May '10 Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

[Scheherazade]

In May, we will be reading the Pulitzer prize winner The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.

Please post your comments and questions in this thread.

[The Comedian]

I will be participating in this discussion. My book hasn't arrived yet, but should in the next couple days. Can't wait!

[applepie]

I will be participating in this discussion. My book hasn't arrived yet, but should in the next couple days. Can't wait!

I'm going to get my copy on order. Just remember, I'm taking your word that this is a good read

[Dark Muse]

Just started reading today!

[kasie]

I read this a few months ago and enjoyed it very much indeed. I'm not sure I will have time to read it again, though it would bear a re-reading, but if I may, I will drop into this thread from time to time to see what other readers make of it. I'm sure you will enjoy it but be warned - it is quite a long book so may take a while to complete.

[Dark Muse]

I just finished the first part of this book, and though there are moments in which I find it a bit difficult to follow on the whole this book is just the sort of thing that I like, and it does have my kind of humor to it.

The opening to this book had many elements which I quite enjoy. I love the mention of magic or illusion within books, and always finding it interesting, so I love Josef's fascination with Houdini and his training with Kornblum.

I like books which while are based in reality play with suggestions of the sureal or supernatural and bend the readers perception of reality, even if in only subtle suggestive ways. I loved the quest for the mystical golem.

Also I really like books that deal with ideas reality to escapism and liked the way in which the book revolved around this idea in various different ways, from the lock picking, and the flight to America.

[The Comedian]

I received my copy yesterday and got about 30 pages into it. So far I'm really enjoying the text, but responsibilities at home and work have kept me from running though it. I'll have more intelligent things to post a little later.

EDIT: I did note that the early narrative of Josef's flight from Prague parallels the story of Superman/Moses: favored son of a dying land sent to find a rebirth in American/new land.

[sadparadise]

Picking up my copy tonight. It will be a late one!

[Dark Muse]

EDIT: I did note that the early narrative of Josef's flight from Prague parallels the story of Superman/Moses: favored son of a dying land sent to find a rebirth in American/new land.

That is interesting. I have to admit that watching the movies they make is about as much as I know about comic books, and Superman was always really one of my least favorite comic heroes so I wouldn't even see the movie when it came out.

[kasie]

***POSSIBLE SPOILER***

DM - if you are like me, you will have learned a great deal more about comic books by the time you have finished K&C: I developed quite a respect for them as I read.

[Dark Muse]

***POSSIBLE SPOILER***

DM - if you are like me, you will have learned a great deal more about comic books by the time you have finished K&C: I developed quite a respect for them as I read.

I am starting to get that impression, and I am finding it interesting. I am thus quite enjoying Kavalier and Clays setting out to create their own comic. And I find the little historical background information about comic books that is offered to be rather interesting.

[Dark Muse]

I have to admit some end notes, footnotes, glossary, or some such thing for the Jewish references/terms in the book would have proven helpful. There has been more than one occasion when while reading I came across some Yiddish term and I am totally clueless as to what they are talking about.

Of course I can always, and do, look it up online. It would have been convenient if the book provided something.

[applepie]

My copy should be in today

[Dark Muse]

I find some things about this book to be quite fascinating. Though I never really seriously got into reading comics, I have always been on the fringe of being interested in them. Maybe it is just "lazy" of me that I won't take my time to read them, but I will see almost any movie made from comic books. And this day in age it seems like some of the better movies (at least for entertainment value) are taken from comics.

I am really finding this book quite enlightening in the whole comic book culture and I loved their devolvement of "The Escapist" Escapism in general is something I always find very interesting in books and this book really brings out the fact that comics are about more than just guys in tights fighting crime.

I like the way in which Joe at first starts out using the comics as a way to act out his own aggression and frustration at the situation, until the comics alone fail to truly satisfy his needs, and how "The Escapists" represents a combined alter ego between Joe and Sam.

[neilgee]

What I got from this book parallels what Dark Muse has said. I did read comics as a youngster but had no idea of the world the men who created them lived in, and obviously no suspicion of the homosexual element or the obscenity trail that comes later in the book.

Sorry I have not got much else to say but I read this novel about a year ago and the details are getting a little vague at the edges and though it's a good novel it's not the kind of thing I would read twice.