The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

When I was a really young kid, my dad worked shifts. And when he'd do overnight ones, he'd always come home at 7 in the morning, just as Sam and I were getting up and ready for school. Dad would always have something in hand when we swarmed him at the door--sometimes donuts (the sprinkled kind, of course), but more often comic books. I loved them. For me, Dad usually picked the girly ones. Casper, Archie and company, and the occasional Wonder Woman. Sam got all the traditional "boy" ones. But four-year-old Sam wasn't really the reading type, so I was the one who ended up devouring all the comics as soon as they came in--Betty, Veronica, and Spider Man alike.

That was more than twenty years ago, though, and I can't say I've thought much about superhero comic books since. That's probably why I didn't expect to feel super-connected to the subject matter of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I picked up the book based on the idea that I should be reading Michael Chabon, combined with a shiny Pulitzer sticker on the cover. ('Cause I'm a cover sticker sucker, let's face it.) But I ended up loving it.

The novel moves around Sammy Klayman, a 19-year-old Brooklyn polio survivor with tons of comic book ideas but no way of cashing in on them; and his cousin Josef Kavalier, a Czechoslovakian immigrant sent to America by his parents just as the Nazi occupation hit Prague. Joe's talents include magic tricks and Houdini-esque escape tricks, but his only marketable skill when he shows up at Sammy's door is a significant drawing talent. Soon, the "boy geniuses" are pitching their respective drawing and writing skills to Sammy's boss, the owner of a company that sells novelties like whoopee cushions and tiny defective radios. 1939 New York is their oyster, as the Amazing Midget Radio Comics are quickly outshone by their star, the boys' creation: the Escapist.

The Escapist becomes a huge, Superman-like hit. The former whoopee cushion salesman makes millions off the copyright while the boys make a tiny fraction of that, but they're content enough as the brains and minor celebrities behind Empire Comics. Nothing is particularly solid, however, in an industry dependent on the whims of American kids. And the guys have their own self-destructive streaks. Sammy struggles with his homosexuality, not the easiest thing in the pre-war era. And Joe feels massive guilt about abandoning his Jewish family to the Nazis' mercy. He sublimates the guilt by saving money to bring them over, and by picking fights with every German he can find in the five boroughs. Any pleasure he finds wracks him, even his sweet relationship with a spunky young artist. So yeah. The party doesn't last long, but somehow it keeps Kavalier and Clay going, through the War and into the bleak 1950s.

Probably the best part of the book is the translation of comic book style into the novel format. The whole thing is highly episodic, from Joe's complicated escape-from-Czechoslovakia story (it involves the Golem of Prague, but not in a way you might expect); to Sammy's, umm, awakening in the ruins of the World Fair with a handsome actor who plays the Escapist on the radio; to Joe's wartime antics as a prototypical soldier-with-nothing-to-lose. The language is highly illustrative, without a single picture anywhere in the book. And the pacing is amazing: the timeline skips around enough so that everything moves along, but Chabon gives so much descriptive detail that you don't feel like you're missing anything. The result is page-turning tension, without being overwrought.

It's not just the structure. The story itself is heavy on comic book mythology: the wish-fulfillment of costumed superheroes who overcome physical weakness (which Sammy can't do) and save the world's persecuted from evil (which Joe can't do). It adds a neat heft to all the characters.

At the same time, it's a shout-out to all the guys who really did bring characters like the Escapist to life. All of Empire's comic book competitors are real (everyone wants the next Superman), and names like Stan Lee pop up every now and then. Orson Welles is there briefly. So it's a cool picture of underground artistry in 1930s/40s New York, too.

Anyway, this is another one I could talk about endlessly if given the chance (where's the book club when you need it?), but who's got the time? I might have a night full of heroic crime-fighting ahead of me.

Parts I liked:

"As he watched Joe stand, blazing, on the fire escape, Sammy felt an ache in his chest that turned out to be, as so often occurs when memory and desire conjoin with a transient effect of weather, the pang of creation....It was, in part, a longing--common enough among the inventors of heroes--to be someone else; to be more than the result of two hundred regimens and scenarios and self-improvement campaigns that always ran afoul of his perennial inability to locate an actual self to be improved. Joe Kavalier had an air of competence, of faith in his own abilities, that Sammy, by means of constant effort over the whole of his life, had finally learned to fake."

[on watching the sudden appearance of "the Escapist" on the outside of the Empire State Building]
"There was something stunned in the faces of the children, blinking and tentative. The slow, dull, dark submarine of the lives in which they were the human cargo had abruptly surfaced. Their blood was filled with a kind of crippling nitrogen of wonder."

On Beauty by Zadie Smith

On the back cover of On Beauty, there's a New York Times blurb: "wonderfully engaging, wonderfully observed...a novel that is as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane."

You know, I never thought I'd agree with Michiko Kakutani, but....

I really loved On Beauty. It might even be on the elusive list of favorites. At the very least, it's near the top of the book club picks. (No offense, James Joyce and William Faulkner.) Zadie Smith's third novel is so full of character detail, fantastic descriptive language, and genuine charm that it's easy to overlook any small flaws. You can barely even see the behind-the-scenes conceit, that it's a modern reworking of Howards End. In the hands of a lot of other authors, that skeleton would be painfully obvious, like dubbing southern accents over a Merchant Ivory film. Here, it's more of a pleasant realization that you're seeing something vaguely familiar, but still refreshing. Think West Side Story.

