The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Content Synopsis following a childhood bout with polio. But he “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” also harbors the desire to be blonde and Protestant opens in October 1939 with the meeting of Czech- (Mayfl ower as a surname is a transparent marker born Josef Kavalier and his American cousin Sammy of waspishness). For Joe Kavalier, the Escapist not Klayman at the latter’s Brooklyn apartment. Kavalier only makes heroic his own short-lived career as an has recently arrived from San Francisco, via Japan, as escape artist in Prague, but also feeds his desire to part of an effort to smuggle himself and the legend- take action against the Nazi army who euphemis- ary Golem of Prague, a giant-sized clay homunculus tically “superintend” his Jewish family in Prague. believed to come to life in moments of crisis to defend Through the comic, he is able to fi ght Hitler. Joe the city’s Jewish Ghetto, from under the noses of the puts the money he makes drawing the Escapist Nazis who were occupying Czechoslovakia. The two into a fund to free his family, going so far as to young men collaborate to create the Escapist, a substantially bankroll a ship, the “Ark of Miriam,” comic book character meant to rival the new and whose mission is to take Eastern European Jewish commercially very lucrative Superman, appear- children (including his younger brother Thomas) ing for the last two years in National Periodical’s from a Catholic orphanage in Lisbon to the United “Action Comics.” The Escapist is Tom Mayfl ower, States. In 1940, Joe briefl y considers joining the a Houdini-esque theatrical escape artist by day, but Royal Armed Forces to join the fi ght against the when night falls he fi ghts alongside the League of Nazis more directly, but Clay is able to talk him the Golden Key, “coming to the aid of those who out of it. languish in tyranny’s chains” (121) and against The Escapist makes the two cousins stars. the evil organization of slavers, the Iron Chain. Invited to a surrealist Greenwich Village garden The Escapist makes his debut in “Amazing Midget party where Salvador Dali is the guest of honor, Radio Comics” under a Kavalier-painted cover of Joe meets Rosa Luxembourg Saks, the daughter of the Escapist punching Hitler in the jaw; this new the host, and she becomes his lover and the inspi- character is a great success. ration for Judy Dark, a. k. a. Luna Moth, the fi rst Sammy, under the pseudonym “Sam Clay,” female superhero and the anchor of an anthology writes “The Escapist” as the fulfi llment of a title of female characters called “All Doll Comics.” wish to be able-bodied, since he is nearly lame Sammy discovers homosexual longings he never 11

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before acknowledged, and is seduced by tall, broad, Tracy to California, who has made the leap from and blonde Tracy Bacon, the voice of the Escapist being simply vocal talent to landing the role of the on the radio serial adapted from the comic book. Escapist in the motion picture serials contracted by Kavalier and Clay don’t own the copyright to char- Parnassus Films. After starring in two “Escapist” acter of the Escapist, having signed over all rights motion picture serials, Tracy joins the Air Force and for a flat fee when they first brought the character is shot down and killed over Europe. to Empire Comics partners Sheldon Anapol and The novel, up till this point a nearly day-by-day Jack Ashkenazy. Sammy and Joe are both making record of life for the two men in the two years after the very good money, and Joe is able to sponsor a 1939 genesis of the Escapist, skips ahead two years dozen other children on the “Ark of Miriam” beside to 1943 to find Joe at the Kelvinator Station, a Navy his brother Thomas, but this is nowhere near the listening post in Antarctica. An accident asphyxiates amount of money Empire Comics is making. This everyone at the station but Joe, a Navy pilot named situation is grounded in a reality of the history of Shannenhouse, and a dog, Oyster. Alone, and forced comics; Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who created to wait months before a September thaw will allow Superman, were bilked of their share of the profits, for the possibility of rescue, both men begin to go as would be Jack Kirby and many other significant insane. Pushed beyond the limits of boredom, Joe comics creators. reads through a sheaf of letters sent to him, over In exchange for a 5% stake in future radio, mov- the last two years, by Rosa, letters that until then ing picture, and merchandising revenues, Sammy he had never read but put away unopened. In the perjures himself in a deposition that he did not letters, Rosa explains that after he left, she married create the Escapist as a rival to Superman, a pre- Sammy and was having his child, a boy they named emptive legal maneuver Empire Comics is forced Tommy in honor of Joe’s late brother. Later let- to make because National Comics, Superman’s ters include photographs, more details of the birth copyright holder, is trying to push all their comic and little Tommy’s development. Read at the time book rivals out of business by claiming all cos- they were sent, it would be easy to swallow Rosa’s tumed superheroes infringe on their copyright. Joe story. But read back to back and with nothing else goes along to earn more money, to be able to save to occupy his mind, Joe notices the