The Final Solution

Home , Michael Chabon, Moonglow (novel)

“OF COMICS, DETECTIVES AND MODEL ROCKETRY” EXAMINING POST-POSTMODERNITY AS THE RESULT OF COMBINING TRAUMA, HISTORY AND FICTION IN THE WORK OF MICHAEL CHABON

Aantal woorden: 25329

Casper De Koker Studentennummer: 01005694

Promotor: Prof. dr. Joost Krijnen

Masterproef voorgelegd voor het behalen van de graad Master in de richting Engelse Taal- en Letterkunde

Academiejaar: 2017 - 2018

Acknowledgements

“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”

― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

To start, I would like to thank the university of Ghent, the Hogwarts to my Neville Longbottom, for having me and allowing me to develop as any good round character would. Thanks to the many professors who helped me learn to read in new and improved ways.

Then I would also like to thank the people who helped me complete this dissertation and hopefully helped me graduate. First, I would like to thank Professor Joost Krijnen, the Ben Kenobi to my Luke Skywalker, for his introduction to trauma literature and his insights and advice throughout the writing process of this dissertation. Second, thank you to Tine Kempenaers, the second reader of this dissertation, for taking her time to read this. Third, I would like to thank my family and specifically my mother, the Loralai Gilmore to my Rory, for her adamant belief that I could in fact handle education at a university level. Finally I would like to thank my lovely girlfriend Chloë, the Miley to my wrecking ball, for her love, her hawk-eyed proofreading, her words of wisdom and her lack of restraint in calling me a doofus whenever I write stupid things.

Preface

In front of you, you have the master dissertation “‘Of Comics, Detectives And Model Rocketry’ Examining Post-Postmodernity As The Result Of Combining Trauma, History And Fiction In The Work Of Michael Chabon”. Throughout the course of studying English literature and linguistics at the university of Ghent, I encountered a great variety of novels and authors that span literary history. From Old English and American revolutionary literature to contemporary postmodern fiction and even graphic novels. Those who were in charge of teaching and broadening my literary mind never seemed to run out of interesting novels to contemplate, analyse and discuss. In this vast library of works however, there was one author who specifically stood out from the crowd. This author is Michael Chabon. This dissertation looks at four novels by Chabon and was written with the goal of graduating the English Literature and Linguistics Master course at the University of Ghent.

Over the course of the fall semester of the 2017-2018 academic year, I came up with the idea of writing a dissertation on Chabon’s latest novel Moonglow. With the help of my promotor Professor Joost Krijnen, this idea changed into an examination of Chabon as a Post- postmodern author. The guidance and suggestions of my promotor added to the paper your will read below. I cannot thank him, and everyone else involved enough.

Although this is not the paper I set out to write, I worked hard on it and really tried to engage with the novels through close reading while using theories and ideas I picked up along the way during my time at university. This paper got me out of my comfort zone of just writing papers about comic books and graphic novels. Although I usually thrive with shorter papers, this long piece of writing will hopefully meet your high standards.

Happy reading.

Casper De Koker – January 2018

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Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Part 1 - Theory ...... 6

Chapter 1 Theory ...... 7 1.1 Trauma Studies ...... 7 1.1.1 What is Trauma? ...... 7 1.1.2 Trauma and Literature ...... 8 1.1.3 Trouble with Representing Trauma in Literature ...... 10 1.2 Historical Fiction ...... 12 1.2.1 The Difference Between Documentary and Historical Fiction ...... 13 1.2.2 Why Historical Fiction? ...... 14 1.2.3 Historical, Pseudo-factual or Historiographic Meta- fiction? ...... 16 1.3 Post-postmodernism ...... 19 1.3.1 Succeeding Postmodernism ...... 19 1.3.2 Post-postmodernism and Its Return to Realism and Humanism ...... 20 1.3.3 Recurring Post-postmodern Themes and Strategies ...... 21

Part 2 - Analysis ...... 25

Chapter 2 Analysis of Recurring Themes in Michael Chabon’s oeuvre ...... 26 2.1 Five Noteworthy Themes and Their Connection to Post-postmodernism ...... 26 2.2 Contextualising Chabon’s Selected Work:...... 29 2.2.1 Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay ...... 30 2.2.2 Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution ...... 34 2.2.3 Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union...... 40 2.2.4 Michael Chabon’s Moonglow ...... 45 2.3 Other Post-postmodern Techniques ...... 54 2.4 Result ...... 58 Conclusion 59 Bibliography 62 Primary works: ...... 62 Secondary works: ...... 62

List of Abbreviations

Kavalier & Clay The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Final Solution The Final Solution

Yiddish Policemen The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

Maps Maps and Legends

Introduction

Michael Chabon authored many works. One example is The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a contemporary English novel that won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 2001. It has since become a mainstay in high school and university syllabi. It is considered to be many things: a coming of age novel, a fake documentary novel, an immigrant story, a clear-cut representation of the American dream and sometimes a third-generation American trauma narrative dealing with World War II. This last consideration is owed to the fact that it, although from a distance, represents the Holocaust in a literary works of fiction. The novel deals with a historical traumatic history and events related to it. From the experience of studying it at university, the idea formed to write a dissertation on a topic related to Michael Chabon because he is a versatile, interesting and clever author able of weaving many ideas into his works. The focus would be put on a more recent work by Chabon because the premise seemed as interesting and versatile in talking about the Holocaust as Kavalier and Clay was. Chabon published his most recent novel Moonglow and now, almost a year since it was published, Chabon’s Moonglow has remained somewhat untouched by academic discussion or literary analysis.

Initially, this dissertation was specifically going to look at Chabon’s Moonglow by itself. This novel’s main story takes place in 1989, at a time where the real Michael Chabon's was taking a break from his first novel’s book tour to visit his mother’s home in Oakland, California to see his terminally ill grandfather. Under the influence of painkillers and approaching death, Chabon’s grandfather shares memories previously unknown to the author. Chabon, feeling like he met a totally new person due to these revelations, decides to weave this experience into a novel which would ultimately become Moonglow. The premise of the novel starts out similarly and the Michael in the novel goes to visit his dying grandfather which leads him to uncovering bits and pieces of a history long since kept a secret. Chabon turns the experience of listening to his grandfather’s revelations into a novel Moonglow yet

the result is something that feels realistic and biographical and not fictional at all. Moonglow touches on similar themes as his previous work The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay such as history, trauma and escapism but Chabon actually plays with the genre of historical fiction to set readers off on the wrong foot. Through the use of the form of a memoir or biographical writing, Chabon seemingly gives a complete and realistic account of his experiences. At the same time, he is actually fictionalizing and playing with the truth. It is a dynamic that uses genre and storytelling to approach literature that seemed to define Moonglow. On closer inspection however, it seemed not entirely unique to this novel in Chabon’s oeuvre alone.

Chabon’s Moonglow is not the only work of his that seems to be playing a game of interchanging fact, fiction, history and memory. Chabon’s other work, such as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Final Solution also share some similarities in this regard. Most notably, they also use history in their own unique ways to tell their respective stories. These novels also seem to share some of the same themes by touching on similar aspects. One of these themes is related to the Jewish experience of World War II and its aftermath. As a Jew, Chabon seems to be interested in telling Jewish stories and some of those stories are specifically dealing with the experiences and trauma suffered linked to the Holocaust. Although topics related to trauma have been explored in previous works, Moonglow has remained relatively untouched by academic discussion or literary analysis because the novel was published quite recently. As a result, not much comparison has been made either between this work and previous works by the same author. This dissertation aims to change that by providing Moonglow with a literary analysis that focuses on some aspects of the novel’s form, genre, story and structure as well as examine some of its motifs and metaphors, but that is not the main goal.

The other previously mentioned novels will also be looked at alongside Moonglow to contextualise it and also to examine whether there is a link, thematic or other, between these works. These exploits are aimed at finding whether there is some larger purpose that Michael Chabon wants to achieve. These novels seem to walk a fine line between Postmodernism and Post-postmodernism, so the question will be asked which one applies to Chabon. Joseph Dewey argues in his book Understanding Michael Chabon that Chabon is a part of a:

“generation of American writers produced almost entirely by universities, specifically by creative writing programs […] they traded the easy charm of reading books and the coaxing pull

of story and character for the intellectual rigor of analysing texts. They studied dense avant- garde postmodern theories about narrative de/reconstruction, fashionable theories that questioned the very legitimacy of language and viability of the reading act they had each loved since childhood” (Dewey)

This seems to suggest that Chabon is firmly placed in a Postmodern context and that based on this formal education he would exclusively write highly intellectual experiments of fiction aimed at challenging the literary status quo. However, Dewey later disagrees with his own point that sees Chabon, and other authors of this generation, as exclusively Postmodern indicating the challenge of labelling this author’s writing style. Dewey suggests as well that these authors are actually “post-postmodernists” and that since they were “alarmed by the dead-end implications of de/reconstructing books into language experiments, sought to restore narrative to a balance, producing serious fiction that maintain the intellectual reach of formal experimentation, certainly, but reclaim as well the inviting imperative of storytelling” (Dewey). Post-postmodern tendencies shine through in Chabon’s fiction and the idea of restoration juxtaposed with formal experimentation are strongly represented. That is why one of the goals of this dissertation is to argue that these novels, and by extension Chabon’s writing, are in fact Post-postmodern works aimed at reconstruction rather than Postmodern deconstruction and scepticism. This dissertation will argue that there are distinct recurring themes and strategies in various of Michael Chabon’s novels connecting history and trauma through fiction and that the author uses these themes in a Post-postmodern sense with the goal of making trauma speakable and fiction relevant and meaningful again following a time in which Postmodernist writing had trouble expressing and achieving these effects.

In order to achieve such goals, this paper will be structured along two pillars. The first pillar will be providing a theoretical overview of three fields of study that can be linked to Chabon’s work. This will start by giving a short overview of theoretical ideas and concepts that play within the study of trauma theory and trauma literature. Trauma and literature will be linked by juxtaposing insights of theorists from trauma studies, like Cathy Caruth, Dominick LaCapra and Marianne Hirsch, and by looking at English studies related to narrative and literature as discussed by James E. Young. These specific theoretical aspects will serve as a framework when analysing how trauma manifests and is represented within the selected novels since they seem to be a critical part of Chabon mode of writing. The theoretical part is then continued by taking a brief look at the phenomenon of historical fiction. It seems that the novels in the selection of Chabon’s work all use history in one way

or another. Several of the events in the books, although fictionalized to a varying extent, can be linked back to historical events. The examination and contextualisation of the workings of historical fiction can show how, in literature, fact and fiction can be intertwined. This short theoretical examination provides a framework to which we can hold the novels. The novels will be put on a scale from fictional to historical and depending on where they stand, the theory can provide insight on how the historical aspects influence the fictional aspects or vice versa. Examining historical fiction also gives an idea of the game Chabon is playing with history and fiction since it is not exclusive to him. This theoretical exploration shows that Chabon operates within an established method of mixing fact and fiction and it will give a bit more insight into the game has been played previously. Finally, the theoretical part of this dissertation will also briefly examine Post-postmodernism as described by Linda Hutcheon and Mary Holland. Arguing that Chabon’s work seems to share many characteristics ascribed to this particular mode will prove difficult if it is unclear what that mode entails. In order to examine the novels, identifying such characteristics will help putting any narratological analysis and the shared themes into a broader context and, as a result, provide a framework to reference when necessary.

