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(Brought to you by kat impatientreader.com) Samuel Klayman, a scrawny 17 year-old, can't wait to escape his mother's stifling apartment in Brooklyn. The year is 1939. Sammy, who is Jewish, remains mostly unaware of Hitler. Then one night, Sammy's mom welcomes a mysterious fugitive into their lives: his 19 year-old cousin Josef Kavalier who has escaped from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. Poor Josef, a haunted figure in a baggy tweed suit, got into the United States through San Francisco. Before that, he had come from Japan, continental Asia, and eastern Europe. Exhausted, he crawls into bed with Sammy who clutches both pillows, refusing to share. But soon the cousins are smoking a forbidden cigarette at Sammy's open window. Josef wants to be called "Joe." He asks Sammy to get him a job the next morning: he's obsessed with earning enough money to bring his family to the United States and save them from the Nazis. Chapter 2 picks up Joe's back-story in the recent past in Czechoslovakia. First we meet a terrific minor character, Bernard Kornblum. Just like Houdini, Kornblum used to earn a living as a stage magician and escape-artist. Now in his seventies, he hangs out at a crummy old supper-club for has-been magicians. It is there that he is recruited by the concerned Jewish citizens of Prague to save their golem. A golem is a huge clay man that is animated by Kabbalistic magic to fight the enemies of the Jews. Since the Nazis are taking over Prague, it would make sense to turn the golem loose to stomp the crap out of them. Some of the Jews would like nothing better. But most vote to send the golem into hiding in Lithuania. Kornblum is supposed to accomplish this from under the noses of the Nazis, but his plan is complicated when his best student shows up drunk, begging for help. Yes, it's Josef Kavalier. Young Josef, son of two wealthy doctors, has been dabbling in magic lessons with Kornblum. He turns out to have real talent, especially as an escape artist. Now he's desperate because his parents spent their savings to get him out of Prague -- and he got turned back at the border by the Nazis. Kornblum promises to smuggle him with the golem as far as Lithuania. After that, Josef is on his own. Chapters 3 and 4 detail the increasingly surrealistic escapades of Kornblum, Josef, and the Golem of Prague. We also get vivid flashbacks of Josef's escapist lessons with the rough-hewn old master, and his fond relationship with his younger brother Thomas who is desperate to secure an invitation to the magicians' secret supper-club. Part II kicks off back in Brooklyn. Sammy finds Joe's sketchpad and realizes that his escape-artist cousin also knows how to draw like a pro, having studied at the Academy of Fine Arts back in Prague. Sammy decides that he and Joe will get rich as comic book artists. Why not -- especially since Superman revolutionized the comic book world only the year before. He decides to change his name from Klayman to the "more professional-sounding" Clay. In a priceless scene, Sammy drags Joe to see his boss at the Empire Novelty Company. Empire peddles things like whoopee cushions and x-ray spectacles that get sold on the back pages of comic books. Of course, Sammy's hard-bitten boss Anapol knows about Superman. Sammy makes his sales pitch, emphasizing the potential revenue in having their own Superman. Anapol struggles to hide his growing excitement beneath flinty skepticism. Meanwhile poor Joe sits in the hall with his sketchpad, struggling to create a new American super-hero. How can a boy from the old country know what to draw? Sammy frantically waves him in to join the meeting. The boss takes one look at Joe's sketch, a ponderous figure with Hebrew letters etched in its forehead, and says, "That's it? My Superman is a golem?" Nevertheless, Anapol gives them a second chance. Joe and Sammy wander the streets of New York, wracking their brains for a super-hero idea. Everything they can think of is ridiculous. Then Sammy has the revelation that the most interesting super-hero is Batman because he has character-driven reasons to fight evil: that is, he must avenge his murdered parents. Nothing ridiculous about that. This leads to the boys' creation of a provocative character: the Escapist who wears a golden key embroidered upon his skintight outfit and travels the world, freeing the oppressed from their chains. They immediately get into trouble with the boss, even while they're starting to make his fortune, because they show the Escapist on the cover of their first comic book, punching out Hitler with a mighty roundhouse to the jaw. In 1939, the United States is still trying to stay clear of what it regards as a war that Britain is losing. The boss feels that the "Hitler" cover is too political. But Joe needs to draw it like that so it stays. Ultimately, the "political stuff" causes the boys (Joe the artist and Sammy the writer) to get even more famous. The novel races on from there, detailing their amazing adventures. You meet some outrageous characters including Carl Ebling, an unstable loser who lurks in the pathetic office space that is the headquarters of his Aryan-American League. Ebling and Joe meet by chance, and plunge into bitter animosity. Their ever-escalating feud resembles the duels between super-hero and super-villain -- with Ebling at his climactic moment cast as the Saboteur, a Unabomber of the 1940s, complete with a crimson crowbar emblem on his skintight outfit! We also meet Rosa who has a big heart and is surprised by nothing. She drinks, smokes cigarettes, beds good-looking men, and is way ahead of her time. There is a host of nerdy comic book artists who come and go as well as one flirtatious and handsome radio actor. Particularly poignant are the flashbacks of Sammy's much-missed father, a tiny circus-strongman known as the Mighty Molecule. Even more fun than the characters are the events themselves that include a gathering of bohemian intellectuals at which Joe saves the life of the obnoxious Salvador Dali. Also notable is the police raid of a wealthy homosexual's party where the assembled "fairies" turn out to be big, strong, pissed-off guys who fight back. There's even an aerial raid on a German scientific outpost in Antarctica! Our heroes are complex characters with a lot of faults. Blinded with anger, Joe behaves with appalling selfishness towards his eventual wife and child. Sammy is so insecure about being both Jewish and gay that you want to pack him off to a therapist. But they are also smart and funny characters. This is a great read. Michael Chabon Bibliography: |
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Noteworthy Links: Wonderquest - Science Q/A! The Connection - Tech blog! Author site - John the Eunuch Historical Mystery series, Cozy Mystery List for all your cozy mystery needs, Obsidian Bookshelf - reviews of gay-themed fiction. |
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