chronological yet more Jewish children, but three days before the and developmental inconsistencies in the story of Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, a German U-Boat little Tommy, and arrives at the correct conclusion sinks the “Ark of Miriam,” with Thomas Kavalier that Tommy is his son. aboard. For days, Joe is consumed by grief, but Still trying to complete his listening post mis- when, after Pearl Harbor, the United States enters sion, Joe intercepts transmissions from a German the war, Joe enlists in the Navy, finally able to fight geologist, named Klaus Mecklenburg, the sole and ready to kill. survivor of an incident at a German station on the Simultaneous to the sinking of the “Ark of other side of the frozen continent. Joe convinces Miriam,” Sammy has accompanied Tracy Bacon Shannenhouse to fly the two of them there so to a weekend retreat with other, prominent homo- that Joe can kill this German in retaliation for his sexual couples. When the retreat is raided by brother’s death. Between chapters and strangely the police, Sammy fellates a police officer to keep unnarrated, the plane crashes and Shannenhouse is his identity out of the police reports and press, and killed; fueled by hatred and the need for revenge, decides that his secret is too damning to risk revealing. Joe manages to get the plane in the air again, but He decides to stay behind instead of accompanying when he finally stands facing the German scientist,

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his anger evaporates, but not before he accidentally skims the pages, a masterpiece. Sheldon Anapol kills the man. Joe wanders to an abandoned German explains to the two creators that National Comics camp at the shore of the Weddell Sea, fueled by copyright-infringement suit is finally coming due morphine to dull the pain of his injuries and to after winding through the courts for a decade. He counteract the cold, and is rescued. has decided to settle, and to give the copyright to The novel skips another ten years between chap- the character of the Escapist to National Comics. ters, this time taking us to Bloomtown, NY in 1953. He is looking to sell Empire Comics, and Sammy Sammy and Rosa live in the model Long Island is tempted to buy it, even though the sale would suburb; their son Tommy is twelve and up to some- not include the rights to the character he and Kava- thing; he is caught twice playing hooky, and on lier made famous. He and Joe make plans to buy occasion glimpsed wearing an eye patch despite his the company: maybe they will publish the Golem relative ocular health. It transpires that Tommy has comic Joe has drawn. There is, however, a histori- been visiting with Joe Kavalier, whom he has been cal interruption that will stand in the way of the told is his uncle, but who hasn’t been seen by the creative reunion of the two friends. rest of his family since 1941 (Joe went underground Sammy’s predisposition to create kid side- after recovering from the Antarctic experience). kicks for the costumed heroes he writes makes Joe has illegally taken up residence in an office in him a target of psychologist Frederic Wertham’s the Empire State Building, and it becomes clear book “Seduction of the Innocent,” a study that he is trapped, unable to reconnect with his old seeks to link juvenile delinquency, immorality, life. Tommy concocts a scheme to flush Joe out of and homosexuality to reading comic books. Con- hiding that snowballs till Sammy is called to the gress holds investigative sessions to determine the Empire State Building to watch Joe, dressed in truth of these charges, and Sammy is subpoenaed Tracy Bacon’s old Escapist costume, preparing to to talk about his writing. Testifying in televised jump from the building’s observation deck, with hearings held in New York, Sammy is outed as a only rubber bands tied around his waist to stop his homosexual by Senators Kefauver, Hennings, and fall. The stunt fails, but Joe only falls a few stories; Hendrickson. This reveals to everyone the sham- he is injured, not killed. Reunited with his cousin conventionality of his marriage to Rosa, which Joe at last, Joe is evicted from the office in which he’d at least thought was a genuine heterosexual union. been living, and agrees to live with the Clays in Sammy is at first shattered by this unmasking, but Bloomtown till he decides what to do next. He then comes to see this as his chance to escape the has all his things, mainly 102 boxes of comics, life he has made for himself and go to California shipped from his office to the suburban address. as he should have done with Tracy Bacon back Another crate finds him there as well; shipped by in 1941. He explains this desire to Rosa and Joe, an unknown agent, the Golem of Prague finally who has usurped Sammy’s place in the marital bed arrives at the end of its globe-spanning peregrina- while Sammy has taken Joe’s place on the couch. tions, now disincorporated and reduced to a pile And then, while the two reunited lovers sleep, of river mud. Sammy departs for the West Coast. After their reunion, Joe shows Sammy what he has been working on for the last decade, a forty- Historical Context nine chapter comic epic centered on the Golem of The turbulent social history of the middle Jewish folklore. Nearly wordless, it is thousands decades of the 20th Century plays a determinate of pages long, and, as Sammy confirms when he role at several key moments in Chabon’s novel.

