“Forget about what you are escaping from.
Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to.”
It is 1939 and Josef “Joe” Kavalier manages to flee Nazi-occupied Europe and emigrate to the United States to live with his cousin in New York City, Samuel Louis Clayman (or “Sammy Clay”). With a little help from his Czech magic teacher (Herr Bernard Kornblum), Joe sneaks his way across Europe hiding inside a coffin containing a traditional clay Jewish golem, the culturally heroic “golem of Prague.” Along the way, Joe narrowly escapes from the Nazis and travels through Japan and San Francisco before finally arriving in New York City. Even though American visas have been severely restricted, Joe is able to secure entry thanks to a happy accident (he was actually born in Ukraine in 1920, not within Czech territory). Back in Prague, he leaves behind his beloved brother Thomas, other siblings, his parents, grandparents, and a lifetime of memories (including a particularly harrowing experience in which he and his brother Thomas attempted to stage a daring Houdini-esque escape by leaping off the Charles Bridge and into the frigid River Moldau but they nearly drowned during the act and required the rescue of their teacher Herr Kornblum). Like many young boys at the time, Joe and Thomas were deeply inspired by the amazing feats of Harry Houdini.
Joe’s cousin Sammy, on the other hand, is seventeen years old (slightly younger than Joe), a polio survivor, and an omnivorous reader. He is fluent in both the classics as well as the pulps like The Shadow, The Avenger, and Doc Savage. He is described as not particularly handsome (his face is compared to an “inverted triangle”). When Joe arrives in New York City, he and Sammy are not only asked to share a room, but also a bed. And Sammy soon learns that Joe is a skilled artist who has been trained at the Academy of Fine Art in Prague which gives him an idea. The two cousins quickly find that proverbial spark of inspiration to create their own comic book, a superhero not unlike the wildly successful Superman (who was created the year prior in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster). At first, Joe suggests they create a Golem character, like the golem of Prague who guided him to America, but after acknowledging their shared admiration for Harry Houdini, they decide to create an illusionist superhero known as “The Escapist,” a magician who wears a blue uniform and is powered by a magic golden skeleton key. By day, he is gimp-legged Tom Mayflower; by night, he is The Escapist, a brilliant hero who always seems to find himself tied-up, manacled, imprisoned, enclosed, or entrapped while battling the villainous Nazi-esque Iron Chain.
Thus, at the peak of the Golden Age of comics, these two cousins combine their talents: the relentless writing of Sammy and the skilled visual artistry of Joe to create a unique new superhero. But how will they sell this idea to a big publisher? As it turns out, Sammy is currently employed as a low-level inventory clerk at Empire Novelties Incorporated, where Sheldon P. “Shelly” Anapol and his brother-in-law Jack Ashkenazy have been looking to break into the comics business: “You just get me a superman… then we’ll see about what you can handle or not.” Naturally, Empire Comics takes off and earns a fortune, but unsurprisingly, Joe and Sammy soon realize they are being exploited by Anapol and Ashkenazy as they are compelled to endlessly crank out issue after issue of The Escapist. And as The Escapist becomes a massive success, it is performed on the radio and merchandise is sold in stores all over the country. This is a very exciting time for Joe and Sammy, even though they are under no illusion about the unserious nature of their comic books. Sammy has always envisioned himself as a more serious literary figure, endlessly noodling away at his unfinished novel entitled American Disillusionment. And, on the side, Joe enjoys performing his magic illusionist routine in public as “The Amazing Cavalieri.”
“Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world, from Rabbi Hanina’s delectable goat to the river-clay Frankenstein of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital and kabbalistic chitchat –was, literally, talked into life.”
Over nearly 700 pages, and against the backdrop of World War II, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay follows Joe and Sammy from teenage obscurity into comic book titans whose offices are seated atop the Empire State Building. But in addition to exploring the wonderfully colorful world of Golden Age comics, Michael Chabon also offers an intimate dual-biography of both Joe and Sammy. For example, we learn a great deal about their love-life. First, we meet a captivating young bohemian woman and magazine illustrator named Rosa Luxemburg Saks, whom Joe accidentally spots sleeping naked on a bed through a window, and soon they fall in love (she is sometimes referred to as “the girl with the miraculous behind”). At the same time, Sammy also grapples with his own sexuality, eventually realizing he is gay, a fact that he reluctantly comes to accept over time despite fears of being persecuted for being a “fairy.” He falls in love with a man named Tracy Bacon, who performs the voice of The Escapist on the radio, but their relationship eventually comes to an untimely end when a party they attend is raided by the police and Sammy is forced to secretly perform gay sex acts on a government agent in order to avoid prosecution. It is a truly traumatizing and horrific scene, and it forces Sammy to retreat back into the closet (“he would rather not love at all than be punished for loving”). Tracy Bacon hops a train to Los Angeles in order to pursue a career as an actor, since The Escapist is expected to be adapted into a feature film.