The second pillar of this dissertation narrows its focus onto the novels, analysis and how it relates it all relates back to Post-postmodernism. This part will start out by explaining which themes specifically were chosen to look at in the novels and why. Then the analysis of each of the aforementioned selected work will be carried out. Each analysis will start out with a brief summary of the plot followed by analysis of the selected themes through the use of close reading and examples from the novel. Looking at similarities and differences within the author’s oeuvre will not only show the clear thematic lines along which he operates, it will shed more light on Chabon’s writing being specifically Post-postmodern. When the examination of these novels is finished, the aspects that recur in Chabon’s novels will be linked more explicitly to Post-postmodernism. This will be done by first connecting the themes to larger aspects that define Post-postmodern writing, previously mentioned in the theoretical part and second, some more examples from the novels will be put forward that feel distinctly Post-postmodern. Ultimately, the cumulative result will try to place Chabon’s work strongly within Post-postmodernism and give proof to the argument that Michael Chabon, using distinct recurring themes, connects history and trauma through fiction with the goal of making trauma speakable and fiction relevant again after getting through the Postmodern wasteland.

Part 1 - Theory

Chapter 1 Theory

1.1 Trauma Studies

1.1.1 What is Trauma?

Trauma is the negative effects caused by an event or bad experience that has a lasting influence on future actions. According to Cathy Caruth it is the singular possession by the past in which those who lived through the overwhelming events continuously recollect and re- enact that past (Caruth 151). Dominick LaCapra adds to this definition by saying that it is “an out-of context experience that upsets expectations and unsettles one’s very understanding of existing contexts” (LaCapra 117). Basically, trauma entails a disruption of the status quo within a person, affecting their psychological experience. It can also upset the status quo of a society, group of people or culture, in which case the ramifications will be different, and more visible on a larger scale. Peter Kellerman, in his book Sociodrama and Collective Trauma suggests that “major traumatic events, such as war, terrorist bombings, and natural disasters, transcend the realms of individual suffering and enter the universal and collective sphere” […] Such a group setting will immediately make it obvious that people are influenced not only by their individual experiences, internal conflicts, and personality development but also by disastrous external socio-political realities which are common to all” (Kellerman 9). So it should be noted that personal and collective trauma are two separate kinds of trauma but they constantly influence one another. Collective trauma might shape how an individual sees his own trauma and how it is interpreted by other individuals whereas individual trauma can serve as specific case-studies for collective trauma.

Trauma in general can be considered as something that has a lasting impact on actions, reactions, and interpretations of certain events. It is a subject that has gotten increasingly more

attention since World War I when soldiers were coming home suffering from shell shock. From that point onwards, the subject of trauma, caused by grand horrific events such as the Holocaust, various wars and the emergence of global terrorism, has taken up a central role in academic studies, the most dominant of which is psychology. Through psychological attempts at understanding trauma, Caruth mentions “that we seem to have dislocated the boundaries of our modes of understanding” so much so that other areas of study such as “sociology, history, and even literature all seem to be called upon to explain, to cure, or to show why it is that we can no longer simply explain or simply cure” (Caruth 4). The main reason for representation of trauma to seep into literary works, whether these are memoirs, biographies, diaries, novels or other such works, is partially because of a human imperative to talk about past and shared experiences. Not only that, giving of testimony of traumatic experiences has been considered a helpful tool for victims to work through their trauma and to recontextualize those experiences, finally succeeding in reclaiming control over the trauma that held them captive..

1.1.2 Trauma and Literature

Literature is a way of narrativizing and narrativizing can be a way to help work through trauma while also fulfilling the purpose of the historical demand to make the truth known. In the narrative process however, there is the risk of loss of truth since stable understanding of trauma or the occurrence of horrific events might reduce the traumatic aspects of that event. As Caruth (preface VII) mentions that the survivors fear that through telling their traumatic stories, their stories will lose their impact, will be reduced to clichés or turn their story into just another version of a similar story. If Michael Chabon writes about Joe Kavalier losing his family in one of his novels, the impact of that event might be diminished as a result of poor storytelling or bad writing This risk can be overcome. According to James E. Young that which is remembered of the Holocaust depends on how it is remembered and how events are remembered depends in turn on the texts now giving them form (1). For example Chabon might be able to do justice to Joe’s loss by describing it using metaphors so the event is still something a reader can relate to. That is why Young suggests to utilize a “critical literary historiography” (4) which does not only consider the facts or the trauma itself, but also the interpretations of the facts and the consequences of those interpretations. The question shifts from “what is depicted in Chabon’s novel?” to “how is it depicted?” and “why is it depicted in such a way?”. The ultimate aim of literature here is to “understand the manner in which historical actuality and the forms in which they are delivered are intertwined” (Young 5). It

becomes a matter of distinguishing what has happened in historical reality as opposed to what is fictional, as well as how it is presented. Trauma is shaped by narration thereof and our consequent interpretation which is the result of an accumulative process of interpretation across generations. For this dissertation such attention to historicity, narration and interpretation will come into play in relation to the analysis of Chabon’s selected works as well. It was already suggested that Chabon plays with these factors while relating a fictionalized accounts of trauma and history. They seem to indicate that the survivor’s testimony or personal experience of his characters is more important than merely establishing times, places, names and dates. What Chabon does in looking for the story of events, he attempts to narrativize trauma and make it mean something for the reader.

One reason, according to Marianne Hirsch, why it is important that trauma manifests in literature and narrativisation is that it has to do with postmemory and post-generational transfer of information. The idea of postmemory looks at the ways in which “knowledge is received and transferred as well as being transmuted into history or into myth” (Hirsch 103). Postmemory serves as a frame which can be used to deliver accounts of experience and stories of the past across and within different generations. This leads to a “structure of inter- and transgenerational transmission of traumatic knowledge and experiences. It is a consequence of traumatic recall at a generational remove” (Hirsch 106). The knowledge, feelings and emotions of the events and trauma are passed on from person to person and generation to generation. Another definition Hirsch offers is that:

Postmemory describes the relationship that the generation after those who witnessed cultural or collective trauma bears to the experience of those who came before, experiences that they “remember” only by means of the stories , images and behaviors among which they grew up” (Hirsch 106)

Those who witnessed the Holocaust and directly came into contact with the trauma it caused as well as the repercussions of such trauma are considered to be part of the first generations of survivors. The generation that follows consists of the children of the first generation, often living with parents whose suffering from trauma is still ongoing and, as a result, come into contact with the horrors of the Holocaust indirectly. This is the second generation and they and their family relationships are still influenced by the previous generation’s trauma. There is also the third generation. This generation is not as closely connected to the trauma or the Holocaust, and most of what they encounter related to the topic, is through stories, memoirs, and other such sources of indirect transmission. Usually, in

cases of third generation authors, there is still some family connection that goes back to World War II ; this is not the case for Michael Chabon. He says his stories come from “ongoing, overarching investigations: into my heritage—rights and privileges, duties and burdens—as a Jew and as a teller of Jewish stories” (Chabon Maps 131-132) Michael Chabon himself describes experiences and fabricates stories based on other stories, images and behaviours of the Holocaust as well as a global Jewish heritage of experience. He creates a kind of affiliated memory of Jewish experience in his stories and in doing so guard a past that needs to be preserved for future generation without a direct link to history.

In a way, it could be argued that because of the way he comes into contact with the testimony of trauma, Chabon and his experiences are similar to that of the third generation and constructs a kind of affiliated memory to the Jewish heritage of trauma. Even more, as an author telling his stories, he makes a reader a secondary witness of trauma which is of some significance. For example, Dominick LaCapra believes that a secondary witness can undergo some of the effects of trauma, without actually being exposed to a traumatic experience. This happens because of identification with the victim. In the case of reading a novel that deals with trauma, the reader might identify with the experiences put forward in the novel. LaCapra distinguishes two ways a traumatic experience can be experienced in a secondary way, namely, it can happen vicariously, or virtually:

“In the vicarious experience of trauma, one perhaps unconsciously identifies with the victim, becomes a surrogate victim, and lives the event in an imaginary way that, in extreme cases, may lead to confusion about one’s participation in the actual events. [...] In the virtual [...] experience of trauma, one may imaginatively put oneself in the victim’s position while respecting the difference between self and other and recognizing that one cannot take the victim’s place or speak in the victim’s voice.” (LaCapra 125)

In providing readers with a narrative, Chabon can cause both vicarious and virtual experiences in his readers. Chabon then uses the confusion of a reader’s own participation or place within a trauma, as well as questions regarding other participants in the narrative to makes readers aware of the impact traumatic events can have. Even if fictional.

1.1.3 Trouble with Representing Trauma in Literature

Although literature is an important tool as it helps with dealing with accounts of individual trauma, according to Cathy Caruth there is are fundamental crucial problems

related to it. One of them is that there is a psychological problem related to relieving and reliving suffering as doing so might eliminate the force of truth of the relived events. Caruth argues in her introduction Trauma and Experience it is not “having too little indirect access to an experience that places its truth in question, in this case, but paradoxically enough, its overwhelming immediacy” (Caruth 6).What this means is that an individual who relives his past trauma through hallucination might come to question the truthfulness of the memory. The dreams and hallucinations are not, as Caruth mentions, “possessed knowledge”(6) and because of it regarded with uncertainty by those in whom they manifest. If even the people to which others turn to get an idea of trauma are doubtful of their own experiences how can one represent those experiences; “how we in this era can have access to our own historical experience, to a history that is in its immediacy a crisis to whose truth there is no simple access” (Caruth 6). This means that accessing and representing trauma proves to be challenging because of this.

As a result, a lot of attention in literary trauma studies has been given to question whether trauma and traumatic events can actually be represented in literature because it raised many questions. If trauma is a response to events or even possession by an event, the question is then whether it is possible to understand trauma by merely looking at those events. Or otherwise, the question whether trauma is the inability of putting experiences into understandable categories and through what means one is able to examine what makes them traumatic and how it is made understandable again. For Caruth, trauma is something that struggles to unite and represent history, truth and personal narrative but some argue, like Roger Luckhurst, that “literature and psychoanalysis” can “attend to these struggles” (Luckhurst 5). The way this works is that literature can be considered a “cultural material” or even a “cultural narrative”(15). Because a narrative knots together various aspects of a culture such as industry and law but also daily-life and the psychology of an individual, it also puts to historical trauma in larger frame. That frame in turn can become a general narrative that serves for traumatized individuals as a method of “consolidating the idea of post-traumatic subjectivity”(15), on a more personal, individual level.

It is because Caruth (Caruth 153) argues that the recollection of traumatic events remains insistent and unchanged due to it never being fully integrated into understanding, they are difficult to represent. The recollection cannot easily become a narrative memory, integrated into a completed story of the past. If it is integrated into a larger narrative outside of just the

individual however, the trauma that seems to invoke the difficult truth of a personal history constituted by the very incomprehensibility of its occurrence, might just become comprehensible once again. The trauma dealt with in literature might deal primarily with individual and psychological trauma but because this is related to larger events, like the Holocaust as is the case in Chabon’s work, the individual can serve as a representative for cultural trauma. In turn, cultural trauma serves as a framework for the trauma of many different people. This opens up a possibility of historical transmission. A history that speaks through the individual or through a community which, in its own suffering, not only finds the cause of disruption but wisdom as well. As a result, literature can be examined as the manifestation of such wisdom, overcoming the disconnect between truth and trauma and to a certain extent, allow for the expression of the inexpressible.

