The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

By Michael Chabon

It took me an eternity to get around to this book. I read Michael Chabon's book The Yiddish Policemen's Union last year and enjoyed it, but not enough to go rushing out and read another of his books, especially one that is over 600 pages long. But I kept hearing these things about this book. People kept telling me how it was one of the best books of the past ten years and totally deserving of the Pulitzer Prize. It simply weighed my bookcase down for far too long and I had to pick it up.

Glad I did.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is exactly what books and literature is all about. It's good writing and a great story about well-formed characters that deserve and gain the respect and empathy of their readers. It is well researched, impossible to predict and, as everyone seemed to tell me prior to reading, entirely deserving of the accolades it has garnered. OK, so I just sort of started vomiting attributes. Let me slow it down and explain.

First and foremost, Michael Chabon is a fantastic writer. I don't mean "fantastic" in the way we over use the word but rather in its more traditional usage as fanciful. But I knew this to be true when I read The Yiddish Policemen's Union  Of all the things I didn't like about that book (and there were a few things), Chabon's abilities as a writer were never questioned. He has an undeniable ability with tone, pace and, most of all, setting. I could practically smell 1940s Manhattan throughout this novel in the same way I could the Sitka Settlement in The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

As an aspiring writer myself, I find Chabon an intimidating novelist to read and appreciate. Reading a single paragraph is liable to send me to my bedroom a blubbering puddle of delicate emotions wrapped in a flimsy eggshell of a man not to be heard from for the remainder of the weekend. I mean how does he write that eloquently? Damn him! (And when I say "damn him," I mean he's fantastic (And when I say he's fantastic," I me... oh never mind)).

You can be a fantastic writer but if the story doesn't jive with readers, all those pretty paragraphs and succinct sentences (and all that alluring alliteration, I might add) are for naught. This was my fundamental problem with The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Great writing. Excellent characters. Wonderful tone. Good pacing. Boring-assed story. Not so with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I especially loved the fact that each character has their own story to go along with the common story of the novel. As in, each of the characters in the novel has their own problems and tribulations to deal with outside the bubble of the central story. And whereas some authors (coughcathylambcough) tend to spread the issues and drama on thick, Chabon knows exactly how much drama and stress to foist onto his characters shoulders without inducing reading induced epileptic seizures brought on by repeated eye rolling.

I genuinely cared for every single character in this novel (Yes, even Sheldon Anapol). They were rendered in such three dimensional detail that they seemed to have genuine texture and depth. I really felt like these guys existed in the annals of comic book lore. Surrounding him with real life comic book names such as Stan Lee and Bob Kane only augmented the illusion of reality. A very definite blur was put into effect.

And that's something else that deserves mention. Michael Chabon quite obviously researched the hell out of the comic book industry in the 1940s (and the Second World War as fought on the continent of Antarctica as well). As a fan of historical fiction I appreciate the attention to detail. But I also appreciate Chabon's determination to make shit up whenever it pleased him. I like Chabon's attitude toward history: Render it as close as possible to the truth whenever possible but throw it out the window when it doesn't fit the story he's trying to tell. Excellent lesson for any writer.

Speaking of the story, it is not only riveting (as I mentioned earlier) but it is also unpredictable. At no point during this narrative did I have a single clue where Chabon was taking me. There's nothing wrong with predictable story lines, good writers can take you down familiar roads and show you different sights along the way, but it's always nice to have someone show you an entirely different path. I, at no point in the reading of this novel, knew where Chabon was taking me. Furthermore, there were episodes in this novel that I could not have predicted in a thousand years of predictions.

So it won the Pulitzer Prize. Did it deserve it? Of course, I don't know. I haven't yet read everything published from 2000. But it couldn't have been the worst option. As I said off the top, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is everything that a reader should expect from literature. Good writing, strong characters and a romping good story.

I mean, seriously, in literature, what else matters?

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Michael Chabon

The Yiddish Policeman's Union is the answer to a very difficult question:

Does there exist a book that is simply too Jewish?

Oi vey! This might be the one.

But, once you get past all the shlemiels, shaydls and shtinkers Michael Chabon has crafted an interesting, if maddeningly incomplete, narrative.

