The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

by Michael Chabon | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 1841154938 Global Overview for this book
Registered by GlitterLover of Leyland, Lancashire United Kingdom on 6/29/2005
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3 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by GlitterLover from Leyland, Lancashire United Kingdom on Wednesday, June 29, 2005
RABCK-a-rama for wormyone

Amazon.co.uk Review
Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses, even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages lurid with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equaliser clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains". Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicentre of comics' golden age.

Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred ageing boys dreaming as hard as they could". Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out of a world gone completely mad. --Mary Park, Amazon.com




Journal Entry 2 by WormyOne from Brighton & Hove, East Sussex United Kingdom on Tuesday, July 5, 2005
ReetPetite picked this up for me at the unconvention (the annual national meet-up of the UK BookCrossing Group) and posted it and it arrived safely today. Thanks so much GlitterLover and ReetPetite. I'm off to cross it off my wish list. :-)

The blurb reads:

"One night in 1939, Josef Kavalier shuffles into his cousin Sam Clay's cramped New York bedroom, his nerve-racking escape from Prague finally achieved. Little does he realise that this is the beginning of an extraordinary adventure and even more fruitful business partnership. Together, they create a comic-strip called The Escapist, it's superhero a Nazi-busting saviour who liberates the oppressed around the world. The Escapist makes their fortune, but Joe can think of only one thing: how can he effect a real-life escape, and free his family from the tyranny of Hitler?"

Journal Entry 3 by WormyOne from Brighton & Hove, East Sussex United Kingdom on Friday, August 11, 2006
I struggled with the first third of this Pulitzer Prize winning book and it’s hard to put my finger on the reason. It’s a good tale, I liked the characters (particularly the crazier ones, like Kornblum) and there’s some great use of descriptive language. But it seemed to me a bit of a curate’s egg. As I read about the escape of Kavalier from the Prague ghetto in the run up to the second world war, pages passed in a flash, but then the book would launch into the history of the comic-book and I’d find myself struggling to get through each paragraph.

Maybe, overall, the problem for me was that the heroes of the novel are creators of comic-books and I’m just not very interested in comic-books. Maybe if their focus had been something which chimed with my interests, I’d have found it more absorbing.

I got more into it after the first third, pretty much once Kavalier and Clay’s romances started. Once the story focused on the character’s emotional lives, rather than the development of their careers, I was a whole lot more interested. Sometime between a half and two thirds of the way through, it started to remind me of John Irving’s novels – something about the way the book was a family saga, led by strong characters whose lives are influenced by tragic events not entirely within their control and whose responses are, to say the least, eccentric.

And I really enjoyed the final third, finally finding myself picking the book up because I was hooked on the story, rather than because I simply wanted to get through it to move onto the next book on Mount Toobie.

Journal Entry 4 by WormyOne at Brighton Railway Station in Brighton & Hove, East Sussex United Kingdom on Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Released 17 yrs ago (8/30/2006 UTC) at Brighton Railway Station in Brighton & Hove, East Sussex United Kingdom

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On the concourse, on the seats nearest the ticket barriers, shortly before 09:30.

Journal Entry 5 by TibetTibet from Brighton & Hove, East Sussex United Kingdom on Sunday, September 10, 2006
i was only passing through brighton station as i had come into town to register the birth of my son, and was on my way back up to london to go to work. caught sight of the book on one of the benches. sweet, i had been aware of travelling books so was glad to have found one.

i started reading the book without checking its blurb so i've been clueless as to what it was gonna be about. so far so good, though i've just got to the part where the guy before struggled for a bit, and i can entirely understand...that said the first few chapters were an enaging enough read.

i'm hoping it's gonna be as good as its made out to be though as it's not a book i would have picked up in shop.

Journal Entry 6 by TibetTibet from Brighton & Hove, East Sussex United Kingdom on Tuesday, October 24, 2006
it was alright and i did enjoy it. worth a read but not, in my opinion, of its pulitzer prize win.

released it at clapham junction - on a ledge at the top of the stairs above platform 11. monday 16th october about 7 or 8pm.

Journal Entry 7 by TibetTibet at Clapham Junction Station. in Clapham, Greater London United Kingdom on Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Released 17 yrs ago (10/16/2006 UTC) at Clapham Junction Station. in Clapham, Greater London United Kingdom

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i wish it well...

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