In order to take care of those memories one has to carry the survivor’s stories forward without appropriating them, without unduly calling attention to ourselves, and without, in turn, having our own stories displaced by them” (Hirsh 104). Michael Chabon will have to be careful when constructing his stories that he does not overstep by making the story his own or losing focus of the main topic. Yet, if one is cautious of this, it should become possible to examine narratives delivered over time. The intergenerational transmission then becomes an important explanatory vehicle with regards to various historical events. In writing about stories that deal with the trauma of the Holocaust, Chabon expands the reach of interpretation and representation of the event and its impact. That is not all, in telling his stories, Chabon will try to unsettle the trauma by taking liberties “with due abandon” (Chabon Author’s note Moonglow), seemingly as an attempt to work through some of the trauma that remains in society. Since “working through trauma should also involve the desacralizing of trauma” (LaCapra), what better way do to it than by embellishing and narrativizing the truth by doing just that.

1.2 Historical Fiction

One of the main points of this dissertation is that Chabon encourages historically removed readers to examine trauma by making it more accessible through the use of post-postmodern fiction. In order to do that however, there is a need to know what shape the fiction of Chabon

takes. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay tells its fictional story but uses historical events to frame it. The Final Solution is a detective story set in England while World War II is going on. Moonglow also deals with that same war and its aftermath using the format of a memoir whereas The Yiddish Policemen’s Union changes certain historical events that took place and figures an entirely new history to follow it. On some level, all these novels play with history and could as a result be perceived as historical novels. This segment will take a brief look at the historical novel as a format or genre in order to get an idea of how it works in a general sense, so those ideas can later be specifically applied to the work of Michael Chabon.

1.2.1 The Difference Between Documentary and Historical Fiction

In order to figure out what historical fiction is and what historical novels do, there is a need for distinction between the historical novel and the documentary novel or fiction. Both terms are often used in juxtaposition with one another, but there is a slight difference between the two. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, the historical novel is:

a novel that has as its setting a period of history and that attempts to convey the spirit, manners, and social conditions of a past age with realistic detail and fidelity (which is in some cases only apparent fidelity) to historical fact. [...] More often it attempts to portray a broader view of a past society in which great events are reflected by their impact on the private lives of fictional individuals. (encyclopaedia Britannica)

That very same Encyclopædia also suggests a definition for the documentary or, as it is also called, the nonfiction novel, saying that it consists of the “story of actual people and actual events told with the dramatic techniques of a novel”. (Encyclopædia Britannica). These two labels are often used together because they are very close to one another. The main difference is that the historical novel deals with the fictional and uses history as its backdrop whereas documentary fiction tells historical truths using narrative strategies taken from fiction and the genre of the novel. Documentary fiction takes factual history books and narrativizes them whereas historical fiction takes factual history and uses it to frame a fictional narrative. So why is this distinction important for the work of Chabon? Because Chabon operates on scale going from mostly fictional to mostly historical but he sometimes pretends to document real events, most notably in Moonglow and Kavalier and Clay through the use of footnotes.

Chabon’s novels can be considered to be predominantly historical novels as they use the backdrop of World War II and the post-war period to tell their stories but there are instances in which the novels document real events in order to ground its narrative in reality. What complicates things is that Chabon sometimes pretends to document events that never happened right alongside documenting events that have happened and consequently blurring the line between the real and the fictional. There is a documentary link between a literary work and the events which inspired them that Chabon seemingly exploits; he uses it as a narrative strategy and a rhetoric tool in his fiction to shape the readers’ interpretation of the history they think they know. Note that this is not the same as historical metafiction since it does not pose philosophic or critical questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, yet being exposed to this strategy does urge readers to be wary and examine whether this kind of fiction really does document historical events or whether is “fictionalizes them thus blurring the boundaries of reality” (Young 8).

1.2.2 Why Historical Fiction?

The fact that Michael Chabon uses historical fiction is not a unique case in contemporary literature. In recent times, historical fiction has become increasingly popular and present due to “persisting fascination with visiting- and consuming- past historical periods as a way of dealing with modern day concerns” (Rousselot 5). It seems that the historical novel participates in a broader transformation of historical consciousness. In Chabon’s case, that is the transformation of the way the Jewish stories played out during World War II. The evolution of these fictional kinds of writing related to historical topics seems to signal not the abandoning of the claim to represent historical actuality but an attempt at reformulating such claims in order to accommodate the changing conception of that actuality. In that sense, Elodie Rousselot argues in the introduction of her book Exoticizing the Past in Contemporary Neo-Historical Fiction that the increased interest in historical writing stems from the idea that:

“The uncertainty caused by our increasingly globalised present exacerbates our nostalgic obsession with appropriating and re-imagining the past [...] the neo-historical novel affords a travel experience to the modern reader-cum-explorer in which the retrieval of these vanishing ‘dark areas’ - like the retrieval of vanishing values and modes of being- is still a possibility. This escapist fantasy is not dissimilar to that offered by travel narratives of old” (Rousselot 7).

This means that there are two main reasons for Chabon to return to the past. The first is that to try and find a way to deal with emerging contemporary trends of globalisation which takes away the factor of mystery and the unknown from our day to day lives, and with it some of its excitement. The second reason seems to be that historical novels allow for an escape from our contemporary living situation, a way to explore other narratives than our own. This escape, as this dissertation will show later, is a large part of Chabon’s writing. Rousselot argues that the effect of historical novel is similar to the “travel narratives of old” and yet, it is a genre that has always existed in some form or another due to human’s obsession with recording remarkable achievements and events. Although it can be argued that the genre of historical writing in canonical literature goes back to the writings of sir Walter Scott and Fenimore Cooper, the probable reality is that this style of writing has occurred before them as well, and they are mere representatives popularized due to evolutions in printing and distribution. When reading works of historical fiction by these authors and more recently by Chabon however, one finds himself to “be invited to participate in generic contract with an authorial presence that ‘bind together’ the text, empyrean in its pretensions to autonomy but in fact implicated in every shade of characterization and turn of plot” (Foley 156). Historical fiction in that regard is playing games with fact and fiction and mixing them together. The history, although it is accurately represented by the authors, serves as a tool to tell a story, it is a pillar that serves as a foundation on which the author builds his novel. The end result is seemingly factual account that is inherently fictional.

Other more recent literary developments within the genre have influenced contemporary books and their authors. According to Barbara Foley, in her book Telling the Truth; The Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction, a lot of the recent trends visible in contemporary historical novels stem from modernist development. She argues that a contemporary historical novel “makes few of the pretensions to totalizing representation that accompany fictions of the previous century. Rather, in its use of documentary materials it parades its status as interpretation but calls into question the very necessity of offering determinate judgement of a concretely historical referent” (Foley 185). What she means is that historical novel as a genre is aimed at re-examining what is viewed as historical fact. Historical fiction in this way attempts to make readers re-evaluate what they know to be historically true by providing unknown narratives in known historic contexts. Foley suggests three respects that are responsible for this effect:

First, the text now proposes cognition through an undisguised adoption of analogous configuration [...] Second, the plot of the historical novel relinquishes the historical probabilities accompanying the pseudofactual novel and directs its narrative energy to the elaboration of a pattern of complication and resolution that interprets and evaluates the social world. [...] Third, empirical data enter the historical novel not to validate the author’s honesty but to reinforce the text’s claim to offer persuasive interpretation of its referent.” (Foley 144-145)

Applied to Chabon this works in the following way. First, readers can come to know things about the past, specifically Jewish stories throughout and after World War II, because the text adopts history through analogous configuration. The story is comparable to other stories and histories a reader might know, through comparison the narrative and any historical implications become clearer. One example of this is how the format of the biography in Moonglow or its use of testimony put the narrative in a historic context while fictionalizing it. A reader may compare this faux-biography to other memoirs and have his interpretations of them change. Second, Chabon’s novels abandon some of the focus on history in order to create a plot with a narrative arc aimed towards a resolution. A clear example of this can be seen in Kavalier and Clay, in which the coming-of-age story of Joe and his coming to terms with the loss of his family, takes precedence of historical representation of the Second World War or life in America. Third, the use of factual data and actual history as way of framing the story gives the story credibility. The facts are used mostly to show that the stories and events written down have some merit and offer a valid judgement on the historical context it takes place in. This is achieved because the “historical novel’s ‘facts’ appear to anchor the text’s analogues configuration in historical actuality by proposing that particular corroborative data bear an unmediated reference to the public historical record” (Foley 146). In short, the fictional events described in the book are similar and bear relation to the historic events, this is what makes the seem real and believable. It is such perceived reality in readers that causes new or changed interpretations of history.

1.2.3 Historical, Pseudo-factual or Historiographic Meta- fiction?

Foley also mentions that aside from the historical novel, in the modernist era, “the pseudofactual novel” reappears in contemporary literature. Although these type of novels are fiction and cannot be other than fiction, effects are very similar to that of the regular historical novel. In the case of Michael Chabon, his novels are also “invoking a generic contract that requires readers to see the text’s characters and actions as replication of real persons and

events.”(Foley 186) which means his novels also have pseudo-factual aspects contained within. One reason for this, according to Foley, is because:

“the validation of personal testimony attaches to one of the central concerns of modernist fiction, namely the artist-hero’s odyssey to self-knowledge. Focusing upon the protagonist’s efforts to formulate a coherent representation of an evasive historical actuality,[…] that its reader apprehend its central characters and incidents as real entities rather than mimetic constructs- filtered through the consciousness of the protagonist and thereby endowed with shape and significance, but real nonetheless” (Foley 188).

So although the historical novel and pseudofactual have different goals and use very different methods, they do share some of the same aims in the modernist era; both indicate a clear link with an unknown past in order to re-examine and re-evaluate it and provide the readers a context in which they can recontextualize their own ideas regarding the past. Chabon unites aspect of both in his writing.

In Postmodernism ,-and with it to a certain extent post-postmodernism, many of the ideas and strategies related to historical and pseudofactual novels survived but “the contemporary literary historical novel has folded various tropes of formal, historiographical and theoretical radicalism into a newly popular, relatively sanitised blend” (De Groot 93). Novels of the contemporary era have a distinct form, influenced by new ideas that emerged throughout the postmodern century. Theorists, such as Linda Hutcheon and Jerome De Groot, argue that these novels “take tools of postmodern historiographic metafiction and make them mainstream and popular” (De Groot 100) all while exploring themes of identity, the human psyche, our position in structures of authority and many others. When looking at the past, despite their new ideas and literary methods, the historical novel still focuses on larger events that existed in the public space. De Groot argues that:

The most significant historical events considered by literary novelists over the past decades have been the two world wars of the twentieth century. [...] It seems clear that revisiting the well- known past of two wars allows novelists to negotiate extremes of human behaviour, such as suffering, trauma, possibly heroism, within a familiar set of tropes. (De Groot 102)

In Michael Chabon’s work, the author specifically looks at the second World War, the trauma it caused as well as its aftermath within the familiar set of tropes provided by biographies, detective stories, coming-of-age stories, family narratives and historical events. The selected novels seemingly historicize and fictionalize certain aspects in order to examine not only the event itself, but the after effects thereof on those who lived through the ordeal.

