The hearings of the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1954 would put a damper on the comic book world for several years, thanks in large part, to the book Chabon mentioned, The Seduction of the Innocent by Frederic Werthem, which I highly suggest you look at in the Mill Vallley Public Library for a truly fascinating throwback to some of the concerns that arose surrounding this art form.  (The Mill Valley Library will feature a display on many of the books discussed in Werthem’s book,  so keep your eyes peeled!) Sammy’s take on the matter, after being ousted on national television as a “subersive” homosexual whose story lines always involved a sidekick who must surely have been proof of the author’s gay tendencies with the horrific side-affect of turning all the  American, comic-book-reading youth gay is, “Dr. Frederic Werthem was an idiot; it was obvious that Batman was not intended consciously or unconsciously to play Robin’s corrupter: he was meant to stand in for his father, and by extension for the absent, indifferent, vanishing fathers of the comic-book-reading boys of America” (631). Which may make one wonder if, in large part, besides the theme of escapism and imagination, besides the story of the dawning of Comic Books against the backdrop of a horrific war, this story is ultimately about family and hope.

Final thoughts? Reactions?

Then, Joe comes home, and we depart from him for a bit to catch up with Sammy, Tommy, and Rosa. We see Sammy, awkwardly struggling to fulfill the role of father, and his wife, Rosa, making a name for herself in the comic business by honing her meticulous precision and drawing skills, and Tommy, clever and more like his real father than he knows. Finally, after meeting with Tommy in secret and the Escapist stunt, all three are reunited. The reunion was well done: it wasn’t overly emotional or sentimental, but it felt good to witness the familiarity between Rosa and Joe, especially after all that Joe (and, no doubt, Rosa) has been through. The companionship between all four of them is still there.

But questions arise: where is Rosa going the day she meets Tommy in the train as he’s off to visit Joe? Rosa’s wearing a perfume that Tommy knows she hasn’t worn in forever, and rather than blowing up at him, hugs him and thanks him, perhaps for stopping her from doing something she would later regret (an affair?).

Why does Joe jump? Does he go through with the stunt as a favor to Tommy? Is he so utterly confused and forlorn about what to do with what he cannot fix that he no longer cares?

What does it mean that the Golem comes back into the story? (Recall that in Joe’s little closet, Sammy and Tommy found numerous drawings of the Golem.)

How will it end? Tune in next week, faithful reader, for the final installment of our epic adventure as we come to the final act (presumably) of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

How could he begin to say how happy he had been, this last month or so, in the radiant focus of Bacon’s regard, how mistaken Bacon was in wasting that regard on him. No one as beautiful, as charming and poised and physically grand, as Bacon could possibly taken an interest in him. (pg 407)

These sections of Kavalier and Clay (pages 360-440 and 440-500) are a fulcrum, a pivot point, a crossroads around which the possible paths of their futures lay spread out like spokes on a bike wheel, sign posts arrowing off in different directions. Down one way Thomas lands in New York and becomes the third member of a rapidly growing family in a swanky new apartment. Down another he drowns, killed by emotionless Nazis, another nameless body in another grim news story, leaving Josef alone, an escapist with no way out. Or he could run, an art he has by this point mastered, abandon his superhero mask and Clark Kent glasses and disappear into tundraed wasteland of loneliness, the only place on earth the machinations of war hasn’t crushed.

Sammy has his own crossroads. One leads him off to California to live in debauchery and ecstasy through the Golden Age of Hollywood. Or he could turn down the dark and rugged path that leaves him half-dead in an alley, broken, abused, and without recourse, an unwitting harbinger of Stonewall and Harvey Milk. A third path leaves him trapped in a marriage forged not out of love but from of duty and respect, a life as a failing Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent, his secret identity locked away in a closet, drowning in mothballs and failed attempts to forget.