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The novel’s opening suite detailing Josef’s obviously, no historical testimony offered by escape from Prague is informed by the German Sammy Clay. occupation of Czechoslovakia, and when in New Those characters Chabon created in his novel reg- York City, Chabon regularly updates his reader ularly rub elbows with historical persons; Salvador with what information would have been available Dali and Orson Welles, obviously, were real peo- to Joe about the ongoing “superintendence” of the ple, though Rosa Saks father and host of the surre- Jewish community in Prague. Similarly, the cre- alist garden party where Joe meets Rosa, Longman ation of the Escapist follows the 1937 publication Harkoo, is not. The kaffe klatch that meets at the of Superman’s first adventures, in “Action Com- Excelsior Café (likely named after Stan Lee’s ics,” at a time of explosive growth in the number of famous 1960s sign-off in his Marvel Comics edito- superhero titles and characters to take advantage of rials) is a mixture of real and invented characters. the interest in the Last Son of Krypton. The real Gil Kane sits beside the imaginary Julie In other instances, Chabon’s history is less Glovitz. Likewise, the lists of comics titles and exact; as he explains in his “Author’s Note” at the characters Chabon periodically gives the reader end of the novel, “I have tried to respect history and are a mix of real imaginary characters and imag- geography wherever doing so served my purposes ined imaginary ones; if one didn’t already know, it as a novelist, but wherever it did not I have, cheer- would be hard to tell the two apart, since they are fully or with regret, ignored them” (637). There all equally ludicrous. was no actual “Ark of Miriam” whose sinking Chabon notes that this novel, and all his work, is motivates Joe to join the Army, though German indebted to the work of Jack Kirby (639), one half U-Boats were known to harass the Atlantic ship- of a series of partnerships that created some of the ping lanes. Likewise, Bloomtown, Sammy and most enduring characters in comics history (The Rosa’s model suburban community on Long Island Hulk, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, etc). His- is clearly patterned on Levittown, but it is not that tory is unclear how much of these characters are first, famous planned suburb, only one of its innu- his, and how much of them rightly belongs to his merable imitators. collaborators, a situation parallel to that which Joe In other cases, the historical record impinges on faces; like Kavalier and Clay, Kirby never saw a the novel in more significant ways: the court case fraction of the revenue generated by his creations, “National Periodical Publications, Inc. v. Empire and at the time of his death was still struggling to Comics, Inc.” whose settlement signals the end have his original art returned to him from Marvel of the publication of the Escapist’s adventures, is Comics. This story, sadly, is repeated throughout patterned closely on another suit which when set- the history of comics. tled did end the publication of the Captain Marvel Other figures, less clearly acknowledged, but character because of real and imagined similari- still instrumental to the story, include Will Eisner, ties to Superman (similarities that, cosmetically whose pioneering page layouts in “The Spirit” at least, are much easier to see than those between reappear in the splash pages of Kavalier’s “The the Escapist and Superman). And Frederic Wer- Golem.” Likewise, Luna Moth and her psychedelic tham’s book “Seduction of the Innocent” did lead adventures owe a debt to Steve Ditko’s 1960s work, to Senate inquiries into whether comic books through the character design and basic character of encourage delinquency, homosexuality, and moral Nightshade, and the other-dimensional adventures decline. As Chabon implies (623), though, there of Dr. Strange. To make Kavalier’s influence on the was no second day of New York testimony, and world of comics more profound, Chabon regularly