I say interesting because Chabon has taken a historical footnote and supposed that it actually happened. In this case, Chabon takes the controversial proposal made by Harold Ickes in 1940 that a portion of Alaska be portioned out to Jewish refugees trying to escape the expansion of Nazi Germany. Ickes' Alaska proposal was very real, but it was shot down in the U.S. Senate and European Jews were left to their own devices for another eight years before the creation of the state of Israel. In Chabon's world, thousands flood the icy confines of Baranof Island and over-populate the tiny Russian settlement of Sitka (which becomes a seething metropolis of two million souls) which then goes on to host the 1977 World's Fair (the pinnacle of the Sitka settlement, apparently). As well, there exists constant friction between the Sitka Jews and the Tlingit natives in the area.

I say incomplete because Chabon offers up information about this alternate reality like Ebenezer Scrooge offers a two pence raise on Christmas Eve. Chabon supposes that Israel was indeed created in 1948 but was subsequently wiped off the map within six weeks during the Arab-Israeli War. Therefore, it is the state of Israel that is relegated to the status of footnote and the Alaskan proposal that becomes the defining event for post-war Jews.

Trouble is, the Sitka Settlement is still on American soil and the Ickes proposal was simply a 60 year land lease and the narrative takes place five weeks prior to Reversion. Since the holocaust in Chabon's world was nowhere near as devastating as the one that occurred in reality, worldwide attitudes toward Jews haven't changed much. America (and the Tlingit) very much wants the Jews (or the Frozen Chosen as they are referred to in the novel) out of the Sitka Settlement, forcing the Jews back into their centuries old diaspora where pogroms an ghettos are still very much a reality.

Sounds cool (in a alternate-history way, not in the anti-Semitic way), right?

Well it is.

Except that Chabon only gives out tantalizingly few details about the geo-political situation despite the fact that they become important toward the end of the book. His story focuses on a loser police detective in Sitka who is investigating the murder of a heroin junkie who may or may not have been Messiah (Tzaddik Ha-Dor). The investigation, which begins in the sleaziest fleabag hotel in Sitka blows up into an international incident involving extremist Zionists bent on reclamation of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Arabs and, of course, chess.

While the primary narrative was alright (but again, incomplete) I was far more interested in the world that Chabon had created. I wanted more information about the state of the world in his alternate 2007. He mentions the Third Russian Republic and the existence of a country called Irkutsk, which raised all sorts of questions about this alternative world and its relationship with the board game Risk. Apparently the Atomic Bomb was indeed dropped on Berlin at the end of World War II (1946). He noted that the major players in the Middle East were Egypt and Persia (!?!) and that Manchuria existed as an autonomous nation, presupposing that China has fractured into another "Warring States" period. There was something called the "Cuban War," JFK married Marilyn Monroe and Orson Welles completed his opus Heart of Darkness. In one flight of fancy that is not too far off from the truth, America is ruled by right-wing evangelical Christian zealots.

I wanted to know more about this world. What of Japan? What happened with them at the end of the war? Or Korea. Or Greece. Two major international crises that followed the war. How did they play out? Or the United Kingdom or France or Germany or Africa or Greenland. The little tidbits of history Chabon drops are like bread crumbs for a starving man. I was insatiable for information about this intriguing world. So much so that I often lost interest in the primary narrative.

This was all too much for me who would have much preferred a travelogue through Chabon's world at some point in the narrative so that I could place these Alaskan Jews into some sort of political and historical context. This would have really eased my mind about what I was reading instead of constantly trying to guess about what had gone on in the world over the prior 60 years. Alas, Chabon focuses on telling his story of crime, justice and redemption at a personal level and I can't really fault him for that. It's his story and he can tell it any way he wants to and frankly, he does tell it very well (and in Yiddish, too), although it begins to sound a little familiar once you break it down...

Meyer Landsman is a hard-boiled cop in a world full of Raymond Chandler characters (if Raymond Chandler characters carried monikers such as Mendel or Yossele). He is instantly detestable and lovable but prone to making really bad decisions that somehow work out in his favor. Berko, his Tlingit-turned-Jew partner, is a metaphor for the topsy-turvy politics of this barren northern settlement and Bina, Landsman's ex-wife and current boss is a careerist cop who plays by the book. A nice little Harry Potter-esque triad of good guys to fight against Slytherin Hou... I mean the Verbover Jews.

Anyway, The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a good book but left me needing more in terms of geo-politics. I suspect that says a lot more about me than it does about this book. So read it yourself and get back to me about what you thought because I'm still day dreaming about Shiite/Sunni conflicts in Arab controlled Palestine and their global implications.

Yes. I'm a nerd.