By the start of Part VI, The League of the Golden Key, both men have made their choices, selected a path and run helter-skelter down its rocky, fragmented terrain. Soon enough they found the narrow road constricting, suffocating, empty, but, rather than turn back and start again they kept walking, accepting the journey without a thought about the destination. Sometimes the trees would thin and they would get glimpses of each other, their paths momentarily angling toward each other before veering sharply in the other direction. When Sammy begins to suspect that Joe is the masked marauder threatening to turn himself into a Jackson Pollack painting on 5th Avenue the trees part, the ferns thin out, the gravel smoothes, and the two journeymen begin to realize just how parallel their paths really were. The man in the dinner jacket falling through the air, his parachute just out of arms’ reach isn’t oblivious to his impending death. He knows the consequences of his decision to fall from the plane, but it is the path he chose and he will follow it through until the end.

-AxB

Nothing seems to have been quite as influential in shaping Sammy and Joe’s art as their exposure to Citizen Kane in 1941:

All of the dissatisfactions he [Joe] had felt in his practice of the art form he had stumbled across within a week of his arrival in America, the cheap conventions, the low expectations among publishers, readers, parents, and educators, the spacial constraints that he had been struggling against in the pages of Luna Moth, seemed capable of being completely overcome, exceeded, and escaped. The Amazing Cavalieri was going to break free, forever, of the nine little boxes.

‘I want us to do something like that,’ he said. (p. 361)

What a beautiful and fascinating passage! Chabon has mentioned Joe’s frustration several times throughout the book, but never with as precise examples as this list. Notice, too, that the words “escaped”and “free”, the essences of the novel, are featured in Joe’s moment of epiphany. Often called one of the greatest films of all time, it’s easy to see why Welle’s directorial style captured his fellow artists’ admiration and awe. From his classing panning scenes to atmospheric shots where light and cigarette smoke create ominous tension, Welles changed the way people looked at movies. He used different artistic conventions to seemlessly convey,  in pitch-perfect narration, his story.

“It was that Citizen Kane represented, more than any other movie Joe had ever seen, the total blending of narration and image that was–didn’t Sammy see it?–the fundamental principle of comic book storytelling, and the irreducible nut of their partnership…Citizen Kane was like a comic book.” (362) Although I would like to spend another several paragraphs or so looking at what the last 7 words of Joe’s observation mean (could the idea be reversed: a comic book is like a movie? Then why choose one or the other? Which media form tells a better story? What does each form do that the other can’t?), at this point, I would like to bring up the idea, just to ponder, of what Chabon is doing: writing a novel which in turn, describes a graphic novel.

It has to be hard, on some level, to write about a visual medium, in poart because, the very defining feature of what you’re writing about has been taken away. It reminds me of Magritte’s famous picture of the pipe with the words “ceci n’est pas une pipe”.  We are receiving Joe and Sammy’s comic book in translation–from image, to word. One of the beauties of the English Language is that it allows us to communicate on several levels–we can respond to the sound of the narration (aural), the words of the narration (oral), the story (read: idea) of the narration, or the visual images that we receive when we read.  Although we are allowed to create our own idea of what the Escapist looks like, we are also given fairly concrete descriptions. Would you have liked Chabon to have included a few sketches in the novel, or do you prefer to leave it up to your own imagination? How successful do you think Chabon’s novel is in terms of combining the overarching Joe and Sammy storyline with the art, style and tone of their creation? Do the occaisonal chapters in which the reader is plunged into their graphic novel (albeit, without any graphics) work seemlessly for you, or are they jarring? Would you have opted to read a graphic novel that told Joe and Sammy’s story? How much of a wider audience do you think Chabon has attracted to an art form (comic books) that tends to have a relatively selective niche?