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collapses the actual timeline of comics’ develop- sidekicks, since in his relationship with the tall ment. So, in 1954, Kavalier has finished what and blonde Tracy Bacon, he sees himself as the is essentially the first graphic novel, about two sidekick. Chabon himself is deliberately ambigu- decades before the actual publication of those texts ous when he talks about the importance of homo- who vie for the title now (Joe Sternanko’s “Chan- sexual desire in Clay’s creation of these sidekicks; dler: Red Tide,” Will Eisner’s “A Contract with Clay notes that sales jump 22% when a sidekick God, and Other Tenement Stories,” or Gil Kane’s is introduced, and it’s unclear if the reason for this “His Name is…. Savage”). The character of the is some sort of latent homosexual identification Escapist bears more than a passing resemblance or simply a broader desire for younger readers to to Mister Miracle, a super-escape artist created by locate a character with whom they can identify Jack Kirby for DC Comics in the 1970s. And the in their escapist fantasies. Chabon is a lot less stylistic revolutions and evolutions of Kavalier’s ambiguous about the corrosive effects of Clay’s pencil and ink work prefigure the best work of fifty secrecy regarding his sexual orientation, and it is years of dozens of actual cartoonists. clear in the book’s final chapters that it is only by “escaping” conventional standards of appropriate Societal Context desire that Clay can be happy. The historical time period Chabon mines for his None of the main characters make a big deal out novel allows him to explore the intersections of of practicing Judaism, but nearly all of them oper- three marginal communities: Jewish, homosexual, ate in a Jewish demimonde that provides a social and comic book artists. backdrop for the novel: a key moment in Clay’s It makes for a potent stew in the novel: nearly relationship with Bacon is taking the actor to his all the comic artists in the novel are Jewish, and mother’s Shabbat meal. And Joe Kavalier has an Chabon suggests more than once that the Jew- emotionally rewarding sideline business as a stage ish need to be at once part of and separate from magician at the bar mitzvah’s of boys who are the mainstream American culture informs the ways in natural fans of the Escapist. Judaism, in this way, which superhero characters, with their alter egos introduces to the novel a series of cultural bench- and masked identities, their double lives, develop. marks that have a lot to do with daily life and little Chabon is not the first to notice the uniquely Jew- to do with the explicitly supernatural elements ish nature of Superman’s character, and the story of religious practice. Except, of course, for the of Joe’s escape from Prague, the last son of a com- Golem, who in the novel is evidence of the super- munity that is essentially wiped out, and his set- natural, and in other ways is the divine spark that tling on welcoming but foreign shores, is not only sets Kavalier and Clay going. the stereotypical immigrant story, but also a real world analogue of Superman’s origin. Religious Context Likewise, Sammy Clay’s nascent homosexual- As noted above, most characters in the novel are ity implies another way to read the double lives of raised as part of a Jewish milieu that connects them comic characters. His desire, first for the charac- to a common experience, whether they are Ameri- ter he creates, then for the living embodiment of can like Sammy or European like Joe. This back- that character, Tracy Bacon, suggests a perfected ground functions, mostly, as more of a social than narcissism: the desire for a better positioned, a religious touchstone, but the influence of Jewish more culturally privileged version of the self. This mysticism and myth is relevant, especially when it same desire, perhaps, inspires Clay to create kid concerns the Golem and Kabala.