But despite all the success of the cousins and their newfound romances, Joe and Sammy feel uneasy. Joe wrestles with survivor’s guilt after having escaped the Nazis. Over time, he grows increasingly hopeless about the darkening plight of his family back in Prague. He routinely speaks with the consulate, hoping to help them, but to no avail. Then his girlfriend Rosa connects Joe with an international aid organization known as Transatlantic Rescue which brings children from Nazi-occupied Europe to America. After much finagling, he finally arranges for his brother Thomas to cross the sea, but in a tragic twist of fate, the boat carrying Thomas is torpedoed by a German U-boat, killing all the children aboard. Following this and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Joe turns inward and grows embittered. He even apparently attempts suicide during one of his Houdini-esque stage performances as “The Amazing Cavalieri” before abruptly abandoning Rosa, Sammy, and the comics business in an effort to go fight the Germans. Seeking vengeance for the death of his brother, he enlists in the U.S. Navy and winds up at a remote station (Kelvinator Station) in Antarctica. Here, Joe faces numerous tribulations, including a gas leak that kills all his compatriots except a pilot named John Wesley Shannenhouse. The two of them spend a lonely, bleak, psychologically damaging period in near-darkness and isolation before discovering the existence of an enemy German station located across the ice. They decide to lead an unsanctioned raid on the German station (after Joe sends a surprise warning message: “We are coming to get you”). But while en route, their plane crashes and Shannenhouse dies of a burst appendix while Joe is left to face-off with the lone German geologist at the station by himself, but the German geologist is shot during the scuffle. Not wanting to actually the man, Joe goes to extraordinary lengths in an effort to save the man. Joe drags him all the way back across the ice to Kelvinator Station only to sadly discover upon arrival that the man has died. This whole incident, rather than making Joe feel satiated in revenge, leaves him feeling even more grief-stricken and traumatized.
Meanwhile, prior to Joe’s sudden departure, Rosa discovers she is pregnant with Joe’s child. All this time, she had been hoping Joe would propose to her so they could settle down together, but instead Joe abandoned her to join the Navy, leaving her utterly despondent. After briefly considering an abortion, Rosa and Sammy decide to get married (perhaps both hoping to mutually avoid disgrace –Rosa avoiding being single and pregnant while Sammy wants to avoid accusations of being gay). During this whole era, Sammy and Rosa periodically write to Joe, but he never writes back, leaving them completely in the dark as to what happened to him. Rosa gives birth to a baby boy and she and Sammy decide to name him Thomas (or “Tommy”) in honor of Sammy’s deceased brother. Although when Joe learns about the boy in letters, he is acutely aware that Tommy is his own son (Sammy’s homosexuality is something of an open secret among friends and family).
In time, Joe quietly returns to New York after getting rescued from Antarctica and recuperating in Guantanamo Bay. Nobody has seen or heard from him since December 1941. One day, upon his return to New York City, Joe accidentally crosses paths with his son, Tommy, at Louis Tannen’s, a supplier of tricks and supplies (Tommy is also a very skilled escapist like his father). And by now, Sammy is still in the comics business, having become the editor of Pharoah Comics (after having worked at a variety of other publications, such as Gold Star Publications, then Olympic Publications). Several times, he threatened to take a train west to California and escape his New York life, but he stays in New York beside Rosa to help raise Tommy (in fact, in addition to being spouses and co-parents, Sammy and Rosa bill themselves as a package-deal when it comes to the comics business).
After an emotional, albeit awkward, reunion with his old friends (which first sees Joe performing a ridiculous comic book-styled stunt atop the Empire State Building), Joe moves in with Rosa and Sammy, bringing along his huge comic book collection into their Cape Cod-styled home in Bloomtown, New York. At long last, Joe finally apologizes to Rosa for abandoning her and they rekindle their deep, undying passion for one another while Sammy is forced to answer for growing public scrutiny over the effects of comic books on the nation’s youth. He is hauled before a congressional committee for questions about allegedly deviant sexual activities that are encouraged within the pages of comic books. This all comes on the heels of a book entitled Seduction of the Innocent (1954) by Fredric Wertham, a prominent German-American youth psychiatrist. The book argues that comic books are encouraging youth delinquency and other criminal behavior, such as sexual deviance. For hours, Sammy is grilled on wild accusations about homosexual innuendo in comic books as well as rumors of a pedophilic relationship between popular superheroes like Batman and Robin. It is a highly embarrassing spectacle that puts Sammy’s personal life on full display in front of the whole country. In fact, Wertham’s book and subsequent senate committee (which led to the industry-created “Comics Code Authority” censorship group), are all historically accurate events that actually took place in the United States in the 1950s and led to significant upheaval in the comic book industry.