~AB

Jim Steranko is a legend in the comic book scene. In the mid 1970s he published Chandler: Red Tide, considered by many to be the first true “graphic novel.“A prolific illustrator who developed his own approach to the art form, Steranko’s work includes: “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.”; “Captain America”; “the Shadow”; “Superman #400″; “X-Men #50-51″ and “The Steranko History of Comics I & II”. Steranko has illustrated numerous other comic book covers and storylines. He did the first production art for Raiders of the Lost Ark & has worked on many other films, including Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula film.  Steranko also created his own publishing company, Supergraphics, which published a printed tabloid called Comixscene in the early 70s (later to morph into Prevue), as well as “The Steranko History of Comics I & II”.  Steranko’s work has been exhibited all over the world, including the Louvre and Australia’s  Sydney Opera House .Additionally, Steranko is an accomplished and talented musician.

As for Steranko’s influence on Chabon, consider: first, Chabon’s love for and knowledge of comic books, secondly, Mr. Steranko had an early career as an escape artist before becoming a renowned comic book artist (remind you of a certain character in our book?). His career as a magician was the inspiration for Jack Kirby’s character Mr. Miracle (who clearly influenced the Escapist).

Let's Level with Lee! © Lee Hester, 2007, ARR

Jim Seranko, Michael Chabon and J. David Spurlock

Steranko-Chabon art print © Jim Steranko, 2001, ARR.

Steranko’s Artwork for an event with Chabon and Steranko.

Jim Steranko, Michael Chabon, J. David Spurlock.

If you’ve come this far and are still reading, here’s an older article from “Metroactive” (a Silicon-valley based news source) which discusses Steranko’s life and work in conjunction with Chabon’s novel.  The article has some fantastic quotes from Steranko, as well as a great photo of a young Steranko removing shackles from around his torso.

“Will he?” she said, and, lifting the wrapped dish, she looked him in the eye for the first time all evening.

Though it would recur often enough in his memory in later years, he would never know exactly what she had meant by that look.   (p.313)

Pages 300-367 are all about beginnings.  Tracy Bacon, Luna Moth and her ordinary other self (Rosa Saks), and the Amazing Cavalieri arrive on stage waving their capes like magicians at the start of a magic act.  The boys start a new comic book, Joe channels his desire to fight Nazis into new creative and romantic prospects, and Sammy finally falls in love, a kind of magic in itself.  Not only are they growing up into responsible men, but the childish exploits of the comic book are maturing and developing, adopting Orson Welles as its mentor.

There is something incredibly romantic and sad about how Tracy and Sammy open their hearts to each other.  Kissing on top of the Empire State Building – a first kiss, no less – hovers in the fantasies of many girls, and for Sammy to experience it with Tracy during a time when they both risk death or, at the very least, imprisonment, imbues the act with risk and daring that only heightens the romance.

But this isn’t their story, not quite yet.  Sammy and Tracy are only in the beginning, when a relationship is still furtive and tentative.  The first steps of the Amazing Cavalieri are stronger and more determined.  Joe puts on his dark blue suit with gold piping and becomes Cavalieri, like Clark Kent entering a phone booth and stepping out Superman.  He is a man learning to be a superhero, figuring out how to play to his strengths and misdirect over his weaknesses.  He is a hero forged out of tragedy and death who exercises his demons and exacts his revenge under the protection of anonymity.  He even comes with his own pre-packaged villain, the Saboteur by night, Carl Eberling by day.  By battling the dastardly and helplessly inept Saboteur, Joe, as the Escapist, can finally put his frustration to rest.  He has a good life now, a good girlfriend, two good jobs, and hope for the future, both for his family and for his comic book career.  But, like all good tales, darkness lurks around the corner, it must.  There is no such thing as a happy ending, and, with 269 pages to go there is probably a great deal more anguish to come.

The clerk or secretary–a woman, more often than not–pinned to a hard chair by a thousand cubic feet of smokey, rancid air that caught like batter in the blades of the ceiling fans, deafened by the thunder of filing cabinets, dyspeptic, despairing and bored, would look up and see that Joe’s thick thatch of curls had been deformed by his headgear into a kind of glossy black hat, and smile.(178)

What a palpable description! Reading it, you can see the classic 1940s office recreated in old black and white movies; you can feel the murky air clinging to everything, crushing the poor characters of the stagnant, hot and oppressive office.