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The Golem, both Rabbi Loew’s Golem of horror at the implication when the crate is first Prague that Joe helps to liberate from its city opened. But this reading feels to me a little over- of origin, and “The Golem,” Joe’s long, nearly stated, given the relative calm with which Joe wordless graphic novel, exist as fantastic com- confronts the evidence. Instead, Joe speculates mentaries on the creative process. Mythically, the that the Golem has degraded to dirt because the Golem is made of clay, and life is “breathed” into soul has gone out of it, and it’s easiest to believe him by carving letters from the Hebrew alphabet that’s what Chabon means by having it lose its into his forehead. In this way, “breath” becomes animation in America. “speech,” a communicative act that summons the Golem into being. In Jewish tradition, there is Scientific & Technological Context talk of a line of Golems who have, at different The physical facts of early comic book publishing times, protected and served the Jewish people, played a strong role transforming Josef Kavalier, including even a clay goat, talked into life and late of the Prague School of Fine Arts, into Joe then killed for its meat so that its creators would Kavalier, penciller and inker of the Escapist, the not starve. Luna Moth, the Four Freedoms, and Mr. Machine When Joe first tries to draw what Sammy Gun. Printed on the same rolling presses as news- describes as a superhero, he draws a Golem, which papers, and onto crude wood pulp, the cheapest then evolves, after a weekend of cigarettes, coffee, grade of paper available, the fine feathering of and hours of talk, into the Escapist. Later, he plots Josef’s early work would not reproduce on the and draws the epic graphic novel he calls “The inside pages of the comic (the covers, printed Golem” that explores the history of the Golem with different stock, are where Joe does his most in relation to the history of the Jews. This work artistic work, like his famous cover of the Escap- also features appearances by the archangels of ist punching Hitler). Joe’s art evolves to be at Kabala, the mystical and numerological arm of once bolder and more simple, because this is the Judaism. extent of what the poor quality reproductions will From what we are told, “The Golem,” as a allow. The path followed by Chester Gould, artist work, seems a history of sorts. The motivating of the blocky and thick-lined Dick Tracy newspa- idea, though, seems to be the way language, and per comic, is parallel to that Chabon assigned to speech, lend animation to a man (Joe Kavalier) and Kavalier; as Dennis Drabelle notes in Civilization, a people (the Jews) via the intercession of a divine “Gould overcame… the pulpy pages… by draw- spark, breath shaped into words. As Ken Kalfus ing shapes so strong that you hardly notice their noted in his review of the novel for the New York flatness.” Writing for American History, Richard Times, “Chabon… always returns to the incanta- Marshall explains that “factors of technology and tory power of the word.” commerce played important roles in the birth John Podhoretz, writing about Kavalier and of the comic strip,” and the limited technology, Clay in the magazine Commentary sees the pile and the limits of what men like Sheldon Anapol of dirt the Golem of Prague becomes, when it has were willing to spend on as uncertain a venture finished its travels and finds Joe in the garage of as costumed superheroes meant that the work was the Bloomtown house as Chabon’s recognition kept basic and primal. It was working in this vein, of what became of the Jews in ghettos in Prague, however, that Joe became a legend, an inspiration Krakow, and Lviv. It is true that Rosa mistakes via his line to both the surrealists and the pop art- the Moldau Rover mud as ashes, and recoils in ists after them.

