Rating: 
Summary: brilliant, then good, then mediocre
Review: For the first third of the book, I felt transported to another world. I'd stop and put the book down, just to savor what I had read for a few minutes. The characters were broadly drawn but vivid, and Chabon beautifuly captured the pain and joy of being a dreamer as a teenager.And then I don't know what happened. Years suddenly pass, and the characters are replaced by folks with the same names, but who bear almost no resemblance to the orignal characters. I gave Chabon the benefit of the doubt during the Antarctica scenes; they weren't bad, just not as brilliant as the first part. And when the 1950's come along, the novel collapses. If he ended it before WWII, I'd understand the Pulitzer. Wish the editor had made him lop off that ending - or spend another year perfecting it.
Rating: 
Summary: A Four Color Blockbuster
Review: I take a strange satisfaction in knowing that this book is better for me than for most people. As a lifelong comic book devotee, especially of the Golden Age of comics, I caught every reference and knew every allusion Michael Chabon was making. I know what artists Joe Kavelier is an amalgamation of, and I know who Samuel Klayman and Rosa Saks are (at least in the comic book world.) I know what the cover of Amazing Midget Radion Comics #1 looks like, because I have seen the original from which it was taken. (Captain America Comics #1, for anyone who wants to look it up.) The story is a delight, well written and as bursting with energy and excitement as the original comics themselves. It does not dwell on the minute of this peculiar art form, but drops enough hints so that an informed reader knows that Michael Chabon knows what he is talking about. (Kavelier sails to the Antarctic aboard the US Miskatonic!) My knowledge of magic and escapistry is more than limited, but I am sure a seasoned magician will get the same delight from "The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay." I trust that the reseach is accurate, and that Chabon has given me a glimpse into more than one secret world. A really, truly great book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful characters - They are so real!!
Review: Joe, Rosa and Sam are so well described through their actions thast you really care about them.
I thought Chabon did a marvelous job entertaining the reader. There is not much action to the story, but you love the characters so much you just want to see what happens to them.
And that is the hallmark of a wonderful author.
I wish I could read more about what happens to Joe and Rosa, and Sammy after the novel ends. I want a sequel.
Anyway, anyone who give this book anything less than a near perfect rating, is either malicious, inexperienced, or not an avid reader.
Becasue this is a beautifully written novel, and deserves all the praise it has received.
Great job Michael!! I hope one day to get my copy autographed.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: Michael Chabon is America's most gifted storyteller. Throughout his career, from his debut novel (The Mysteries of Pittsburgh) to his newest work (Summerland) he has showcased his incredible abililty to create realistically flawed characters and fascinatingly well-conceived stories. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is a detailed novelization of the history of the birth of comic books in 1930s America. Told from the perspective of two aspiring artists (Kavalier and Clay), the book magically portrays both the Jewish experience leading up to WWII and the development of an industry that would grow to involve billions of dollars and shape generations of young readers. With his detailed research and cleverly created characters, Chabon has, indeed, written a masterpiece. Incorporating the real-life figures of comic-book legends Stan Lee and Will Eisner (among others), the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay acts as a love letter to an artform that Chabon clearly loves very much. And to have thi sstory take place in an era of such turmoil only adds volume to the overarching themes of love, war and self-discovery. For lovers of comics, literature or just plain old good storytelling, Chabon has hit another homerun.
Rating:
Summary: If you want to believe in magic...
Review: Ok, so this big book about a pair of comic book artists won the Pulitzer Prize. Clearly it should be read as the artistic achievement that it is, right? Well I suppose one could read it that way, but in this day of dogged cynicism, why kill another beautiful thing with over-rumination and critical theory? It's rare that a book can satisfy reader's appetites for excitement and literary aplomb at once, but this book does both effortlessly. "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is satisfying on so many levels, but to me, none were so enjoyable as Chabon's characterization of late-1930s New York with its filthy teeming streets and what seemed like endless possibility. There is an early section in Kavalier and Clay titled, "The Golden Age". It refers primarily to the initial burst of comic book production at that time, marked by innocence and resplendence, but also to the peak of Kavalier and Clay's youth. Chabon transports the reader back into this peak with staggering believability. The believability is juxtaposed with a sense of magic that has all been lost in the post-post-modern world. I mean, can you really compare Harry Houdini (a primary figure in K & C) with David Copperfield? Arthur C. Clarke once said that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I would argue the same is true for literature. Michael Chabon's novel certainly is "advanced", but more to the point, it's magic. It's no surprise given the state of the world that adults find themselves reading well-written children's books like the Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket series instead of heavy-handed "adult" books. When barely post-adolescent Joe Kavalier leaps from stoop to fire escape and swings into a dirty tenement building with impossible ease, glimpsing the smooth round flesh of a napping young woman, which he immediately sketches for his less agile friends after she runs from the building, you feel the presence of another time, another place. "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is a work that will educate and fill your heart with wonder, even if you have a university education.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Pulitzer material
Review: A fun read at times, but needed another edit. The author especially loves to randomly toss in OED words out of the blue (the overuse of "exegesis" comes to mind). I could have loved this book if the story had been more succinct. Some of the writing was beautifully lyrical but it also often brought the story to a grinding halt for pages while the author jerked himself off over his technique and vocabulary.
A good book, not a great book, and too long NOT to be great.
Rating:
Summary: Ka-Pow! But No Superbook.