In the end, Joe and Rosa decide to stay together and raise Tommy; Joe quietly makes a bid to buy Empire Comics (by now, Joe and Sammy become enmeshed in various lawsuits over the rights to The Escapist); and the golem from Joe’s youth in Prague mysteriously finds its way back to Joe. Then Sammy suddenly departs for Los Angeles, allowing Joe and Rosa to live together), marking an emotionally bittersweet finale to the novel. Sammy leaves behind a marked-up old business card reading “Kavalier & Clay.”
In reading The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay for the first time, I found myself deeply absorbed in the business of Golden Age comic book-making (“the long underwear hero trade”). Throughout the novel, Michael Chabon offers an extensive history lesson on comic books, and indeed, he has thoroughly delved into all the major sources on the topic. Some of his sources included the children of creators like Will Eisner and Gil Kane, as well as legendary founders like Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, among many others. It really is impressive and makes me wants to research the history and lore of comic books in greater detail (admittedly, I have never been heavily interested in comics but I wouldn’t mind exploring them). Prior to reading this novel, I wasn’t aware of just how many comic book superheroes were created by immigrants or the children of immigrants, particularly Jewish immigrants, like Superman, created by Jerry Siegel (the son of Lithuanian immigrants fleeing antisemitism in the Russian Empire) and Joe Shuster (the son of Canadian Jews, whose mother fled Ukraine in the Russian Empire); or Batman, created by Bob Kane (whose family was of Ashkenazi Jewish descent and whose grandparents fled Eastern Europe for America); or even Captain America, who was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby (both the children of Jewish immigrants). In most cases, we see marginalized people creating heroes who will champion their own salvation. Here, I cannot help but draw comparisons to other mythological heroes, whether they are Greek heroes like Odysseus or Achilles, or Biblical heroes like David or Jesus –people need these heroic figures as a source of comfort and strength, especially in times of great struggle. And likewise I was particularly interested in Michael Chabon drawing our attention so starkly to other heroes, like Harry Houdini or the golem of Prague.
Before to reading The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay I was unaware of just how important a figure Harry Houdini was for young boys of the era (particularly young Jewish boys). Beginning with his first performance aptly titled “Metamorphosis,” Houdini comes to serve as an important source of inspiration for Joe and Sammy, later becoming immortalized as the superhero The Escapist. But it is precisely this concept of Harry Houdini’s “escapism” that, in my view, serves as a key theme in the book. All throughout The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, everyone seems to be longing to escape from something, whether it is Joe fleeing from the Nazi shadow sweeping over Europe, or Sammy escaping from the cultural shackles constraining his homosexuality in America. Sometimes people are escaping from other people, sometimes they are escaping from themselves. Either way, the desire to escape is ever-present.
But The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is also a novel about the American Dream. It is the story of two young men who struggle to rise in the world. They are both escape artists of a sort, fascinated by magic and comic books, and they are feverish readers of superhero lore and manage to turn their passion into material gain. Therefore, to what extent should we interpret this notion of “escapism” as connected to the American Dream? Is Michael Chabon suggesting the American Dream shares something in common with escapist fantasy? And, similarly, should we regard Houdini’s “autoliberation” performance as a powerful image of the American Dream? If so, what does the American Dream promise an escape from? An escape toward? Does it promise rebirth? An achievement of the impossible? A magic spectacle a la Houdini’s “Metamorphosis?”
Maybe comic book escapism is merely the modern iteration of ancient cultural stories and traditions, like the golem of Prague. We might be wrong to easily dismiss it. We often make the assumption that there is a fixed, enclosed plane of existence known as “reality” which is juxtaposed to the silly notion of comic book “escapism.” But perhaps reality, itself, is shaped by the very fantastical escapism offered through fiction and ancient mythology. After all, where would Joe and Sammy be in life without Houdini’s escapist fantasy? Without the adventures of Superman? Without the golem of Prague? Perhaps the impulse to escape into non-reality is actually what shapes and gives definition to our fluid concept of reality.