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Biographical Context by “The Final Solution,” a detective novel, and not, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” as a reader of “Kavalier & Clay” might imagine, marks a transitional period in Michael Chabon’s an exploration of Hitler’s policies toward the Jews. writing. It’s the fifth book in a career marked by As a child, Chabon was given comics to read what critics note as strong early promise in his first by his father, and he cites this early exposure to novel, “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” and a well- the brightly colored adventures as the secret origin received movie adaptation of his second novel, of his interest in superhero comics (Tobias). He “Wonder Boys,” starring Michael Douglas and has shown an sustained engagement with genre Tobey Maguire. Two short story collections also writing beyond these books he’s written: speaking predate the writer’s third novel. at the 2004 Eisner Awards Ceremony, an indus- The differences between this novel and his ear- try event where comics professionals honor their lier works is worth remarking upon. In the first own, Chabon scolded publishers for chasing an place, “Kavalier & Clay” is a closely observed and adult audience at the expense of their character’s research intensive work of historical fiction. Its set- appeal to children, and he proposed several ideas ting is also striking: in his previous novels, Chabon that would, he says, bring kids back to comics. had carved out a niche for himself by setting his In that Eisner keynote speech, he develops the novels in the also-ran cities of the Eastern seaboard, importance of escapism in a way that is conso- Pittsburgh where he was born and Baltimore. But nant with the novel, but in this new formulation, in this novel, Chabon trades that distinctive qual- the only ones who get to escape are young peo- ity to immerse himself, and his narrative, in New ple. This is in direct contrast to how Lee Behl- York City. That said, he tackles the project with man, in “SHOFAR,” sees “Kavalier & Clay” as gusto, indulging internecine borough squabbles “remarkable for the intimate ways it shows how like a native. much pleasure and value may be found in produc- Likewise, Sammy Clay’s questions about ing and reading fantasy,” especially for American his sexuality echo the casual bisexuality of Art audiences and artists wrestling with the dispari- Bechstein, the protagonist of “The Mysteries of ties between “the unbridgeable historical divide Pittsburgh.” In this new novel, though, the theme between a relatively comfortable American Jew- of struggle over finding oneself is developed in ish present and the dark European Jewish past.” a more closely observed context: Clay struggles It is difficult, at times, to reconcile what Chabon with his attraction to men, unlike Bechstein who seems to be after in his novel (the way pulp and is blasé and a bit omnivorous in his sexual con- genre literature managed the tensions of its adult quests. All of this, of course, emanates from the writers) and what he proposes now for how pulp imagination of a writer who is happily married and genre writing is, or ought to be, consumed with children. by its audience. He has also written a number of As much as this aspect of the novel looks back short essays under the name Malachi B. Cohen; to Chabon’s earlier work, the sustained interest in in this guise, he has extended the publishing his- “Kavalier & Clay” in genre writing charts a pro- tory of the Escapist beyond the embargo leveled gression that, so far, has dominated his subsequent against the character in 1954. Under the mast- work: the first book Chabon published after this head of a prodigiously profligate series of small one was “Summerland,” a novel for children that publishing houses, Cohen tells of the further pub- some have described as an American entree into lished adventures of the Escapist and the Luna the Harry Potter marketplace. This was followed Moth, adventures that reflect contemporary trends

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in comics, such as the socially relevant comics Works Cited of the 1970s, and the grim-n-gritty style of the Behlman, Lee. “The Escapist: Fantasy, Folklore, 1990s. One of these essays was published in “The and the Pleasures of the Comic Book in Recent ­Amazing Adventures of the Escapist,” an anthol- Jewish American Holocaust Fiction.” SHOFAR ogy of comics creators creating Escapist stories to 22.3 (Spr 2004): 56–71. flesh out these publication histories; for the first Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures time in February 2004, the Escapist saw print in a of Kavalier & Clay. New York: Picador superhero comic, making the belated transforma- USA, 2000. tion into real imaginary superhero. _____. “Interview with Scott Tobias.” AV Club. Chabon’s novel played a role in the rehabili- The Onion. 22 November 2000. tation of comics as a site for legitimate literary Drabelle, Dennis. “Weird Fantasies and Amazing work. He has also taken up arms alongside Dave Adventures.” Civilization 4:6(1997/1998). Eggers and his McSweeney’s Press to promote Academic Search Premier. Grand Valley State a return to genre prose writing by established University Zumberge Lib. 9 Jan. 2005. authors, and has edited a collection of pulp writ- Kalfus, Ken. “The Golem Knows.” New York Times ing for the press. It’s possible to read the theme 24 Sept 2000. of escapism that runs through the novel in con- Marshall, Richard. “100 Years of the Funnies.” tradictory ways, but Chabon’s comments are less American History 30:4 (1995). Academic ambiguous about simultaneously enjoying pulp Search Premier. Grand Valley State University writing and denying its potential as worthy of Zumberge Lib. 9 Jan. 2005. “serious” attention. Podhoretz, John. “Escapists.” Commentary June Matthew Dube 2001.

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