
escape artist who eventually saves his protégé's life. With so many
strange ingredients mixed up in this tale, readers will hardly be
surprised to learn that Clay’s father was known as the Mighty
Molecule, and traveled around the country as a circus performer.
Chabon takes his multilayered story up to the Eisenhower era—a
time when comic books came under increased scrutiny and attack.
America had lost its innocence during the war, and now was
suspicious of everything, even Superman and Batman. Kavalier and
Clay can hardly hope to escape unscathed in this troubled age when
the caped crusaders of yore are knocked down to size, and anti-
heroes are in the ascendancy. History again intervenes in our story,
and Clay is called upon to testify before the Senate Subcommittee to
Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, where he is vilified and outed . . .
and, in a strange way, also liberated.
Chabon maintains an impressive balancing act throughout this book.
He manages to capture the flavor of pulp fiction, without its
banality. He stuffs his novel with more plot twists than an old movie
serial, but never loses the thread of his main story. He captures a
surreal sense of fantasy, without abandoning the grounded History
(with a capital H) of his narrative. And—yes!—he shows how flawed
our heroes are, but lets us keep cheering them on as though they
really could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Amazing
adventures, indeed!
by Michael Chabon
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
The period leading up to World War II was the Age of Heroes in the
United States. During this era, Americans were introduced to Buck
Rogers (who first appeared in Amazing Stories
in 1928), Dick Tracy (1931), Flash Gordon
(1934), Roy Rogers (first film appearance in
1935), the Green Hornet (1936), The Phantom
(1936), Superman (1938), Lassie (1938), Bat-
man (1939) and Captain Marvel (1939). And
then the real age of heroism began, with young
American men going overseas to fight against
the Axis powers, in a struggle that was per-
ceived by the general public as a similarly un-
ambiguous confrontation of good versus evil.
We should not be surprised, then, that Michael
Chabon’s exploration of heroes and villains, The Amazing
Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, should be set primarily during this
same period. Much of the appeal of this fascinating book stems from
Chabon’s ability to blend the sometimes heroic (or mock heroic)
exploits of his characters with the feverish pop culture heroism of
this period in American history. These different levels of heroism
get hopelessly muddled in the course of the novel, but they never
lose their charm. As Chabon realizes, even today we are all suckers
for a story of truth, justice and the American way.
Not just his readers, but sometimes Chabon’s characters get
confused between real and fictional heroism. Josef Kavalier, an
exile from the Nazi occupation in his native Prague, arrives in New
York in 1939 and soon finds himself enlisted by his Brooklyn cousin
Sammy Clay in a scheme to create a new comic book. Their hero,
the Escapist, becomes a huge success, largely because he is the one
caped crusader who is not offering mere escapism: current events
permeate his adventures, and the first issue of the comic book stands
out for its cover depicting the Escapist delivering a haymaker to
Hitler’s mug.
Kavalier’s own life imitates, in eerie fashion, the comic book tales he
illustrates. Early in his life, Kavalier had been an aspiring escape
artist himself, and even performed with a mask. Later in the book he
actually dons the costume of the Escapist in pathetic imitation of his
imaginary alter ego. But he is a flawed superhero, capable of
harming those he loves through his theatrical attempts at stylish
exploits. But in other settings, Kavalier proves capable of true
heroics, although without a cape and mask: he serves in World War
II, and—in perhaps the strangest interlude in a book full of peculiar
twists—single-handedly defends Antarctica against the Axis threat.
On the home front, he engages in fisticuffs with the Nazi head of the
Aryan-American League. And (all too fitting in this sometimes
surreal novel) he rescues Salvador Dali from drowning . . . at a
fashionable party. It is all too telling that the latter incident is one of
the more straightforward moments in The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay.