At any rate, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is almost laid out, itself, like a comic book, with numerous classic gripping adventures unfolding in Joe and Sammy’s real life, like Joe nearly being caught by Germans while traveling across Europe inside the golem coffin, or Sammy’s party getting raided by government agents, or Joe repeatedly facing-off with American Nazi activist Carl Ebling (who later makes violent bomb threats against Empire Comics before being arrested), and even a scene of Joe attempting to lunge himself off the Empire State Building like a superhero before his cable snaps (he narrowly survives by landing on a ledge, though it is later revealed to have merely been a hoax devised by Tommy in an effort to reunite Joe with Rosa and Sammy). There are numerous other minor characters and odd misadventures throughout the book, such as surprise-cameos from the likes of historical figures like Orson Welles and Salvador Dali (whom Joe rescues at a party after he gets his head trapped inside a deep-sea diving helmet), as well as comic book alter egos like “The Bug” (the alter ego of Tommy) or Sammy’s father’s vaudevillian alter ego, the “Mighty Molecule,” further blurring the line between fiction and reality. Some of the delightful pulp villains mentioned in the novel include the likes of The Saboteur, Mr. Machine Gun, The Gauntlet, Kapitan Evil, the Panzer, Seigfried Swastika Man, the Four Horsemen, Wotan the Wicked, and others (often they were stand-ins for Nazis). But my favorite secondary character created by Kavalier and Clay is assuredly the exploitative, sexualized “Luna Moth,” a huge-breasted supernatural Mistress of the Night and new Queen of Sumeria, a Moth Woman who works by day as a quirky librarian (Joe unsurprisingly took his inspiration for creating Luna Moth from his lovely girlfriend Rosa). Characters like Luna Moth are vividly-imagined and their stories are wonderfully woven into various chapters of the novel, making it seem as though we are, in fact, reading her story as it is written. In many of these cases, we are asked to consider the importance of comic books, not as vapid content devoid of depth, but rather a body literature reflecting something deeply important about the human condition.
Review of “The Escapist” Comic Book Series
After finishing The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I learned that Michael Chabon actually created a faux eight-part comic run of The Escapist. Imagine that! Seeing The Escapist come to life was no doubt the stuff of dream for him. And while these comics are apparently no longer available in print, being a Pulitzer completionist, I decided to track down copies off eBay. Suffice it to say, this was the right decision. In fact, in many ways, I enjoyed The Escapist comic books even more than The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
The eight volume Escapist comic series (produced by Dark Horse Comics) is a playful fourth wall-breaking collection that portrays Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay as if they were real historical comic book creators like Bob Kane or Siegel and Shuster. The Escapist comic amusingly declares it is “brought to you by the dedicated archivists at Dark Horse comics, the estates of Kavalier and Clay, and the implacable scholarship of Kevin McCarthy, widely acknowledged to be the world’s leading expert in ‘Escapistry.'” And in Michael Chabon’s introduction, he pretends to recall his first Escapist comic he bought in 1968, in which the Escapist battles a villain named Junkman who places the Escapist in a coma via an “atomic spike” of “superjunk.” These comics are rife with winking nods to the audience, and they read like a loving tribute to the history of comic-book making, in that the style and artwork wildly varies from book to book, from Golden Age and Silver Age homages, to graphic novel imitations, minimalist artwork, children’s comics, and even manga.
The comic run begins by giving an overview of the birth of The Escapist during the Golden Age of the ’30s and ’40s, with brief historical interludes, detailing when Sheldon Anapol merged Empire Novelties, Inc. with his brother-in-law Jack Ashkenazy’s Racy Publications, Inc. They initially only publishing Amazing Midget Radio Comics, later shortened to just Radio Comics. Then in 1946, Ashkenazy sold his shares to his brother in law and founded Pharaoh House, but in 1954, plummeting sales of superhero comics, and the impending loss of the Empire v. CD legal case, as well as the potential fallout from the publication of the book Seduction of the Innocent, Anapol also sold all his rights to DC Comics (to become the obscure “Sasquatch of comics”) while Kavalier continued to publish under Empire for “Adult Interest” comics. This all adds a fascinating bit of history to the larger story in the novel (there are many such historical notes throughout the comic run).
But there are also numerous secondary characters that appear in the comics, especially Luna Moth, Kid Vixen, Mr. Machine Gun, and The Escapist’s posse consisting of Dr. Alois “Big Al” Berg (who is freed from a carnival sideshow where he had been forced to perform as “The Ogre”), Omar (who is freed from enslavement under the Sultan of Khurvistan), Plum Blossom (who is freed from a Macau sweatshop), and Tom Mayflower himself (who is rescued from an orphanage in Central Europe). The first comic is perhaps the most important since it tells the story of the “passing of the key” from Uncle Max, known as the illusionist “Misterioso,” down to gimp-legged Tom who becomes the Escapist. He and his compatriots join the secretive international society known as “The League of the Golden Key” while vowing to battle the tyrannical enemy called the “Iron Chain,” and swearing a sacred oath to secure the liberation of all who toil in chains.
“To all those who toil in the bonds of slavery and the shackles of oppression, he offers the hope of liberation and the promise of freedom! Armed with superb physical and mental training, a crack team of assistants, and ancient wisdom, he roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny’s chains! He is –the Escapist!”