Chabon does an excellent job of creating evocative descriptions, but something about the tone of the book feels too…easy. I don’t mean that it was in any way easy to write, but the style is too polished for some of the subject matter, at least, to me. I want a little more rawness in the telling of Joe’s escape and his haunting thoughts of his family. I want more grit: instead, I feel like we were lifted from right when Joe and Sam make their deal to publish their book and gently set down when they’re somewhat famous and working in the Empire State Building, the plot progressing forward on its smooth, even pace. How many years did we suddenly skip by?

The book is beautifully written, but something about the narrative keeps me at a gentle distance. How do you feel about Chabon’s writing style? Does it work for you?

~AB

Reading from pages 66 to 122 – the beginning bits of Part Two, A Couple of Boy Geniuses – details the creation of Kavalier and Clay’s superhero The Escapist.  Their masked avenger bubbles around in their brains like Achaean organisms in prehistoric oceans, sparked into life by war and death and loss, by adolescence and lust, inspiration and desperation.  In every sense of the word, The Escapist truly is a Frankenstein.  He carries the soul of The Molecule, Sam’s commitmentphobic father, the spirit of Bernard Kornblum, the desire of Clay, and the melancholy of Kavalier.

Both Kavalier and Clay need rescuing.  Kornblum rescued Josef twice, once from the frozen river after his own escape failed miserably and later by shipping him to Lithuania to escape from Prague and the disappointments of his family.  But he’s just as trapped in New York City as he was back home, trapped with future full of poverty, suffering, and familial death.

Clay’s confinement is largely economical and psychological, but it doesn’t make his need for freedom any less valid.  He has spent his whole life trapped by his mother’s lack of expectations, his lack of artistic talent, cleverness, and skill, and his polio-ridden body.  His chance of escape comes in the guise of his father, Alter Klayman, a circus strongman.  “In publicity photographs, where he often posed shirtless or in a skintight leotard, he appeared smooth as a polished ingot, but in street clothes he had an unwieldy, comical air and, with the dark hair poking out at his cuffs and collar, he looked nothing so much as a pants-wearing ape, in a cartoon satirizing some all too human vanity.”  But, like all dead-beat dads, The Molecule puts himself before his own son and runs off in the middle of the night after promising to take his son on the road with him.

The creation of the Escapist allows both Josef and Sam to draw their own escape, literally and figuratively.  He is them and their families, their faults and failures, their hopes and dreams drawn in India ink.  But extrication in practise is always more difficult than what is theorized on paper, and neither boy will find the door to a better life wide open and waiting.  Conversation begets creation, but action forces development and, perhaps more importantly, interference (most likely in the sultry form of Rose Saks) spurs creativity.

~AxB

Initially, I didn’t really like Sammy. His tough-boy bravado left me feeling irritated. He seems only concerned about himself; choosing not to reflect on the events that his cousin and his family have gone through: “it was hard enough being a disappointment to himself and Ethel without having to worry about four starving Jews in Czechoslovakia”(71). Of course, I interpret this callous selfishness from an adult’s perspective, and perhaps that’s what most typical children of Sammy’s age would do. Regardless, I’ve begun to appreciate Sammy’s complexity as Chabon unravels his character’s nature. In the last 60 pages, we’ve learned a great deal about Sammy, and including one essential element that has severely impacted him: the absence of his father.