But Kavalier and Clay, for all their dramatic exploits, carry with
them an aura of tragedy. Despite relentless efforts, Kavalier fails in
his attempt to bring his brother Thomas to the United States, and
out of the grasp of the Nazis. Indeed, one feels the heavy hand of
fate throughout these pages. In their relationships with others—
friends, lovers, associates—both Kavalier and Clay tend to let events
guide them, with a passivity that is surprisingly out of step with the
“Wham! Bang!” theatrics they celebrate in their comic books.
Real and contrived heroes also dance around the periphery of this
highly stylized, artfully written novel. The Old World golem
becomes both a prototype for the Escapist, and an actual means of
escape for Kavalier, in his labyrinthine journey to America. Even
earlier Kavalier is mentored by Bernhard Kornblum, a real life
escape artist who eventually saves his protégé's life. With so many
strange ingredients mixed up in this tale, readers will hardly be
surprised to learn that Clay’s father was known as the Mighty
Molecule, and traveled around the country as a circus performer.
Chabon takes his multilayered story up to the Eisenhower era—a
time when comic books came under increased scrutiny and attack.
America had lost its innocence during the war, and now was
suspicious of everything, even Superman and Batman. Kavalier and
Clay can hardly hope to escape unscathed in this troubled age when
the caped crusaders of yore are knocked down to size, and anti-
heroes are in the ascendancy. History again intervenes in our story,
and Clay is called upon to testify before the Senate Subcommittee to
Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, where he is vilified and outed . . .
and, in a strange way, also liberated.
Chabon maintains an impressive balancing act throughout this book.
He manages to capture the flavor of pulp fiction, without its
banality. He stuffs his novel with more plot twists than an old movie
serial, but never loses the thread of his main story. He captures a
surreal sense of fantasy, without abandoning the grounded History
(with a capital H) of his narrative. And—yes!—he shows how flawed
our heroes are, but lets us keep cheering them on as though they
really could leap tall buildings in a single bound. Amazing
adventures, indeed!
RELATED LINKS:
The Fourteen Skies of Michael Chabon by Ted Gioia
Review of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Review of Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road
The Fourteen Skies of Michael Chabon by Ted Gioia
Review of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Review of Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road
| The New Canon |
| The Best in Fiction Since 1985 |
The New Canon
Home Page
Gabriel García Márquez:
Love in the Time of Cholera
David Foster Wallace:
Infinite Jest
Margaret Atwood:
The Handmaid's Tale
Toni Morrison:
Beloved
Jonathan Franzen:
The Corrections
Don DeLillo:
Underworld
Zadie Smith:
White Teeth
Roberto Bolaño:
2666
Mark Z. Danielewski:
House of Leaves
Cormac McCarthy:
Blood Meridian
Philip Roth:
American Pastoral
Jonathan Lethem:
The Fortress of S0litude
Haruki Murakami:
Kafka on the Shore
Edward P. Jones:
The Known World
Ian McEwan:
Atonement
Michael Chabon:
The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay
Philip Roth:
The Human Stain
Mario Vargas Llosa:
The Feast of the Goat
Marilynne Robinson:
Gilead
David Mitchell:
Cloud Atlas
José Saramago:
Blindness
Jennifer Egan:
A Visit from the Goon Sqad
W. G. Sebald:
Austerlitz
Jeffrey Eugenides
The Marriage Plot
Donna Tartt:
The Secret History
Michael Ondaatje:
The English Patient
Saul Bellow:
Ravelstein
A.S. Byatt:
Possession
Umberto Eco:
Foucault's Pendulum
Cormac McCarthy:
The Road
David Foster Wallace:
The Pale King
J.K. Rowling:
Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone
Arundhati Roy:
The God of Small Things
Roberto Bolaño:
The Savage Detectives
Paul Auster:
The New York Trilogy
Per Petterson:
Out Stealing Horses
Ann Patchett:
Bel Canto
Ben Okri:
The Famished Road
Joseph O'Neill:
Netherland
Haruki Murakami:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Marisha Pessl:
Special Topics in Calamity
Physics
Jonathan Franzen:
Freedom
Colm Tóibín:
The Master
Denis Johnson:
Tree of Smoke
Richard Russo:
Empire Falls
Alice Munro:
Runaway
Martin Amis:
London Fields
Mark Haddon:
The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-Time
John Banville:
The Sea
Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
Jeffrey Eugenides:
Middlesex
Junot Diaz:
The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao
Aravind Adiga:
The White Tiger
Tim O'Brien:
The Things They Carried
Irvine Welsh
Trainspotting
Tobias Wolff:
Old School
Tim Winton:
Cloudstreet
David Foster Wallace:
Oblivion
Oscar Hijuelos:
The Mambo Kings Play
Songs of Love
More to come
Recommended Links:
Great Books Guide
Conceptual Fiction
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's personal web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
American Fiction Notes
LA Review of Books
The Big Read
Critical Mass
The Elegant Variation
Dana Gioia
The Literary Saloon
The Millions
The Misread City
Page-Turner
Page Views
Disclosure note: Writers on this site and its
sister sites may receive promotional copies of
works under review.