The techniques of historical fiction also seem to imply that this form is self-conscious, complicated and questioning.

At its core, historical fiction takes the dry facts and information of a historical past and invest them with fictional life. Marianne Hirsch argued that “storytelling as a skill historians need to learn if they are to be able to tell the difficult history of the destruction of the Jews (Hirsch 105). This seems to be what Chabon tries to do by using historical fiction infused with aspects of pseudo-factual and postmodern historiographic metafictional novels; tell the stories of difficult family histories and pasts that find their cause in war-related trauma. Borrowing the word of Jerome De Groot again, Chabon seems to “take the trauma of the war and fold it into their meditations upon memory and identity” but by putting it within various fictional contexts, the key historical events occur more in the background because Chabon realizes they are “something unable to be expressed, something that might hurt or wound the psyche” (De Groot 105). The memory of the past bring about some pain and employing fictional strategies helps alleviate some of that.

However , there remains the divide and interplay between fact and fiction and it seems that:

Historical novels are keenly interested in the interaction between what is ‘known’ and what is made up, querying for instance, the deployment of varieties of quoted evidence, which is often literary, therefor highlighting the innate textuality of history, to frame a persuasive narrative, and the use of the realist mode to present a story that is clearly fiction.” ( De Groot 113)

As is the case with this dissertation, the question of what is known and what is made up will be explored further in order to discern some of the author’s intentions and ascertain whether he does in fact make trauma narratives accessible and mean something to readers in order to bring himself and his audience closer to understanding some of the implications of the Holocaust’s traumatic past. It is “the historian’s job is to explain the otherness of the past, whilst the novelist explores the differences of the past” (De Groot 113), and it is this dissertation’s job to explore the way in which Michael Chabon, as both novelist and would-be historian, is using the historical novel, its tropes, metaphors, prose and narrative style to interpret and render a version of the past to his historically removed audience.

1.3 Post-postmodernism

1.3.1 Succeeding Postmodernism

Having looked at the theoretical frameworks for trauma narrativization and the way in which fiction deals with historically removed narratives and linked this back to Michael Chabon, one final theoretical aspect that should be looked at is that of Post-postmodernism. Placing Chabon’s work within Post-postmodernism and giving proof to the argument that Michael connects history and trauma through Post-postmodern fiction are among the main goals of this dissertation Therefore, providing a brief overview of Post-postmodernism’s main ideas and techniques related to fiction or literature can help the analysis further down the line. Most notably Mary Holland’s introduction to Succeeding Postmodernism, Language and Humanism in Contemporary American Literature and Linda Hutcheon’s Theory of Parody.

Starting out with Post-postmodernism, Holland defines it as the successor to Postmodernism and calls it the “positive concept of succeeding postmodernism”, clearly influenced by its predecessor and influenced by:

what is by now a well-accepted understanding of ‘postmodernism’ more broadly, as a concept of the world and our place in it as impacted by cultural, historical, and philosophical effects of (late) capitalism, consumerism, image culture, loss of sense of historicity, awareness of the inescapability and definitveness of subjectivity and perspective (Holland 18).

For this dissertation, this would imply that Michael Chabon has a broad understanding of postmodern literature and its effects on telling stories. Post-postmodern literature of the twenty-first century moves beyond its predecessor through the performance of recuperative acts against postmodern keystones, such as silence and apathy, caused by the postmodern condition. In the case of Chabon, this would mean restoring the loss of the sense of historicity and the exploration of subjectivity as something to examine If it is inescapable, why not use it and even celebrate it. Although literature remains “postmodern in its assumptions about the culture and world from which it arises, and it remains post-structural in its assumptions about the arbitrariness and problems of language” (Holland 18) it does use these aspects to move towards “humanist ends of generating empathy and communal bonds, ethical and political questions, and, most basically, communicable bonds” (Holland 19). For Chabon, as will become clearer throughout the analysis part, his stories often deal with various communal

bonds, whether that be friends, family or random encounters. Telling stories about them, making them relatable, causes empathy in readers but also provides them with new language.

1.3.2 Post-postmodernism and Its Return to Realism and Humanism

Postmodernism was much defined by post-structural notions regarding signification, our notion of what language is, and how humans stand in relation to it. This also dictated the kinds of literature we find in this period, the questions that literature raises about what it is to be human, and therefore also our notion of the human. Dewey argues this visible in the work of Pynchon, whose work is self-conscious and experimental, and John Updike who explore psychological aspect of the human mind. Now that a move towards humanistic ends is occurring, those questions start to disregard those post-structural notions and put humans front and centre once again. In the case of Chabon, the works are still self-aware and touch on psychological themes, but these work contain recognizable characters that work “toward humane insights into love, death, work and family” (Dewey). One clear way to see this is by looking at contemporary fiction and comparing it to what came before. Agreeing with Holland, it can be said that “American fiction in the twenty-first century looks, reads, and feels profoundly different from twentieth-century postmodern literature because it conceives of what language is and what it can do very differently. It displays a new faith in language and certainty about the novel’s ability to engage in humanist pursuits.” (Holland 3). Such humanist pursuits are what I believe also occur in Chabon’s novel by emphasizing the bonds of family and friendship between many of the characters Chabon created. Other humanist pursuits include the narration of life stories, as in Moonglow, the representation of trauma, as in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and The Final Solution, and the portrayal of family and relationships in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Placing Chabon’s work under post-postmodernism, allows the novels to have a more meaningful and humane significance and allows “Literature’s and theory’s ability to be about something, to matter, to communicate meaning, to foster the sense that language connects us more than it estranges us, so that we can come together in ways that build relationship and community rather than alienation and solipsism of anti-humanistic postmodern literature” (Holland 8).

The previously mentioned historical fiction can also be linked to post-postmodernism since the latter is more invested once again in realism. Chabon’s novels examine realistic and probable pasts, which is not a unique case in post-postmodernism. As Holland suggests the:

“novel moves backwards, to the comfortable assurances of traditional realism, in order to move forward out of antihumanism [...] in the twenty-first century, we have seen a proliferation of novels that shift their foci towards the real, the thing, the presence, and away from the sign, word, and absence upon which postmodern fiction fixated.” (Holland 9)

Contemporary literature tries to retain parts of humanism, such as affect and meaning, and investment in the real world as well as relationships between people. It is these aspects that will be examined in writing by Chabon as well. Chabon uses his own brand of realism in historical contexts to write realistic historical fiction. While there will be some holding on to “the postmodern and poststructural ideas about how language and representation function and characterize our human experiences of this world” (Holland 10) because post-postmodernism is rooted in the ideas of its postmodern predecessor, Chabon still will move away from these ideas in order to focus on the historical reality of people, the focus will be on the human experience, not scrutinize the way it is represented. Because of this holding on to what came before, some caution will be necessary while examining Chabon’s novels, to mistake not Post-postmodern developments with potential Postmodern experimentation. These two are linked because Post-postmodern developments initially evolved from Postmodern experiments but confusing and interchanging both, considering them to be equal, would do disservice to the respective developments that defined them as new and established them separately in literature to begin with.

1.3.3 Recurring Post-postmodern Themes and Strategies

Aside from mentioning globally what post-postmodernism entails in a general sense and how it is related to this dissertation, it would prove useful to already examine some techniques and themes that occur in this kind of writing. This will provide a starting point for the more in depth analysis of the works selected from Chabon’s oeuvre, later on in this dissertation. One such technique, according to Holland, is the emergence of a “new mode of realism, post- structural realism that produces ‘reality effects’ not by repressing the machinations of fiction, as does traditional realism, but by making them visible via metafiction’ (Holland 9). There are a couple example that will be explored in which Chabon uses metafiction to direct the reader’s attention at the fact that these historically influenced stories are fiction, or at least, fictionalized accounts of a person’s subjective memory of historical events. One of the examples that will be examined is Chabon’s use of epigraphs and how they already tell the

story that follows. Other examples include the use of footnotes and ironic references in the author’s note or copyright disclaimer.

Another strategy related to post-postmodernism worth mentioning here is parody. Chabon uses genre and established forms such as detective novels and memoirs to tell his stories. This could be considered parody on Chabon’s part According to Linda Hutcheon in A Theory of Parody, parody is best seen as an ironic trans-contextualization and inversion of a text or genre, or better yet; “repetition with difference” (Hutcheon 32). Parody involves intertextuality since its aim is often to duplicate certain aspects of something that came before, but using them in different ways. This definition fits the description of what Chabon does with his novels as well. Parody is not just a hypertextuality that is just a matter of formal borrowing and indicating larger similarities of genre outside of the text. Instead, it is a fully fledged narrative form. This form could be considered to be a form of metafiction whose essences lie in the acknowledging of a double or its duplicitous nature.

It was already argued that a novel, specifically historical fiction, is rooted in what can be considered “the realities of historical time and geographical space” (Hutcheon 31) and its narratives are still presented as only narrative, “its own reality- that is, as artifice” (Hutcheon 31). It seems that such stories are inherently fictitious. Chabon parodies everything from the genre of the memoir, the idea of testimony as well as the templates provided historical and genre fiction to tell his stories and as a result parodies them. Hutcheon argues that , using parody, authors attain a “means of freedom, even in the sense of exorcising personal ghosts- or rather, enlisting them in their own cause” (Hutcheon 35) all thanks to the ironic distance that parody affords. Hutcheon really emphasizes that parody is repetition that includes difference, heavily drenched in irony as it is:

“Critical ironic distance whose irony can cut both ways. Ironic versions of ‘trans- contextualization’ and inversion are its major formal operatives, and the range of pragmatic ethos is from scornful ridicule to reverential homage” (Hutcheon 37)

This is important because it shows that parody can, but doesn’t have to be, comical or ridiculing. Instead textual imitation and appropriation of another text’s genre, form or structure can result in new meanings and significance of those aspects. In another article by Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History, she argues that parody is not a mechanism for “what appears to be an aesthetic turning-inward” but rather “is exactly what reveals the close connections between the social production and reception of art and our

ideologically and historically conditioned ways of perceiving and acting” (184). This adds to previous by linking parody not only to intertextuality but to an author’s intention as well as proposing there is an urge throughout history for parody for various reasons. Parody does paradoxically enacts both “change and cultural continuity” (185). What is more, because of such a continuity, parody seems to employs such a historical memory in order “to signal that this kind of self-reflexive discourse is always inextricably bound to social discourse” (206). Considering parody is helpful when trying to find out the author’s goal as it might provide insight into the structure of the story.