Chabon expertly depicts a young, desperate boy earnestly yearning for his father’s love and approval. The ultimate betrayal of being left behind by his father (after he promised to take Sammy with him) is not only heart breaking, but it goes a long way towards explaining the following passage:

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 a constant effort over the whole of his life, had learned only how to fake.(113)

The “inability to locate an actual self” seems a terrifying and depressing thought–is Sammy empty? Is one of his core fears that he doesn’t have enough substance or worth of his own? While we don’t know a great deal about Josef’s father, it’s safe to say that Josef found a father figure in Kornblum. With an esteemed and wise man to support him, it’s no wonder that Josef has such an inner confidence. Sammy, however, has had no such support. His know-it-all/take-charge persona hides his frail confidence in what he is doing and who he is. He’s a vulnerable character in a way that Josef is not, but he is determined never to show it. It seems somewhat sad to think that Sammy has compensated for this void of confidence over his whole young life. It makes sense that he seeks it out from others: as Sammy watches Josef acrobatically finagle his way into the apartment window, the assuredness and ability that Josef exudes humbles Sammy. The moment that the Escapist is born is the moment that Sammy channels his feelings for his missing father into something somewhat tangible and accessible, something Sammy can control and deal with on his own terms.

We have an idea of what the Escapist will represent to Josef, who has escaped Prague after practicing for years to escape any physical boundary or limitation. Josef has escaped with his life, has escaped the horrors that await his family. What the escape means for Sammy is different. Sammy needs the escape from his insecurity, his father’s rejection, and his fear of failure. He needs escape from the boredom of his life (which his father, the Mighty Molecule, also escaped from), and he wants to escape into his dreams.The Escapist just might  become Sammy’s projection of a self he can believe in. (One wonders how true this is of other comic book creators and readers, or of any artist, for that matter.)

~AB

The first 66 pages (all of Part One, The Escape Artist) details the very brief histories of Samuel Klayman, a New York Jewish kid with aspirations far greater than his meager circumstances allow, and Josef Kavalier, his Praguean cousin with a flair for prestidigitation and lock picking.  Sam is a rough seventeen year old, unhandsome, unrefined, “bigmouthed, perhaps not quite as quick on his feet as he liked to imagine, and tending to be, like many optimists, a little excitable.”  Josef, on the other hand, is a “pale, freckled boy, black-haired, with a nose at once large and squashed-looking, and wide-set blue eyes half a candle too animated by sarcasm to pass for dreamy.”

Most of Part One centers on Josef’s second attempt at escaping the increasingly oppressive Hitler-occupied Czechoslovakia after the Germans made last minute changes to the visa requirement.  Josef inserts himself into a detailed plan created by his old magic teacher, Bernard Kornblum, to extricate from the city a Golem before the Führer gets a hold of it.  When he first leaves his parents on the train platform he’s no different than most teenagers: full of bravado, chill to the point of cocky, and ignorant in thinking he’s smarter than he really is.  It doesn’t occur to him that he probably won’t see his family again until he returns home to pilfer some of his father’s belongings for his second escape.  He changes again, from a clever yet rather silly young boy to a responsible and determined young man, and again to a man aged by painful experiences and traumatizing hardships.  His daring escape isn’t refined like his brother’s drawing – there’s no taking tea in a dress jacket before calmly opening the parachute – so when he collapses on Sam’s bed after taking the most circuitous route to America possible he is very much not the same childish boy who gladly held torque wrenches in his mouth while eating omelettes.

Sam’s transformation is more subtle.  To the reader he never changes.  He is a put-upon kid who reads too much and understands too little and makes up for his lack of a career by telling everyone tall tales of grandeur.  Sam’s somewhat cold mother may or may not believe his boasting, but Josef certainly did, and it is in his mind that Sam changes.  He is no longer the idealized cousin with the glamorous arty job but a menial inventory clerk.  Josef steps into the phone booth as Clark Kent and comes out an exhausted Superman, world-weary and ready to call it quits and lock himself away in his Fortress of Solitude, while Sam steps into the phone booth as Superman and exits Clark Kent with an even lower salary and less expectations of him.  Yet they are also like the Golem, inert, trapped, isolated, shoved about by external forces.  They are hovering between the realities of youth and adulthood, experience and naïveté, freedom and confinement, fear and security, friendship and loneliness, magic and truth, war and peace, death and life.  As Part One draws to a close both boys are standing in the metaphorical phone booth ready to change, but will they accept what they become?

~AxB