Here are a few random pictures I captured of these wonderful comic books with the intent of showcasing their unique artistic and stylistic diversity:
Some of these stories are silly, like “Sequestered,” which sees Tom Mayflower saddled with jury duty until he discovers a plot by the Iron Chain to frame an innocent man, or “Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been” which is a parody of Senator Joseph McCarthy (or Senator McCraven, as he is known in the comic) who is exposed for having a secret cosplay baby fetish. Other stories showcase sexualized imagery of Luna Moth and her sometimes-boyfriend Officer O’Hara. In one particularly memorable story, they are both taken to hell via a strange library book. Still other stories in the collection are sci-fi futurist tales like “The Escapist 2966.” And there are also new villains featured throughout these stories, like the stage performer Doc Hypnosis, or a rogue band of police officers secretly working for the Iron Chain, or the Luna Moth-nemesis named The Mechanist, and even a mysterious “Dark Woman” who reappears at key moments. Volume 7 is an entire multi-chapter story about the top hat-clad villain named Mr. Machine Gun.
Throughout the comics, The Escapist travels from beneath Empire City to the depths of the ocean and beyond; from a fictional Asian country called Quodesia (a parody of Maoist China) to the frontlines of the Vietnam War; entrapped inside a giant time capsule at the 1940 World’s Fair to the lair of a secret Nazis cohort and onward to a trapped submarine stuck at the bottom of the ocean during the World War II; from breaking into prison to the far reaches of outer space. Some of The Escapist’s friends are also briefly lured by the enemy, as in “The Siren Song of Circe O’Shaughnessy” or “To Reign in Hell.” The comics also feature hilarious fake letters to the editor as well as nonsensical advertisements that might well have been found in old comic books, and even a fake news update about a local man named Louis Bartholomew who discovers a rare Radio Comics issue (The Escapist #179) hidden away in his basement, though there is no record of this comic ever having been created. It’s all good fun and worth a few chuckles, especially for serious comic book nerds. However, I should also note, there are some morally weighty comics featured in this collection, most notably the controversial “The Final Curtain,” in which we find Big Al recovering in a hospital. When The Escapist visits, he meets another patient named Lewis Washington who requests a final escape for himself, namely a medically-induced assisted suicide, to help him escape from his painful life filled with dark memories. Another heavy story is “Electricity,” a dark tale about a woman who is raped and becomes accidentally entangled in a robbery before she shoots the culprit and is given a death sentence by means of electric chair, all the while still pining for the affection of a different man (whom she just so happens to spot moments before she dies).
At any rate, this comic book collection is very much worth your time if you enjoyed The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. In fact, it won the “Best Anthology” award at the 2005 Eisner Awards. It also became notable for featuring the final story of “The Spirit” by the late Will Eisner (The Godfather of the Graphic Novel), to whom Escapist #6 is dedicated. In this way, despite being a fictional creation, The Escapist has actually managed to leave an indelible mark on the history of comics.
Brian K. Vaughan also apparently created his own contemporary take on The Escapist. His story follows the son of a longtime Escapist fan who uses his inheritance to purchase the rights to The Escapist and then joins together with two fellow artists to somewhat accidentally assume the superhero persona of The Escapist and solve a real crime. I have yet to read this one, but it’s readily apparent that both he and all of the talent involved in bringing The Escapist to life have had such fun filling the pages with homages, pastiches, tributes, and many inside-jokes and gags. The Escapist reads like a love letter to comic book fans.
Notable Quotations:
“In later years, holding forth to an interviewer or to an audience of aging fans at a comic book convention, Sam Clay liked to declare, apropos of his and Joe Kavalier’s greatest creation, that back when he was a boy, sealed and hog-tied inside the airtight vessel known as Brooklyn, New York, he had been haunted by dreams of Harry Houdini” (opening line).
“The long run of Kavalier & Clay –and the true history of the Escapist’s birth—began in 1939, toward the end of October, on the night that Sammy’s mother burst into his bedroom, applied the ring and iron knuckles of her left hand to the side of his cranium, and told him to move over and make room in his bed for his cousin from Prague” (4).
“At the age of fourteen, he had decided to consecrate himself to a life of timely escape” (24, on Josef).
“But Kornblum had never had so naturally gifted a student, but his own discipline –which was really an escape artist’s sole possession—had not been passed along. He didn’t tell them what he now privately believed: that Josef was one of those unfortunate boys who become escape artists not to prove the superior machinery of their bodies against outlandish contrivances and the laws of physics, but for dangerously metaphorical reasons. Such men feel imprisoned buy chains –walled in, sewn up in layers of batting. For them, the final feat of autoliberation was all too foreseeable” (37).
“There’s good money in comic books…” (73).
