{"id":2054,"date":"2002-05-06T13:53:49","date_gmt":"2002-05-06T20:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/?p=2054"},"modified":"2002-05-06T13:53:49","modified_gmt":"2002-05-06T20:53:49","slug":"books-the-adventures-of-kavalier-and-clay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/2002\/05\/06\/books-the-adventures-of-kavalier-and-clay\/","title":{"rendered":"Books: The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has probably not escaped your attention that, in recent days, defective yeti has been yammering on and on about comic books. It may surprise you to hear, then, that I don’t actually read comics books — not any more, at any rate. But as noted before<\/a>, I love the idea<\/i> of comic books, and love the four-color champions documented therein. And this superherophilia was recently brought to the fore by the excellent novel The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay<\/a>, the newest book by Michael Chebon and winner of the Pulitzer Prize.<\/p>\n

Having narrowly escaped Prague in 1939, Josef Kavalier teams up with his cousin Sam Clay in New York to fight Hitler in the only way he can: through the use of comic books. The two young men, capitalizing on the popularity of the then-novel “Superman,” convince a local publisher to sponsor a monthly comic book entitled “The Escapist” which chronicles the adventures of a Harry Houdini-like hero who has sworn to “free those who languish in tyranny’s chains!” Kavalier and Clay are content to fight (and defeat) the Axis each and every month for a while, but soon both the war and the comic book business take a turn for the worst. At the dissolution of their comic book partnertship the men strike out in their own directions, but they never forget the two-fisted tales that brought them together as a team.<\/p>\n

Chebon (pronounced “SHAY-bon,” I’ve discovered) writes exactly the kind of novel I like: a lyrical history of a few memorable characters on their voyage from youth to adulthood. (Not unlike another of my favorite authors, John Irving’s, as exemplified by World According to Garp<\/i> and Ciderhouse Rules<\/i>). This style, combined with a subject matter I already adore, made this one of the best fiction books I’ve read in years. A very satisfying story, and one that I would heartily recommend to anyone who enjoys comic books, the idea<\/i> of comic books, or just a damned fine yarn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has probably not escaped your attention that, in recent days, defective yeti has been yammering on and on about comic books. It may surprise you to hear, then, that I don’t actually read comics books — not any more, at any rate. But as noted before, I love the idea of comic books, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/defectiveyeti.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}