Some people think that I'm a sucker for any damn book that falls off the shelf on me, and I can see how that may seem to be the case. But after all of these years, I've developed a pretty good intuition for avoiding things that I will hate. And I try to take the approach of pointing out the positive and burying the negative out of sight (with occasional exception for something that really bushwacks me, ala Experiment Island). But just to prove that I don't love every book I read, here's a few words about Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
It seemed like a safe bet. Pulitzer Prize winner, nominee for numerous other awards, people whose opinions I respected were excited about it. And with its setting of early comic book history, it seemed like a sure thing. But by a third of the way in, it started to feel (to me) like a potboiler. A big, soapy potboiler. The characters degenerated into game pieces being moved around in a plot machine. Which could be fun in a pulpy way, but the book also insists on a 'high' tone, which holds it back from actually jumping into the pulp -- it felt like it wanted to play it both ways and achieved neither. I stuck with it because some sections seemed to pull it together, but by the time I finished, I wanted my time back. It would have been much better spent on a good comics history, or better yet, a biography of Jack Kirby (who does rate a big acknowledgement from Chabon, but is much more interesting than all of these characters rolled together).
The book also pulls the post-modern stunt of raising its coolness quotient with cameo appearances by hip deceased personalities like Salvador Dali and Raymond Scott. Well, anyone can play that game -- even a mook like me...
Oh, look, what's that manifesting in the corner of my ceiling? Why, it's the spirit body of the late Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, hot rod and kustom kulture hero! Gee, Big Daddy Roth, what did you think of Kavalier and Clay?
"Hmm, kind of clunky, and I was disappointed that there weren't any hot rods in it."
Thanks, Big Daddy.
Yeah, this turkey is still languishing unfinished on my bookshelf. I bought it so I'd have something to read during a long airplane flight and it put me to sleep after 30 pages or so.
Posted by MrBaliHai at 09:31 PM, January 19, 2003.Yep. I'm trudging thru this, too. Chabon is a skilled writer with excellent descriptive powers, but I can only take so many po-mo '30s pop culture references. The plot is too episodic. And I hate it when fictional characters interact with real life personalities! Blecch.
Posted by Matt at 02:10 PM, January 21, 2003.I enjoy 'real-life' characters appearing in fiction if it's done well (Pynchon's "Mason and Dixon") or outrageously wicked (Ellroy's "Tijuana, Mon Amour"), but in "KnC", they just get dropped in like nudgy cameos in a Rat Pack movie.
Are you guys nuts? K & C is a brilliant work that will warm the heart of any lover of comic books. At least one who started reading them in 1939 as did I. Bought Action Comics # 1 when it appeared in Sam Friedman's Drug Store and never looked back!
Posted by Paddy Blake at 05:47 PM, October 31, 2003.