“In 1939 the American comic book, like the beavers and cockroaches of prehistory, was larger and, in its cumbersome way, more splendid than its modern descendant. It aspired to the dimensions of a slick magazine and to the thickness of a pulp, offering sixty-four pages of gaudy bulk (including the cover) for its ideal price of one thin dime. While the quality of its interior illustrations was generally execrable at best, its covers pretended to some of the skill and design of the slick, and to the brio of the pulp magazine. The comic book cover, in those early days, was a poster advertising a dream-movie, with a running time of two seconds, that flickered to life in the mind and unreeled in splendor just before one opened to the stapled packet of coarse paper inside and the lights came up. The covers were often hand painted, rather than merely inked and colored, by men with solid reputations in the business, journeymen illustrators who could pull off accurate lab girls in chains and languid, detailed jungle jaguars and muscularly correct male bodies whose feet seemed to carry their weight” (74).
“Comic books were Kid Stuff, pure and true, and they arrived at precisely the moment when the kids of America began, after ten years of terrible hardship, to find their pockets burdened with the occasional superfluous dime” (77-78).
“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. The desire he felt, watching Joe, was unquestionably physical, but in the sense that Sammy wanted to inhabit the body of his cousin, not possess it. 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” (113).
“Sammy’s real talents, it developed, lay elsewhere than in the pencil or brush” (145).
“And from reading the comic books that featured art by the great Louis Fine, like the one in his hands right now, Jow learned to view the comic book hero, in his formfitting costume, not as a pulp absurdity but as a celebration of the naked (albeit tinted) human form in motion” (176).
“The funny thing was that, as hard as he had fought with Sheldon Anapol for them to be able to keep plugging away at the Nazis, fighting the funny-book wars was getting tougher all the time; though futility was not an emotion Sammy was accustomed to experiencing, he had begun to be plagued by the same sense of inefficacy, of endless make-believe, that had troubled Joe from the first” (296).
“Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity” (325).
“The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place” (339).
“…but Sammy had been in love with men nearly all his life…” (372).
“Sammy jerked his hand away. Regardless of what he felt for Bacon, it was not worth the danger, the shame, the risk of arrest and opprobrium” (420).
“God damn it, you know damn well the Escapist doesn’t fly!” (538).
“Having lost his mother, father, brother, and grandfather, the friends and foes of his youth, his beloved teacher Bernard Kornblum, his city, his history –his home—the usual charge leveled against comic books, that they offered merely an easy escape from reality, seemed to Joe actually to be a powerful argument on their behalf. He had escaped, in his life, from ropes, chains, boxes, bags, and crates, from handcuffs and shackles, from countries and regimes, from the arms of a woman who loved him, from crashed airplanes and an opiate addiction and from an entire frozen continent intent on causing his death” (575).
“The shaping of a golem, to him [Joe], was a gesture of hope, offered against hope, in a time of desperation” (582).
“The age of the costumed superhero had long passed. The Angel, the Arrow, the Comet and the Fin, the Snowman and the Sandman and Hydroman, Captain Courageous, Captain Flag, Captain Freedom, Captain Midnight, Captain Venture and Major Victory, the Flame and the Flash and the Ray, the Monitor, the Guardian, the Shield and the Defender, the Green Lantern, the Red Bee, the Crimson Avenger, the Black Hat and the White Streak, Cat-Man and the Kitten, Bulletman and Bulletgirl, Hawkman and Hawkgirl, the Star-Spangled Kid and Stripsey, Dr. Mid-Nite, Mr. Terrific, Mr. Machine Gun, Mr. Scarlet and Miss Victory, Doll Man, the Atom and Minimidget, all had fallen beneath the whirling thresher blades of changing tastes, an aging readership, the coming of television, a glutted marketplace, and the unbeatable foe that had wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of the great heroes of the forties, only the stalwarts at National –Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and a few of their cohorts—soldiered on with any regularity or commercial clout…” (589).
On the 2001 Pulitzer Prize Decision:
The 2001 Pulitzer Fiction jury consisted of returning chair, Gail Caldwell, and two prior winners of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (including Alison Lurie, who also previously served as a Pulitzer Fiction judge):
- Chair: Gail Caldwell (1951-present) was born and raised in Amarillo, Texas and attended Texas Tech University before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin where she obtained two degrees in American studies. She was an instructor at the University of Texas until 1981 and taught feature writing at Boston University before working as the arts editor of the Boston Review and wrote for other publications like the New England Monthly and the Village Voice. However, she was primarily renowned for her many years serving as the chief book critic for The Boston Globe (1985-2009). Caldwell would later win the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She served several times on the fiction jury for the Pulitzer Prize; serving as chair of the jury in both 1995 and 1997. As of the time I am writing this review, she apparently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has written three memoirs: A Strong West Wind (2006), Let’s Take the Long Way Home (2010), and New Life, No Instructions (2014). She has been open about her childhood bout of polio and her struggles with alcoholism.