Review: The title of Michael Chabon's novel about a pair of young comic book creators promises more than the book delivers, but when it does deliver, it does so with a punch. There are some good scenes in the beginning. The story starts out in 1939 Prague, where Josef Kavalier, about 19 or 20 years old, is set on fleeing Nazi-controlled Czechoslovakia. When a first attempt with papers unexpectedly fails, Josef turns in drunken despair to a once-great escape artist under whom he had studied, and the old man devises a clever but dangerous plan to get Josef out of the country. There follows an intriguing look at escape artistry, at Prague, and at some of the changes in Jewish life under the Nazis. Josef makes it to his aunt's home in Brooklyn, where he hooks up with his cousin, Sam Klayman (they Americanize their names to Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay). Sam has dreams of creating his own comic book, and Josef, who has no idea of what a comic book is, has exceptional artistic abilities. They approach Sam's boss, a distributor of novelties, with a proposition: Why pay to advertise his hand buzzers, whoopee cushions, and midget radios in the backs of comic books, when he could advertise for free by publishing his own comic? Superman had debuted to stunning success the year before, and the boss, after considerable reluctance and skepticism, challenges the boy geniuses to come up with a competitor. The highlight of this book, to me, occurs when the boys are brainstorming to come up with their superhero and his reasons for championing the oppressed. Here the character Sammy is wonderfully imagined. It's all done in dialogue, and you can almost see Sammy's mind working as he paces back and forth, pursuing a number of ideas that lead down blind alleys before the superhero finally emerges, with a little help from Joe, full-blown in the shape of the Escapist. With his mentor and his secret identity as a crippled youngster, the Escapist is reminiscent of Captain Marvel. The book echoes with the actual history of comic books. The Escapist, who went after the villains ravaging Europe, became wildly popular. Comic book art increasingly got better. There's a fabulous passage about cinematic influences on the panels, such as using novel angle shots and extreme close-ups, foreshortening limbs, stretching the panels horizontally and vertically to give them added power, and placing scenes inside a circle to denote a full stop. The Escapist brought in avalanches of money, but, as often happened, the young writer and artist saw but a small cut of the take, while the publisher became rich beyond greed. There is also a protracted law suit filed by the publisher of Superman in what is a clear reference to the suit filed by Action Comics against the publisher of Captain Marvel. What makes this book at all relevant? The subject matter is an inspired concept. Before electronic games, before TVs in every room, before the dark knowledge and cynicism so pervasive now, comic books were a staple of wholesome entertainment for millions of American kids. Priced initially at a dime, they were comparatively affordable. And they could be traded with friends, making that dime and comic readership go far. Comics had the further virtue of separating kids from grown-ups. The more adults disparaged their low-browness and even claimed they corrupted young minds, the more kids loved them. The story of comic books is also the story of long-odds success achieved by gifts backed by smarts. It is, altogether, as American as apple pie. Disappointingly, both the storyline and the pace flag in the telling. In the second half of the book, Chabon seems to have lost his focus. He sends one guy to a bizarre stint at a Naval station in Antarctica, then shuts him up for the next decade, alone and obscure, in bare-bones digs in a office building. Chabon condemns the other guy to failure and the bland prison of suburbia. Ultimately Chabon stops writing, and the story just peters out. Some adventure. Although he is good at action and dialogue, Chabon is deadly dull when it comes to narrative. The pace of the story comes to a dead stop, and all too often the tone is overblown, self-important, and redundant, as in this example commenting on the close of the New York World's Fair: "It made his heart ache to look around the vast expanse of the fairground that, not very long ago, had swarmed with flags and women's hats and people being whizzed around in jitneys, and see only a vista of mud and tarpaulins and blowing newspaper, broken up here and there by the spindly stump of a capped stanchion, a fire hydrant, or the bare trees that flanked the empty avenues and promenades." Many writers would stop here, content with this stark image, but Chabon is just getting warmed up: "The candy-colored pavilions and exhibit halls, fitted out with Saturn rings, lightning bolts, shark's fins, golden grilles, and honeycombs, the Italian pavilion with its entire facade dissolving in a perpetual cascade of water, the gigantic cash register, the austere and sinuous temples of the Detroit gods, the fountains, the pylons and sundials, the statues of George Washington and Freedom of Speech and Truth Showing the Way to Freedom had been peeled, stripped, prized apart, knocked down, bulldozed into piles, loaded onto truck beds, dumped into barges, towed out past the mouth of the harbor, and sent to the bottom of the sea." Yawn. Although the good parts of this book are very good indeed, they are rather spindly legs to support the weight of such nonsense and pomposity.
Rating:
Summary: Truly amazing
Review: This book is incredible. I was constantly amazed at the way Chabon can say something simple in a completely original way. He remarkably conveys the feelings of the characters so that you feel their joy, anguish, and embarrassment and want them to succeed. I've never before genuinely missed the characters when the book ended. This is an outstanding book and beautifully written.
Rating:
Summary: Read this book
Review: What an unexpected gem! Filled with the magical and the mysterious, the story is, in the end, rooted in the reality of New York City just before the war and in suburbia shortly after and Chabon brings it to life in an utterly believable way. It is an emotional story and is not, despite what you might expect from the covers and the reviews, a light-hearted story. At times uneven as though Chabon was changing the nature of the book he was trying to write (and thus the four stars instead of five), it is nevertheless one of the most truly creative stories I've read in a long time. I recommend it strongly.
Rating:
Summary: Great escapism
Review: I loved this book. Chabon obviously adores the English language. He never condescends to his reader... he expects you to come to his level. Kavalier & Clay is a sprawling, witty, beautifully written book. There are a couple of sections that meander a bit, but even at 600+ pages, this felt like a quick read. I also recommend Chabon's "Wonder Boys" - the book and movie were excellent.
|