Another aspect in literature that post-postmodernism highlights is what Holland calls “a literary return to family” (11) as there seemingly are plenty of possibilities for “family connections and for family as a context for constructing and understanding the self” (11). In Chabon, the narratives are centred around families and bonds of friendship that resemble family. So not only is the aspect of family important with regards to testimony of trauma and the delivery of postmemory as was mentioned previously, it is a key feature of post- postmodern writing that allows for the construction of meaning. The idea of family allows the author to explore a framework that was more neglected in postmodernism. As Holland suggests:

“Novels do assert that contemporary culture negatively impacts families in many of the ways that social critics recognize: through the manipulation, disaffection, and alienation perpetrated and encouraged by mediation, simulation and consumption. [...] cultural consequences and reflections of contemporary concepts of signification work their destruction both on the level of the individual and of the family by altering the lives of individuals, who in a culture of images and unfulfillable desire lose their senses of self and fulfilment that would allow themselves meaningful relationships with others.” (Holland 12-13)

What this means is that postmodernism, by attempting to tackle large ideas and its focus on the alienating cultures that dominates, it seemingly loses track of what is important to the individual. Narrowing the focus away from society and back towards the framework of family and relationships, as Chabon does, meaning can be constructed again. Realistic stories can be told without losing track of the individual through the frame of family and the sense of self might be restored.

So in conclusion, post-postmodernism in literature is a move away from the more negative sides of postmodernism while maintaining some of its techniques and ideas. As a result, contemporary twenty-first century literature and fictional novel turn their poststructural

devices back to humanist ends in order to recover the individual and the family in the same terms in which “the earlier novels condemned them, using the mechanisms of mediation, metafiction, and antirealism not to destroy the self, affect, and understanding but to construct them” (Holland 13). Examining Chabon’s work from a post-postmodern perspective allows a toolbox that contains a variety of postmodern techniques, yet gives any analysis of the novel the chance to means something. Moreover it allows to find meaning in the intentions of the author and the game he plays with this family narratives, historical fictions and trauma by interchanging the subjective truth of memory with historical facts and his own fictional machinations. In order to find out whether this is the case, a closer look at the novels themselves is necessary. The second part of this dissertation will do just that. Four selected works will be analysed by using five recurring aspects that author Michael Chabon explores repeatedly. This will show thematic consistencies in his writing which ultimately can be linked back to post-postmodernism.

Part 2 - Analysis

Chapter 2 Analysis of Recurring Themes in Michael Chabon’s oeuvre

2.1 Five Noteworthy Themes and Their Connection to Post- postmodernism

In order to argue that Michael Chabon’s novels connect history and trauma through post- postmodern fiction in order to make trauma speakable and literature relevant again, some common ground between different works written at different times needs to be found. All in all, five notable themes were chosen and the way in which they appear in the novels will be briefly looked at below as they seem to be present in some way, shape or form in Chabon’s writing. These aspects are: the play with history and fiction, Jewish displacement, trauma, escapism and family. These aspects are also specifically chosen as they have a relationship to the aspects discussed in the theoretical part of this dissertation as well as Post-postmodernism.

The first theme that will be looked at in these books is connected to the relationship between history and fiction. This relationship is connected to the idea of the historical novel. It will be examined where the certain novels places themselves on a scale from fiction to historical or somewhere in between. This scaling does not always occur explicitly as Chabon obscures the boundaries in his writing, yet there are instances in which they are visible and some of those instances will be explored. Chabon’s use of history and fiction, aside from its link to historical fiction, also holds a connection to Post-postmodernism; as mentioned previously, historical fiction holds ties to a rediscovered interest in realism. Since Chabon’s novels examine realistic and probable pasts, their focus shifts towards the real, the thing and the presence of factual history. Chabon uses his own brand of realism in historical contexts to write realistic historical fiction; he is using the historical novel to interpret and render a

version of the past to his historically removed audience and in doing so he retains parts of humanism and investment in the real world central to Post-postmodernism.

Secondly, there is the idea of Jewish displacement in many of Chabon’s works, he seems to tell stories about Jewish people leaving or having to leave their homes, their country and their previous life. With regards to the analysis of the novels, a look will be taken at how this displacement impacts characters and what the reasons for it might be within the story. Although Jewish displacement will be looked at as a separately as a theme, it is very much connected to, and can be considered a subtheme of the broader third theme of trauma which will also be explored in the selected works. Chabon might not be a typical representative of trauma literature and he was not directly involved or related with survivors of the Holocaust, his work does represent a kind of postmemory as well. He can be considered a guardian of the Jewish legacy of Holocaust stories that examines a history through tales that are relatable in a contemporary setting. With regards to trauma specifically, what will be looked at is how it is present, or for that matter absent, in the novels as well as what trauma entails for the various characters. The ideas of trauma and Jewish displacement are clearly connected to the ideas of trauma and postmemory presented earlier in the theoretical part, but these aspects can also be connected back to Post-postmodernism. The main reason for representation of trauma to make its way into literary works seems to be because of a human imperative to talk about the past and discuss shared experiences in order to recontextualize those experiences. This in itself already is a humanistic approach that can be considered to be Post-postmodern. Literature is also a way narrativizing which in turn can be a way to help work through trauma. In this regard, trauma can be considered as a hurdle that needs to be overcome. It is the situation from which recovery is needed, the disorder which makes restoration possible. With regards to postmemory, Chabon says his stories come from “ongoing, overarching investigations: into my heritage—rights and privileges, duties and burdens—as a Jew and as a teller of Jewish stories” (Chabon Maps 131-132) Michael Chabon himself describes experiences and fabricates stories, images and behaviours linked to the Holocaust as well as a global Jewish heritage of experience. In doing so he is creating a kind of affiliated memory of Jewish experience and in writing about stories that deal with its trauma, Chabon expands the reach of interpretation and representation of the event and its impact which is Post-postmodern as it challenges previously established truths.

The fourth theme that will be explored relates to the idea of escapism. This theme examines how Chabon’s novels make use of the marvellous or the fantastic and juxtaposes it with a realistic mode of storytelling. The use of escapism in the novels will be considered as well as what this entails for the characters that indulge in it. This idea is omnipresent in the selected works in various forms. Escapism can be considered to be an expressive mode that occurs within fantastic storytelling. The use of the fantastic and marvellous storytelling are elements that occurred in the Postmodern writing by the likes of Kafka and Poe and ultimately carried over into Post-postmodernism because the latter borrowed many strategies from its predecessor. With regards to Post-postmodern literature, Rosemary Jackson argues that “in a secular culture, fantasy has a different function” from earlier literature, “it does not invent supernatural regions, but presents a natural world inverted into something strange, something ‘other’” (Jackson 17). This is similar to what Chabon seems to do in his writing. His literature becomes escapist in the sense that he presents fictional narratives in which characters escape and while doing so he presents readers with narrative that are other than the reality they know. Chabon disorients the reader’s categorization of the real through the construction of alternative facts and escapist literature. There is escape into history, into creativity and into the characters themselves and in doing so Chabon violates what is considered possible and replaces it with his own probably history.

A fifth and final theme that will be explored is connected to the idea of family as it seems to serve as an important framework for characters to operate in. It is connected to the post- postmodern return to humanist ideas. Family bonds will be examined as well as their role in the larger narrative. It was already mentioned too in the theoretical part on Post- postmodernism that this aspect provides a framework in literature to aid in the performance of recuperative acts against Postmodern keystones, such as silence and apathy. For Chabon, this serves as a way of exploring subjectivity which Postmodernism deemed inescapable. Although some of Chabon’s literature might remain Postmodern in its assumptions about the culture and world from which it arises, it does use these aspects to move towards “humanist ends of generating empathy and communal bonds, ethical and political questions, and, most basically, communicable bonds” (Holland 19). For Chabon, these communal and communicable bonds, whether that be planned events with friends or random encounters with strangers, they are always seem to be framed by a family setting. Contemporary Post- postmodern literature tries to retain parts of humanism, such as affect and meaning, and in the

case of Chabon this is seemingly explored through investment in the real world as well as relationships between people.

2.2 Contextualising Chabon’s Selected Work:.

Michael Chabon is a versatile author and “across four decades now, Chabon’s writing- novels, short stories, and a growing body of engaging essays (by any measure a most prolific output)- have become a staple in both high school and university syllabi” (Dewey). Add children’s books and comic books, and the result is an author capable of writing in various styles who touches on varying themes that span a broad spectrum from serious to comical. In order to get a general idea of the scope of Chabon’s oeuvre, four of Chabon’s most notable works will be examined in this dissertation: Going chronologically by their year of publication, the first novel that will be looked is the 2002 novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Kavalier & Clay), a novel which for many readers and critics alike, put Chabon on the map as an established author. The second work that will be examined is the detective novella The Final Solution (Final Solution) which came out in 2004. It is a shorter story, but an interesting fictional experiment. Following this, the 2007 The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (Yiddish Policemen) will be examined, another detective story which shares some similarities with the previous work but is marked by its specific setting and approach to historical context. Finally there is Chabon’s most recent work Moonglow which came out in 2016 which is a novel disguised as a biographical memoir. As it is the most recent work, not as much time has been spent in academics analysing this novel. Because of this, this dissertation will spend a little more time on this novel than the other works which have already been critically and academically examined many times before. All of these works however, are discussed because they play with the boundaries between fact and fiction, share connections to World War II and the trauma it brought with it and prove that there is a common thread in Chabon’s oeuvre.

2.2.1 Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

“His dreams had always been Houdiniesque: they were the dreams of a pupa struggling in its blind cocoon, mad for a taste of light and air.” ― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

The first of the novels that will be discussed is a piece of historical fiction that starts in 1939 with the 19-year-old Josef Kavalier arriving in New York City, in order to live with his 17- year-old cousin, Sammy Klayman. Both of them later adopt similar names and are best known in the book as Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay. Joe, a Jewish refugee escaped Prague with the help of his magic teacher, mentor and surrogate father Kornblum, leaving behind the rest his family. When arriving in America, Sammy and Josef become friends and find success by getting involved in the comic book industry as a writer and an artist respectively. Sammy starts writing adventure stories with Joe illustrating them, and the two recruit several other Brooklyn teenagers to produce Amazing Midget Radio Comics. Sammy and Joe's most prominent character is the Escapist, an anti-fascist superhero who embodies the author’s ideals and disdain for Nazi Germany. Although successful, the two get only a small share of the earnings. All the while, Sammy and Joe have their own private dramas unfolding: Joe wants his family to escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, putting most of his earnings into this endeavour and also starts a relationship with fellow artist Rosa Saks. Sam Clay discovers his sexual identity and orientation and tries to navigate the prejudice of being a homosexual in the 1930s while trying to progress his literary career.