- Alison Lurie (1926-2020) was a Professor of English at Cornell University who won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for her novel Foreign Affairs. Click here to read my full review of her life and Pulitzer prize-winning novel.
- Richard Ford (1944-present) is a novelist who won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Independence Day. Click here to read my full review of his life and Pulitzer prize-winning novel.
Notably, jury member Gail Caldwell also won a Pulitzer Prize this same year in 2001 in the Criticism category “for her insightful observations on contemporary life and literature” in The Boston Globe.
The other finalists in 2001 were The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams and Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (Oates had previously been nominated for the Pulitzer in 1993 and 1995, as well).
The annual jury report to the Pulitzer Board included a page-long assessment for each nominee. For The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, I have faithfully copied their assessment below:
“Michael Chabon’s rollicking homage to American popular culture owes its heart to the golden age of comics, but its soul belongs to the somber tread of history. By imagining the collaboration between two graphic artists in pre-war New York, Chabon has opened the door to a wild expanse of intersecting plots and themes: the pen-and-ink heroics of pulp fiction and comics; the influence (and moral imperatives) of mass culture in a world confronted with Hitler’s reach. Brilliantly conceived and passionately rendered, ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay’ moves with the power of a locomotive, but its moral center is what sustains the momentum: Chabon understands the transcendent power of myth (artistic or religious) as well as the earth-bound charms of fantasy, adventure, and old-fashioned romance. Funny, wrenching, and razzle-dazzle wise, this novel is in love with the sights and smells and sounds of life lived day-to-day. Its creator seems equally reverent about the English language and the form of the novel itself.”
In interviews, Michael Chabon has reiterated an amusing story about when he first learned he had won the Pulitzer Prize. When the phone call came, his eight months pregnant wife, Ayelet, answered the phone (apparently the person on the other end was a literary correspondent at The Associated Press). After listening for a few seconds, she started screaming and ran outside carrying the phone to find Michael in the yard. She then leaped into his arms and told him the good news. When Michael finally picked up the telephone, the correspondent on the other end simply replied, “I gather you’ve heard.”
Who Is Michael Chabon?
Michael Chabon (pronounced “Shay-bonn”) was born in Washington DC in 1963 to an Ashkenazi Jewish family (his parents were physicians and lawyers). He recalls writing his first short story at the age of ten which inspired his future career. His parents divorced when he was eleven and his mother moved into a diverse, progressive community and she started smoking marijuana. Chabon’s father first introduced him to radio serials and comic books at a young age which quickly developed a lifelong love of comics (and later inspired elements of The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay).
Chabon studied at Carnegie Mellon University for one year before transferring to the University of Pittsburgh, graduating in 1984. He subsequently received a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of California, Irvine. He wrote his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, while working on his master’s thesis. Amazingly for a literary debut, it was well-received well and became bestseller. After its publication, Newsweek falsely and amusingly identified Chabon as a gay author (a mistake he laughed off and even celebrated).
His second novel, Wonder Boys, was also a bestseller and was made into a blockbuster movie starring Michael Douglas and Tobey Maguire. His third novel was, of course, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2001 and many other awards. To date, he has penned five more novels (totaling eight), as well as collections of short stories, comic books, nonfiction, a memoir, and other works. He is often regarded as a defender of, and an experimenter in, various forms of genre fiction. He has won numerous literary awards from the O. Henry and PEN/Faulkner to the Hugo, Nebula, and Pulitzer (among many others). Chabon is also a screenwriter, having worked on movies and series like John Carter, Spider-Man 2 (the best Spider-Man movie!) and Star Trek (Chabon is a lifelong Trekkie –which gets high praise from me!)
In 2014, Amazon fell into a dispute with top five publisher Hachette, and it even stopped taking pre-orders for books published by Hachette. Chabon was one of hundreds of authors who signed an open letter condemning Amazon.
Politically, he has identified in interviews as something akin to a liberal, progressive Jew. He is a fierce critic of Donald Trump and the seemingly inexorable decay Trump’s right-wing authoritarian movement has unleashed upon the United States and around the world, as well (for example, Chabon is also a critic of the state of Israel and other militant right-wing countries).
Chabon has been married twice. First to poet Lollie Groth in 1987, but after the success of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, the imbalance of their careers created problems in the marriage and they divorced in 1991. He then married Israeli-born writer Ayelet Waldman in 1993. Apparently, their mutually creative relationship inspired the fictional relationship of Sammy and Rosa in The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Chabon and Waldman live together in Berkeley, California. They have four children.
Chabon has explained that he sticks to a fairly strict writing routine, stating in a 2012 “All Things Considered” interview that he writes from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. each day, Sunday through Thursday, and he tries to write 1,000 words a day. He also gave a wonderful glimpse into his Berkeley, California writer’s studio to PBS in 2016. Inside his studio were action figures, vintage science fiction, and old vinyl records.