Home Page
Gabriel García Márquez:
Love in the Time of Cholera
David Foster Wallace:
Infinite Jest
Margaret Atwood:
The Handmaid's Tale
Toni Morrison:
Beloved
Jonathan Franzen:
The Corrections
Don DeLillo:
Underworld
Zadie Smith:
White Teeth
Roberto Bolaño:
2666
Mark Z. Danielewski:
House of Leaves
Cormac McCarthy:
Blood Meridian
Philip Roth:
American Pastoral
Jonathan Lethem:
The Fortress of S0litude
Haruki Murakami:
Kafka on the Shore
Edward P. Jones:
The Known World
Ian McEwan:
Atonement
Michael Chabon:
The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay
Philip Roth:
The Human Stain
Mario Vargas Llosa:
The Feast of the Goat
Marilynne Robinson:
Gilead
David Mitchell:
Cloud Atlas
José Saramago:
Blindness
Jennifer Egan:
A Visit from the Goon Sqad
W. G. Sebald:
Austerlitz
Jeffrey Eugenides
The Marriage Plot
Donna Tartt:
The Secret History
Michael Ondaatje:
The English Patient
Saul Bellow:
Ravelstein
A.S. Byatt:
Possession
Umberto Eco:
Foucault's Pendulum
Cormac McCarthy:
The Road
David Foster Wallace:
The Pale King
J.K. Rowling:
Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone
Arundhati Roy:
The God of Small Things
Roberto Bolaño:
The Savage Detectives
Paul Auster:
The New York Trilogy
Per Petterson:
Out Stealing Horses
Ann Patchett:
Bel Canto
Ben Okri:
The Famished Road
Joseph O'Neill:
Netherland
Haruki Murakami:
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Marisha Pessl:
Special Topics in Calamity
Physics
Jonathan Franzen:
Freedom
Colm Tóibín:
The Master
Denis Johnson:
Tree of Smoke
Richard Russo:
Empire Falls
Alice Munro:
Runaway
Martin Amis:
London Fields
Mark Haddon:
The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-Time
John Banville:
The Sea
Chuck Palahniuk
Fight Club
Jeffrey Eugenides:
Middlesex
Junot Diaz:
The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao
Aravind Adiga:
The White Tiger
Tim O'Brien:
The Things They Carried
Irvine Welsh
Trainspotting
Tobias Wolff:
Old School
Tim Winton:
Cloudstreet
David Foster Wallace:
Oblivion
Oscar Hijuelos:
The Mambo Kings Play
Songs of Love
More to come
Recommended Links:
Great Books Guide
Conceptual Fiction
Postmodern Mystery
Fractious Fiction
Ted Gioia's personal web site
Ted Gioia on Twitter
American Fiction Notes
LA Review of Books
The Big Read
Critical Mass
The Elegant Variation
Dana Gioia
The Literary Saloon
The Millions
The Misread City
Page-Turner
Page Views
Disclosure note: Writers on this site and its
sister sites may receive promotional copies of
works under review.