This book touches on a wide variety of subjects ranging from the exploration of sexuality, the rags- to riches story of an immigrant, the position of the comic book as an art form to the themes of trauma, representation of historical events that this dissertation is interested in. The first aspect worth examining is that this is a historical novel. It takes history as it is known and wraps it in narrative fiction. As mentioned previously, Chabon has a habit of playing with both history and fiction. According to Mio Spiro’s chapter on Kavalier and Clay in the previously mentioned Exoticizing the Past in Contemporary Neo-Historical Fiction this work of historical fiction “bridges fantasy and reality, past and present, foreign and familiar within the literary imagination” (Spiro 162). As will be shown in the analysis of the other novels, this bridging is common in Chabon’s writing. The main difference here is the specific balance

between fact and fiction. In Kavalier and Clay the story is set around the period of World War II but deals for the most part with fictional events, events that are juxtaposed with historical events or the presence of historical figures. Although it pretends to be historical through the use of footnotes and historical description (Chabon, “Kavalier & Clay” Footnotes 605) , readers are aware this story is fictional, that this is in fact a novel. What Chabon does in his novels is:

Instead of using historical facts and real-life events merely as a scaffold, filling the blanks that history has left open- as historical novels are wont to do to sustain their aesthetic illusion of verisimilitude - Chabon integrates and reconfigures historical information freely, openly merging fictional and factual elements [...] well-known referential anchor points are continually and inseparably mixed with fictional elements. (Hubber 156)

As Chabon frames his story by using both real and made up historical facts he explores the past of his own creation which allows him to scrutinize it. Take Joe Kavalier, the Jewish refugee who miraculously got out of the precocious situation of being Jewish in Europe during the second World War. This character serves as a vessel to embody not only the story of refugees who made it out of Europe but also of survivor’s guilt with regards to people who were not as lucky. By juxtaposing Joe or other characters such as Sam with historical figures such as Dali (230) or Stan Lee (451), extra credit is given to their stories making them not only relatable, but also believable. The credibility of the events, closer to reality than if they were just made up, allow readers to identify with them and to a certain extent internalize the experiences of the characters. The result is that readers far removed from this history, are able to connect with it regardless of the distance.

The second theme, this novel being a story of displacement, shows that the novel captures “the moment when Jews and their stories from Europe either disappeared or migrated to other countries. Within that transitional moment, however, there is a gap - a void of misplaced experience that is registered by the text” (Spiro 163) and what Chabon seems to do is fill in some of those gaps with his own inventions and fabrications. This works in various ways in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. The most dominant example is the displacement of Joe Kavalier from Prague to America. He has to leave behind his home, his family, his mentor and his country to avoid the persecution that so many others suffered. One of the gaps that Chabon fills is the question of why and how Joe, or anyone in a similar situation, was eligible to leave Prague. Initially this was because Joe “having been born during a brief family sojourn in the Ukraine in 1920, was, by a quirk of politics, eligible to

emigrate to the United States” (Chabon, “Kavalier & Clay” 21) but when the plan fails other options of emigration are also represented through Lithuania, across Asia and the Pacific. This instance, fills a gap of a singular person emigrating by giving the detailed account of an unlikely, yet possible escape that might not have occurred in real history but seems plausible enough to pass as realistic. Another instance of filling a gap could be read as the reverse. It takes the more common displacement of Jewish Children from their homes in order to save them by boat and bringing them to America. The novel attaches the character of Thomas; Joe’s little brother, to this experience, showing how challenging the undertaking was. What is more, it fills the gap of experiencing failure and the consequent experience of sorrow when the plan does not come to fruition in the end. The novel gives accounts of Jewish displacement and gives them an extra dimension by providing detailed information and even emotions to them. This filling in gaps is another indication of Chabon’s game with fact and fiction but also provides readers again with means of identification with the story of both the novel itself and the larger history it is based in. The idea of Jewish displacement is more than just the filing of gaps, it is also closely related to trauma.

In Kavalier and Clay, the main source of trauma is Joe Kavalier’s previously mentioned departure from his home in Europe in order to flee from the Nazis. Although this can be seen as traumatic in itself, it seems far removed from other trauma stories which provide testimony of lives spent in hiding or even those surviving the camps. This example, although not as extremely gruesome as others, indicate to that trauma is very personal and comes in various shapes. Joe still loses his family, his friends, his culture and because of his survival, he also shoulders some level of guilt for making it out where others have perished. This in itself is similarly traumatising, although in a different, more indirect way than what was taking place in Europe with the persecution of the Jews.

Rather than just focussing on trauma, guilt and the effects it has on Joe Kavalier’s actions throughout the story, the novel aims to move beyond that and towards recovery. This focus on recovery can be read in term of post-postmodernism. The principal way this move towards recovery is achieved is by means of escape. Escapism is a theme that is present in most of Chabon’s novels and in all four discussed in this dissertation. The way in which Kavalier and Clay shows Joe Kavalier finding a way to deal with the trauma, and the guilt he carries, is through his drawing of comic books. Channelling his feelings through the comic book character of the escapist, Joe can be seen as “a self-reflexive literary figure that both embraces

and critiques the role of storytelling as witness to past suffering” (Spiro 171-172). Joe is aware of his prosperous situation, and the guilt he feels because others were less fortunate in turn fuels his actions with regards to both making comics and saving his family By making comic books, he tries to channel his negative emotions toward Nazis in something that is almost propaganda against them. In them, he also relates emotions of loss and sorrow similar to those he felt when leaving behind his family. At the same time, he provides “an analogy for the redemptive power of creative art” (Spiro 165). The novel in itself begins and ends as a story of escape, trauma, and creative expression. The escape of trauma is, in the short term, achieved through creative expression that revisits those past feelings and experience in superhero comics. In the long term comic books are ultimately what reconnect Joe to his friends and family after returning from the war. Take the example where Joe and Sammy are sorting through old comic books and Joe’s recent work on the Golem: “And, Joe” Sammy said, without looking up from the pile of pages. Joe waited. “Rosa and I were talking. And she, uh, we think it’s okay, if you want to… that is, we think that Tommy ought to know that you’re his father.” (Chabon, “Kavalier & Clay” 546). Here we have Sammy and Joe reconnecting as friends while they are discussing and exploring the mutual things they used to love. Later, Joe gives Tommy his collection of comic books. The boy immediately builds his bug’s nest, “there he sat, chewing on a pencil, reading comic books, and paying unconscious tribute, in his igloo of solitude, to the ice tunnels in which his father had come to grief” (Chabon, “Kavalier & Clay” 590). It is in this bug’s nest that Tommy also overhears Rosa and Joe talking, realizing they are in love and Joe is his father. This ultimately results in Joe telling his story “about the things you did when you were young, and the mistakes that you made” but Tommy not listening, “he was just lying there, in the Bug’s Nest holding his father’s hand, while his mother brushed the bangs from his forehead” (Chabon, “Kavalier & Clay” 595).

This shows that comic books serve as a tool not just for personal redemption, but social redemption as well. As a result, the way trauma in this novel seems to function is “within the unbridgeable gap, a space of difference, between ‘then’ and ‘now’, paying homage to the past by underscoring the sense of loss that continues to haunt the present” (Spiro 175) but ultimately, the trauma of the past is overcome through creative work in the novel’s present. At the same time, the idea of escapism, into the world of comic books can also be linked to the ideas of the marvellous and the fantastic in post-postmodernism, showing instances where realism takes a backseat and the fictional takes over the reins. This does not mean that realism

is done away with altogether, on the contrary, the fantastic or “the marvellous in Chabon’s novel, while still entrenched in history, briefly but wilfully turns its back on it. At the same time, however, it ironically serves as a monument to history” (Huber 151). The marvellous is represented through escapism but in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay it is always set against the character of Joe and his historical setting. Through the comic of the Escapist, Joe channels the historical trauma of a person in World War II by personifying his own experiences in a golem-like figure. The efforts of the character as a creative individual allow for fantasy to stand next to reality. This means that fiction and history, and their relationship within Chabon’s novel, are once again foregrounded through the representation of trauma and the consequent recovery from it through creative and escapist means.

The final theme that needs to be discussed here, and which is pervasive in Chabon’s novels, is also related to post-postmodernism: the theme of family. In Kavalier and Clay, the idea of family is pervasive throughout as part of the story deals with Joe’s inability to help or save those who were left behind in Europe and the construction of a new one in America. By telling the story this way, through spectacle marked by family connections, a context for constructing and understanding the self is provided. What is more, the move from one family into the next, shows Joe’s evolution as a character in the book as well as how he is able to overcome the trauma of losing his European family, by reconnecting with his son.

2.2.2 Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution

“It would please him well enough to amount to no more in the end than a single great organ of detection, reaching into blankness for a clue.” ― Michael Chabon, The Final Solution

In this segment, a closer looks will be taken at the second novel from Chabon’s selected works, the aforementioned 2004 novella The Final Solution. Although not all themes are as overtly represented as they were in the previously discussed novel, the work demands some examination when looking at Chabon’s work. This novella can be considered to be the most fictional work out of the four selected works. The story is set in 1944 in and around Sussex and London. The protagonist is and old, retired detective who spends his time keeping bees and enjoying his solitude. He is coaxed out of retirement to solve the mystery surrounding the murder of a town visitor and the disappearance of a German Jewish refugee boy’s parrot. The parrot served as a kind of mouthpiece and friend for the boy, called Linus Steinman who was

rendered mute and traumatised by his experiences in the Holocaust. The bird attracted a lot of attention because it kept reciting series of numbers which were thought to be secret German codes or bank account numbers, leading it to be taken for personal gain, leaving the boy devastated and alone. Intrigued by the mystery, the detective sets out to help and solve the mystery. It is only through means of fiction, that questions about the historical side of the novella are answered. Chabon seems to not only depict struggle linked to accounts of suffering but overcomes it through the writing and consequent consumption of fictional stories rooted in histories.

As was the case with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the focus will be on the five aspects that were previously argued to be a part of Michael Chabon’s style. I will start by looking at the most dominant aspect of novel which is the relationship between history and fiction. This story also plays with the divide between historical fact and the fiction but does so in a different way that TAAKC. Rather than historical fiction or fake-documentary fiction, this novella is a detective story doing homage to and parodying the fictional world of famous consultant detective Sherlock Holmes. Various allusions and intertextual references such as the protagonist’s cap, his pipe, his tweed cape and even his previous adventures all call back the image of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes. Out of all the works of fiction by Chabon discussed in this dissertation, The Final Solution can be considered to be the least historical because it is set in a previously established fictional universe. What Chabon does within the world of his novel is bringing history back in by creating a mystery that is impossible to unravel because of its connection to the Holocaust. Mia Spiro argued that “the text is suggesting that the most appropriate way for today’s readers to access traumatic history is through the filter of a self-conscious prose that undoes a sense of certainty even as it is being uttered” (Spiro 174). This means that Chabon, in telling the story of a mute traumatised boy through the eyes of the detective on one side and the parrot as a mouthpiece tries to examine an event that is hard to know. The detective “was coming home, it seemed to the old man, rather with his tail between his legs” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 113). Signifying that he also could not solve the mystery of the parrot and his mumblings. This shows that even people at the time of the event, and the world’s greatest detective, had trouble making sense of what was happening. What is more, the parrot is giving a fragmented, outlined account in his speech of the events that occurred which shows there is more than just difficulty in understanding the events. There is struggle in conveying the experiences and memory related to the events. For most of the book, it seems readers will stay in the dark about the history that

took place but then, in chapter 10, the prose turns to its most self-conscious by giving an account of the events through the eyes of the parrots and its inner monologue. Through this narrative strategy, readers discover the parrots adventures up until that point, “the sadness of his captivity, of his wanderings, of his finding the boy, of the rolling of trains, of the boy’s mama and papa and the mad silence that had come over the boy when he was banished from them” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 104-105).