Film Adaptations:
- None, though there was considerable buzz about a feature film adaptation that was in process throughout the 2000s, but the film never materialized. More recently, in 2019, a Showtime miniseries was announced but this still has yet to materialize.
Further Reading:
- I am mostly unfamiliar with Michael Chabon’s bibliography, though there are a few novels that seem compelling to me: Wonder Boys (1995), The Yiddish Policeman’s Union (2007), Telegraph Avenue (2012), and his most recent book Moonglow (2016). If any passing wanderer has a pressing recommendation for me, please feel free to drop me a line below.
- Note: In an afterward to The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon responds to questions about whether or not he would ever write a sequel to Kavalier & Clay, saying: “I do intend to do so –maybe. Someday.” He further states: “For the only true sequel is the one that flickers briefly into being in your mind, O my friend by the fireside, in the moments after you read the last paragraph and lay the book down.” I guess the verdict is still out, but in more recent editions of the novel, he has included a few brief chapters that were cut from the text before publication, such as “Breakfast in the Wreck” wherein Sammy meets a man named Felix Landauer, a teacher whose hand he shakes just like many other men’s hands over the years (implying a homosexual dalliance) the day after his humiliating congressional grilling, and “The Return of the Amazing Kavalieri” wherein Joe speaks to Tommy’s fifth grade class (where Felix Landauer is Tommy’s teacher) and performs an escape stunt that doesn’t go as planned. There is also “The Crossover” and lastly there is the original conclusion to the novel entitled “Fifty Dollars Takes It Home” which is an imagined New Yorker article whose author meets Sam Clay and Rosa at a comics convention in 1988, and Sam draws a rendering of the Escapist, offering fifty dollars to take it home, or two for ninety. By now, Joe is dead but Sam spends his time traveling the country with his ex-wife Rosa after having lost a lot of money in legal battles over the rights to The Escapist (interestingly enough, the rights to the Escapist have eventually been picked up by DC Comics in this fictional timeline), Tommy is now a stage magician, and Sammy occasionally works with his godson Ethan Kavalier, the second son of Rosa and Joe.
Literary Context 2000-2001
- 2000 Nobel Prize Winner: awarded to French-Chinese writer Gao Xingjian (b. 1940) “for an œuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama.”
- 2000 National Book Award Winner: In America by Susan Sontag
- 2000 Booker Prize Winner: The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
- Per Publishers Weekly, the top-selling book in 2000 was The Brethren by John Grisham. Other books on the bestseller list included novels by Tom Clancy, Danielle Steel, Nicholas Sparks, James Patterson, as well as apocalyptic Christian “Left Behind” novels by Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye.
- In 2000, the final original Peanuts comic strip was published by Charles M. Schulz. It was published on February 13th and Schulz died on February 12th.
- Stephen King’s novella Riding the Bullet was published in e-book format only, making it the world’s first mass-market electronic book.
- Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks was published (the sixth “Culture” novel).
- Jupiter by Ben Bova was published.
- True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey was published.
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski was published.
- Code to Zero by Ken Follett was published.
- Portrait of an Artist, as an Old Man by Joseph Heller was published.
- When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro was published.
- Robert Jordan’s Winter’s Heart was published (the ninth “Wheel of Time” book).
- Robert Jordan – Winter’s Heart
- The Prometheus Deception by Robert Ludlum was published.
- A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin was published (the third book in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” Game of Thrones series).
- The Truth by Terry Pratchett was published.
- Omerta by Mario Puzo was published.
- Michael Stackpole published two more Star Wars Expanded Universe books in the New Jedi Order series.
- The Human Stain by Philip Roth was published.
- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi was published.
- White Teeth by Zadie Smith was published.
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling was published (the fourth book in the Harry Potter series).
Did the Right Book Win?
I was a bit trepidatious about embarking on this epic novel, and admittedly, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is very long and gets mired in tedium here and there, but it is filled with such playful, colorful comic book imagery that it’s hard to resist its appeal. The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay wound up being an extraordinary reading experience for me. Not only is this a very funny novel, but it also offers a wonderful portrait of New York City during the Golden Age of comics. And it is a bittersweet intimate dual-biography that has a great deal to say about the idea of “Escapism” and its connection to the American Dream. As such, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a superb choice for the Pulitzer in 2001.
Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Random House, Trade Paperbacks, New York, New York, 2012 (originally published in 2000). Dedicated “to my father.” Note that Michael Chabon gave a wonderful interview to the John Adams Institute about the influence of his father on this novel.
Click here to return to my survey of the Pulitzer Prize winners.