The book channels its Bloomsbury-era inspiration by exploring whether it's possible to break class barriers (even when your intentions are good), and looking at the small legacies we leave one another. It's set in academia (a Boston-area college that's like pretty much every college/liberal arts department we've all known and loved), and focuses on the Belsey family. The father, Howard, is an art history professor, a British expat, who gets off on university politics much more than on Rembrandt. His African-American wife, Kiki, is his feisty conscience. Their grown kids are born-again Christian Jerome, obnoxious college student Zora, and adolescent Levi, who wants to identify with ghetto kids despite his very middle-class family. They love each other, but they're not the happiest bunch. Howard recently cheated on Kiki with a family friend (and not a one-night stand floozy, as he told his wife). They're not really separated, but not really talking much, either. The kids are isolated, too: no one takes Jerome's Christianity, or any of his emotions, seriously; Zora is completely absorbed in her own little quest to dominate Wellington College politics; and Levi is getting deeper and deeper with a group of unhappy Haitian immigrants, while still pretending that he's going to school and holding down a weekend job. Plus, the family's nemeses, a rival British family headed by a Clarence Thomas-type who once insulted Howard in an academic throwdown, is moving in down the street.

The main plot of the story involves the Belseys moving outward and engaging both the upper class (the rival professor, Monty Kipps) and the lower (Carl, a talented kid from the Roxbury projects with a knack for poetry). The latter becomes part of a campus tug-of-war over affirmative action, and whether kids who aren't paying tuition through the nose can sit in on poetry seminars. The Conservative bootstrap effort is led by Kipps, while his wife and daughter fraternize heavily with the Belsey enemies. Meanwhile, Howard just wants tenure--but his wounded professional pride and his unfortunate libido keep him right in the miserable middle with everyone else. The crumbling marriage is the backdrop for all the chaotic dealings going on outside their house.

This indictment of academia is exactly what I expected/wanted from White Noise, and just didn't get. You don't need absurdism to highlight a system that's already absurd. You just have to describe it well, and Smith does that. She hits all the right character notes, too. Even less fleshed characters, like Jerome and Carlene Kipps (whose bond with Kiki pushes the plot along in very technical ways), don't feel too awkward. Other characters are spot-on--like Zora's pushy Lisa Simpson-ism as overcompensation for physical insecurities. And the poet/professor Claire, whose 60s-style politics and blithe narcissism reminded me of half the English professors I had in college.

But more than anything, I really loved Smith's prose. She has an amazing way of distilling the essence of things into a sentence or two that smacks you right in the face with its accuracy. By the end of the book, I wasn't even tired of the Belseys. I'd gladly read follow-up stories about them. Maybe not another whole novel, but some short stuff in the New Yorker or something. And I enjoyed this one much more than White Teeth. I look forward to what Smith comes up with next.

It was hard to pick favorite parts, but since it would be a shame to waste the Post-It flags littering my copy....

"Jerome said, 'It's like, a family doesn't work any more when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone. You know?' Kiki's kids always seemed to say 'you know' at the end of their sentences these days, but they never waited to find out if she did know. By the time Kiki looked up, Jerome was already a hundred feet away, tunnelling into the accepting crowd."

"Mozart's Requiem begins with you walking towards a huge pit. The pit is on the other side of a precipice, which you cannot see over until you are right at its edge. Your death is awaiting you in that pit. You don't know what it looks like or sounds like or smells like. You don't know whether it will be good or bad. You just walk towards it. Your will is a clarinet and your footsteps are attended by all the violins."

"God knows, even the story he ended up giving--a one-night stand with a stranger--had caused terrible damage. It broke that splendid circle of Kiki's love, within which he had existed for so long, a love (and it was to Howard's credit that he knew this) that had enabled everything else."

David Sedaris at Union Square Barnes & Noble

"If you read a story in Esquire and don't like it, there might be something wrong with the story. If you read a story in the New Yorker and don't like it, there's something wrong with you."

Tonight I saw David Sedaris kick off his latest book tour at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square. This is a victory, make no mistake. I have been trying for years to see Sedaris read live. There's always been a fatal scheduling conflict, or sold-out tickets. And my favorite consolation prize, a signed copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day procured by one of my favorite people, sits on my shelf in a place of honor. But I was never able to get to any of the events in Connecticut or Boston.

So today I left work and headed straight to Union Square, well in advance of the 7:00 start time. And I'm so glad I did--not only did I get one of the last seats available and bond with my neighbors, but Sedaris showed up an hour and a half early (!) just to sign books. I decided not to wait in line, but it was still extremely impressive. Even the store employees seemed nonplussed. Usually authors push through the reading, wearily answer some questions, and sigh through the signing line. I've never seen a writer voluntarily show up ahead of time to accommodate more people.

The reading itself was fantastic--probably the best I've ever attended. Sedaris was more energetic, more attractive, and more charming than I expected--definitely more so than he comes across on camera, or even on radio. He read one of the essays from When You Are Engulfed in Flames, and then some hilarious bits from his personal diary. Did I mention the energy? He just kept going. If there weren't eight million more people waiting for signatures after the talk, I'm pretty sure he would have kept plowing through silly jokes and the snippets from his journal.

And the questions were--get this--tolerable. Not a single person asked what his inspiration/influences are. That, my friends, is unprecedented. Unprecedented! The epigraph above came in response to someone's question about how his writing style has changed now that he's been published so much and in so many different places. It was cute.

The whole event was great from start to finish. It also sets the bar high for the next reading to come along. It's probably just as well that I won't be able to go to see Salman Rushdie tomorrow. Fatwa drama is such a downer.