The second dominant theme in the novella is trauma, more difficult aspects of survival and suffering. It is haunting the novel even if most of the characters do not realize it. It is present in The Final Solution, very differently from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay in which it was distant, more removed. The boy Linus Steinman, of whom “the density of his silence suggested something more than unwillingness to speak” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 15) is the very embodiment of trauma even if the characters he interacts with are not fully aware of it. There seems to be a lack of understanding put forward in the novel when it comes to trauma. The old detective we assume to be Sherlock Holmes sees the boy as a “puzzle” that is there “to kindle old appetites and energies” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 15), a mystery waiting to be solved. Other characters see him merely as the owner of a rather talkative parrot who holds the key to gaining advantage in the war or gathering wealth. In the second chapter of the novel, there is one of the rare instance in which characters comment on his actual experience before arriving in Sussex, but even then its importance is understated and the gravity of the impact on the boy misunderstood. Take for example the comments offered on Linus during a dinner:

“Nazis, was it?” said Shane. He gave his head a moderate shake. “Rotten Business. Tough luck for the Jews, when you come right down to it.” The question of whether or not the boy was going to spit out the bit of soup he had dabbed onto his tongue seemed to interest him far more than had the internment of the Jews. (Chabon, “Final Solution” 22)

These comments from Shane are given quite absently, almost disinterested, like he was talking about the weather and not a human boy or of group of people. Calling the things rotten business or tough luck is somewhat of an understatement. It shows that Shane simply does not comprehend what is going on at that time on the European mainland. He only seems to care about the parrot and which profits it might yield. This shows a huge flaw in most of the characters present. They all do not see or refuse to see what Linus went through. There is only Bruno the parrot who understands. He witnessed a variety of “madmen” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 102) and with them, some of the atrocities that the Holocaust brings. Another

instance in which the misunderstanding of trauma is shown occurs near the end of the novel when Sherlock Holmes feels like the act of finding the boy’s parrot and solving part of the mystery should earn him the boy’s gratitude in the form of a smile. Yet, the trauma remains and “his expression did not alter from its habitual blankness, apart, perhaps, from a flicker of anxiety in the eyes, even of doubt” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 114). The smile comes, but it is directed at the parrot. The main companion of Linus. He is the only one who seems to understand him and his experience. Reuniting with the parrot does not undo all the traumatic experience but does provide Linus with a way to cope with it, even when those around him do not understand his situation.

In this inability to understand however, Chabon puts forward an interesting comment at the end of the novel. He mentions “that it was the insoluble problems- the false leads and the cold case- that reflect the true nature of things” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 117) which seemingly explains the lack of closure both in the novel as a whole as well as of the mystery within. People are not always able to understand everything, just as the characters do not understand Linus’ trauma. But in our attempts to find meaning, or create it by writing novels, readers do get closer to understanding. If life, personal experiences or history are mysteries, novels can help in finding or creating meaning, allowing readers to get closer to solving it.

The following part of the analysis deals with the other themes of escapism, family and displacement. These themes, although present in the novella, feel less dominant and less foregrounded than the previous ones. There are a couple of ideas worth mentioning as they seem important to the overall narrative structure of the novel. With regards to displacement it would be quite obvious to point to the situation of Linus and his parrot. They had to leave their home as a result of the Holocaust. This is significant because it is the event that prompts Linus to escape into silence and entrusting his story to the parrot. In the novella there is an interesting parallel however in the old detective for leaving his previous home. In the ninth chapter, the Sherlock Holmes analogue returns to London after an absence of twenty-three years. In his return he expected a city destroyed: “One has read so extensively about the damage of the bombs and fires. I had prepared myself for a ruin. Indeed I confess to having in some measure anticipated […] the sight of this great city lying in smoke and ashes along the Thames” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 91). Instead he finds something quite different. The city survives and even to an extent thrives, “they had bombed it; they had burned it; but they had not killed it, and now it was sending forth growths and tendrils of some strange new life”

(Chabon, “Final Solution” 92). Although the novel itself suggest this experience to be a foretaste or demonstration of the nature of death itself for the detective, it can also be read as a way of showing how trauma can be overcome. The old detective left for reason of his own and now, after some troubling times returns to find the process of recovery, perseverance and growth. The old detective can go back and through this parallel, the book questions whether dire situations can take turns for the better. It makes a reader wonder whether the process of revisiting a place thought lost and finding that place still somewhat intact could be possible for someone like Linus. It shows there still might be hope for a young, traumatised displaced Jewish boy to find something he remembers as having been lost. In this parallel, Chabon urges readers to examine the positive possibility of coming home to place that through trauma changed into something stronger and unwavering.

The theme of family is most prominently represented by the presence of the Panicker family. It is a family that is quite poor and unpopular among locals. This is partially the result of the family’s grown son Reggie “the despair of the Panickers and, like many sons who betray even the most modest aspirations of their parents, a scourge to the neighbourhood as well. He was a gambler, a liar, a malcontent and a sneak” (Chabon “Final Solution” 20). Mrs. Panicker is no saint either anymore as “at the age of forty-seven, after twenty-five years of piety, disappointment and restraint, she had taken a deeply foolish interest” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 42) in Mr. Shane. Mr. Panicker, who is aware of this interest, feels his marriage is a disappointment, calling it vacant (96) and that he has failed his family because of “bombed- out house of his life as a man” (96). It shows that the family, although still trying to stick together, is somewhat divided, not quite whole. Near the end of the story, there is a promise of restoration however. Although Reggie leaves town to find a new start, Mrs. and Mr. Panicker seem to reconnect as a result of the role the latter played in finding the bird. Mr. Panicker also realizes during his adventure with the old detective in London that “the boy, Linus Steinman, bereft and friendless, had thus been revealed, standing tiny and alone in the midst of the heap of gray ash” (96) that was the vicar’s life up until that point. Although finding the parrot or looking after the boy might not be the vicar’s ultimate purpose, in the novel he seems determined to do a decent job of it. Because of that, readers are left with a more hopeful future for the Panicker family that revolves around them reconnecting and taking the best care they can of the boy who has lost so much. This means that although initially the frame of family in the novella is defective, maybe even dysfunctional, not all hope for a happy ending is lost.

Moving on to escapism, there are two small examples that can be discussed. The first instance of escapism comes in the form of the old detective, who after a life of fighting crime and solving mysteries, found peace in beekeeping. He reads beekeeping journals to which he also occasionally submits articles. Even when the police come knocking to solve the murder of Mr. Shane, he initially refuses because “this is a crucial moment, a crisis if you will, in the hives. I could not possibly abandon them for an unremarkable crime” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 27-28). In the seventh chapter of the novella, more insight is given into the significance of the bees in the old detective’s life. He considers the featureless drone to be a song of a city:

“in which gems, gold ingots, letters of credit, or secret naval plans were never stolen, in which long-lost second songs and ne’er-do-well first husbands did not turn up from the Wawoora Valley or the Rand with some clever backwoods tricks for scaring an old moneybags out of his wits. No stabbings, garrotings, beatings, shootings; almost no violence at all, apart from the occasional regicide. All of the death in the city of the bees had been scheduled, provided for, tens of millions of years ago; each death as it occurred was translated, efficiently and immediately, into more life for the hive. (Chabon, “Final Solution” 61)

The bees and their song signify for the old detective as point of peace after a lifetime spent among murderers and ruffians. It is a world in which everything is organised and all the puzzles have been solved. In his eventful life, the old detective now prefers peace and enjoying things like “the morning cool, the burning shag, the drowse of the late summer, honey-sated bees” (Chabon, “Final Solution” 70) things he recognized as animal pleasures, things that in his earlier life meant very little to him. This shows that change comes with age and that interests can shift, but mostly that when a lot of events occur in someone’s life, some of them being horrible or gruesome, there comes a point where they will have had enough of it and go looking for other meaningful endeavours. This also shows that the old detective had a choice to escape and to go do something else. This contrasts the second example of escapism found in the figure of Linus Steinman and his parrot. Being a kid makes it so that he is not quite able to make choices as freely as an elderly person does. There are also not as many options for him to recover through creative action. Linus escapes not into a creative feat but into himself with only a parrot who understands him. This allows him not having to explain what has happened to him to others and relive the trauma of the past. His silence allows him to be absent and to escape into his good memories. Those memories to an extent are shown by the parrot. Although the train song is the most dominant expression of the past given by the parrot, there is also in the final paragraph in which “the parrot, startled perhaps

by the clamor of the passing train, flew up into the rafters of the station roof, where, in flawless mockery of the voice of a woman none of them would ever meet or see again, it began, very sweetly, to sing” (Chabon “Final Solution” 118). This images conjures up the idea of a lullaby sung by a mother, showing that for Linus, the parrot holds memories of a better time in the care of his loving family. The escape into himself allows him to be alone with those good memories which are also channelled through his companion. The singing of Bruno could also be argued to be a creative outlet for trauma because in his inner monologue in the tenth chapter, he thinks to himself that “the rawness would be soothed. It was bliss to sing the train song.” (105). In that sense it could be read as a way of working through trauma. Despite the train song lingering with Bruno “far longer and more vividly in his mind than any of the thousand other songs he could sing” (104), as effects of trauma are inclined to do, there are still other songs that he remember like the lullaby. This shows that Linus and Bruno have their own way of escaping their traumatic past together while still to some extent they are able to hold on to the good parts.

2.2.3 Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

“These are strange times to be a Jew” ― Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union

The second of Chabon’s novels is The Yiddish Policemen's Union which is an alternative history, a detective story and a piece of science fiction all rolled into one reality, set in Sitka Alaska. Contrary to history as it is known, the United States implemented the 1940 Slattery Report, which provided Alaskan land for the temporary settlement of Jews displaced and persecuted by the Nazis during the second World War. The novel moves away from history by imagining an independent, although temporary Jewish settlement being created on the Alaskan coast. This resulted in only 2 million Jews perishing during the Holocaust in Europe as was mentioned in the fifth chapter of the novel :“ grim revelations of the slaughter of two, million Jews in Europe”(Chabon, “Yiddish Policemen” 27). The book itself chronicles the story of Meyer Landsman, a homicide detective with a drinking problem as he tries to uncover the truth behind the murder of Mendel Shpilman and exploring themes such as religious extremism and terrorism as well as the randomness of the way in which history unfolds. This book is connected to the main goal of the dissertation because looking at a counterfactual or counterhistorical novel may enable readers to construct other scenarios for what occurred in actuality. The result of this thinking exercise then helps readers to see more

clearly the importance of the events that did happen, making them more accessible, relatable and understandable.

Different from Kavalier and Clay, this novel is not a true historical novel. It does deal with a history, but a history that is different and other to the one that readers know in reality. It is an alternative history. As with historical fiction, this type of writing is based on historical facts but, instead of filling in the blanks in which historical fiction operates, it departs from those facts or changes those facts so there is a shift that takes place in the following history. At the same time, the novel is also not exactly as fictional as The Final Solution.. It was previously argued that the previous detective story is the least historical of the novels discussed in this dissertation. Both of these detective stories are fictional, but The Yiddish Policemen’s Union uses history not merely as a framing device but also as one of the main reasons for the plot. In this novel, a lot of the historical difference with the reader’s reality is the result of one member of congress, called Anthony Dimond, getting hit by a car and dying because of it. This event is mentioned on multiple occasions throughout the novel:

the late Anthony Dimond, the Alaska Territory's nonvoting delegate to the House of Representatives. (Until the fatal intervention on a Washington, D.C., street corner of a drunken, taxi driving schlemiel named Denny Lanning—eternal hero of the Sitka Jews—Delegate Dimond had been on the verge of getting the Alaskan Settlement Act killed in committee. (Chabon “Yiddish Policemen” 27)

Delegate Anthony Dimond, prime opponent of the Alaskan Settlement Act, was run down by a taxicab while chasing an errant rum bun into the street (Chabon, “Yiddish Policemen” 277)

In the history outside of the novel, Dimond was the person who stopped the Slattery report from going through but since he was not around anymore due to an accident, history unfolded quite differently. The Alaskan Settlement Act is passed and Jewish refugees from the war go to Sitka. The historical facts provided in the novel can mostly, if not entirely, be considered to be the fabrications of the author. There are of course parallels with reality with which readers are familiar but they are somewhat altered in order to fit the needs and progression of the narrative. The fictional story told and facts given are part of the world the author creates. It is a world in which this story would not take place if only the historical situation were somewhat different. This can result in readers re-examining their own views on history as they are provided with a template that is entirely different. Once again Chabon uses history, or the difference to it, as a way to trick readers and allow for closer examination of the events that facilitated the Holocaust and question why no more steps were taken to help the Jewish

people in their predicament. It also allows examination of current day events and contemporary society, such as the issues related to Zionism and Israel, because they are often the results of decisions made in the past.

Although the history is different, the holocaust still did take place. Some novels deal in the extremes; in Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, the Nazis win World War II and the holocaust is carried out successfully while other counterfactual histories, such as Dr. Jeffrey S. Gurock’s book The Holocaust Averted: An Alternate History of American Jewry, 1938-1967, imagine worlds in which the holocaust did not take place at all. Because in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union the holocaust still happened, the trauma it caused is still present. What is more, there is added trauma because of the destruction of the state of Jerusalem:

Nineteen forty-eight: Strange times to be a Jew. In August the defense of Jerusalem collapsed and the outnumbered Jews of the three-month-old republic of Israel were routed, massacred, and driven into the sea. (Chabon Yiddish Policemen 27)

Although most of the characters on the novel were not directly affected by these two major historical events, they still influence the daily affairs in the novel. The Holocaust was one of the reasons that Sitka became a Jewish Settlement, the destruction of Jerusalem urged even more people there despite the fact that “The population of Sitka Settlement had already swollen to two million. In direct violation of the act”(Chabon “Yiddish Policemen” 27). In a way, the novel deals with the post-generational ramifications of the novel’s own peculiar traumatizing history which the author has created within the novel. This fabricated memory can be considered a kind of postmemory transferred from character to character in the novel. Together with the fabricated memory being transferred, there are also some ideas regarding trauma literature that do apply here as well. It is the trauma of the novel’s own Holocaust, which is somewhat different from the one in the reader’s reality, which makes the examination of trauma similar but more unconventional due to its fabricated nature than regular fictional novels or other texts of testimony and biography. Readers will note that similar to the trauma in their own history, one main reason for representation of trauma within this novel is because of a human imperative to talk about past and shared experiences in order to recontextualize them. In The Yiddish Policemen’s Union however, readers are asked to recontextualize and explore experiences from characters in the novel in order and compare them the history. In doing so readers get access in an indirect way to the events of the Holocaust. As readers examine the mistakes from the past, they are made to consider the

many aspects of the Holocaust, including trauma. As a result, the hypothetical history of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union urges readers to question the trauma and consequences of real history without having to take large mental leaps. This allows for a different approach related to working through atrocities from the past.

The idea and theme of Jewish displacement is also prevalent in the book. The displacement works twofold. On one side, there is the displacement from Europe to Alaska. During and after the second World War, as previously mentioned, Jewish refugees were allowed go to Alaska and settle there for a limited amount of time of sixty years. Although the city is doing quite well, the limit is about to expire and as a result, the future for the Jewish residents is quite uncertain. That is where the other side comes in. Some of the Alaskan Jews, mostly religious Zionists wish to return to Jerusalem, for them this is the preferred way of overcoming the uncertainty caused by the reversion of the Alaskan Settlement Act. Jerusalem was previously lost to the Palestine in the novel’s version of the Palestine-Israel conflict and it now “is a city of blood and slogans painted on the wall, severed heads on telephone poles. Observant Jews around the world have not abandoned their hope to dwell one day in the land of Zion” (Chabon, “Yiddish Policemen” 19). The uncertainty of having a place to call home and of historical removes is a theme that is quite pervasive in Jewish literature and history regardless of the Holocaust. With regards to Jerusalem alone, “Jews have been tossed out of the joint three times now-in 586 BCE, in 70 CE and with savage finality in 1948” (Chabon, “Yiddish Policemen” 19).Chabon seems to be aware of this tradition as he incorporates it quite handily into his novel, not only to provide his story with a setting, time and place, but also using it as an element around which part of the plot’s mystery is centred.

There is also some level of escapism in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union but it is not as positive or recuperative as it was in Kavalier and Clay. Rather than escaping using a creative outlet, Landsman escapes by indulging in alcohol, burying himself in his work as a detective and his relentless pursuit of justice. This is somewhat more destructive than the recuperative acts of creativity in Kavalier and Clay. The biggest reason for these acts is that they fit within the stereotypical character of the contemporary detective. The sense that Landsman is trying to escape comes primarily from factor that were chosen by the author to adhere to the elements that define contemporary detective novels and stories, staying within and emphasising the boundaries of the fictional genre. This means the escapism is just a secondary result and interpretation of the main character’s persona. The primary aim was to put down a

relatable detective on paper. There is an added level of escapism to this novel because of the fact that it is a detective novel. Chabon has always been a proponent of genre fiction. He even wrote a series of essays, collected in Maps and Legends (Maps), with many arguments in favour of genre fiction. In one of his essays he says: “I wanted to instil—or rather I didn’t want to lose—that quality, inherent in the best science fiction, that was sometimes called “the sense of wonder.” (Chabon, “Maps” 115). At a later point in this collections of essays, he mentions:

For a long time now I’ve been busy, in my life and in my work, with a pair of ongoing, overarching investigations: into my heritage—rights and privileges, duties and burdens—as a Jew and as a teller of Jewish stories; and into my heritage as a lover of genre fiction.[…] One search, with a sole objective: a home, a world to call my own.(Chabon “Maps” 131-132)

To Chabon, genre fiction provides an escape to himself and by extension to his readers. Choosing for the established form and genre of the detective novel makes escaping into a new world possible. The sense of wonder comes from difference with reality and the fantastic elements that make that world unique. That uniqueness attracts readers who as a result will scrutinize their own realities and learn from both worlds

The final aspect returning in these novels is that of family, more specifically Landsman broken relationship with his wife and the loss of his sister. Throughout the story we discover that Landsman’s relationship with Bina Gelbfish ended “not quite three years” (Chabon “Yiddish Policemen” 17) before the story of the novel starts. The result of a long desired pregnancy that ended in abortion after it proved uncertain whether the baby would be healthy and able to lead a normal life While they still have contact because of their work, Bina ends up becoming Landsman’s superior, their relationship is a rather complicated one. The novel also reveals information on Landsman’s sister, a professional pilot, who died some time before the novel’s beginning. This info revealed is also new to Landsman who finds out her crash was not an accident and has connection to the case he is currently working on. The fact that Landsman’s has these broken relationships, define him as a character and provide some insight for reader to understand why Landsman is the way he is. Interestingly, despite the dark nature of detective stories in general, the story does turn towards some sense of positive restoration. Landsman finding out the reason for his sister’s death helps him come to terms with it more as he is able to make sure some sense of justice is done. As far as his relationship with Bina is concerned, there is also a happy end. They end up back together and decide to tell their story to the public. It would seem that Landsman’s escapism of throwing himself

into his work, although initially being destructive, does lead to some closure and happiness in the end.

From the previous look at other novels by Chabon, it becomes clear that there definitely is a thematic thread running through this selection of his work. These key themes also appear once again in Moonglow just as they have appeared in previous works..

2.2.4 Michael Chabon’s Moonglow

“She was a vessel built to hold the pain of her history, but it had cracked her, and radiant darkness leaked out through the crack. ” ― Michael Chabon, Moonglow

The fourth and final of Michael Chabon’s novels in this dissertation’s selection is also his most recent. Michael Chabon’s Moonglow is set in 1989. Just after the publication of real Chabon's first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, the author went to visit his mother’s home in Oakland, California to see his terminally ill grandfather who tells him all kinds of stories about his life. The memories that are shared are ones the Chabon had not previously encountered and the week spent listening to his grandfather’s revelations gave him the idea for the novel It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex, desire and love, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at mid-century and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is also a speculative history in which Chabon attempts to reconstruct a secret history of his own imagination based on the testimony of his grandfather. The novel takes the second half of the past century and condensing it into the single life of his Grandfather, and that lifetime into a single week of deathbed confessions. It is “a lie that tells the truth”, a work of fictional non-fiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir.

This disguised memoir shows its disposition as a novel mostly because it is not told chronologically. The narrative shifts constantly between periods before, during and after World War II with jumps mixed in to Grandfather’s last week in which he is telling the story to Michael, the character that supposedly author the novel people are reading. If one were to cut up the book and to reconstruct the chapters in their chronological order, as Grandfather asked the author to do (241) one basically embarks on reconstructing the story as if it were one of grandfather’s models. The first part of the narrative takes place during his youth and

his time spent in the army both before and during the war. Grandfather enlists in the army corps of engineers after putting himself through school by hustling pool where his main goal is to gather intelligence on Wernher Von Braun and the v2-rocket program. The second part of the narrative in Moonglow deals with Grandfather’s life after the war with the in-books author’s fictional Grandmother. It deals with the stories of their first meeting and Grandfather’s attempts to win her affection as he is determined to save grandmother as she was damaged by the war. This damage manifests in hallucinations and voices attributed to The skinless horse. The skinless horse haunts her and the family and Grandfather’s rising frustration lands him in prison. Grandmother is committed to a hospital and Grandfather, while he is in prison, comes up with an idea to make small model rockets actually fly. This gets him released early. After prison, Grandfather accepts Grandmother as she is, mental illness and everything, and stops trying to save her. After that there are still instances of problems with Grandmother’s mental health but the grandparents of Michael mostly seem to be doing well. The third part of Moonglow deals with Grandfather’s life after the death of Grandmother. The main story deals with the realization that although he loved Grandmother, this was very hard at times. It also deals with him getting over his dislike of Wernher Von Braun and indirectly caused by an encounter with him, Grandfather is asked to build models for educational and exhibition purposes at NASA. At one point he meets Sally Sichel, whom he starts dating but at one point Grandfather falls and breaks his leg, revealing the poor health he is in. He then goes to live with his daughter, the author’s mother and spends his last week telling his story to the author Michael. As mentioned above, the thematic aspects that reappear throughout different works by Chabon are also present in Moonglow. After briefly looking at them in other novels, the time has finally come to examine them in Moonglow. The main idea related to this novel is that Chabon pretends to write a factual biography. Like in Kavalier and Clay, this novel uses footnotes and historical events to frame his story. This time there is an even heavier focus on Post-postmodern family that makes the story relatable to readers and the trauma recognizable since they can attempt imagining the events from the novel are befalling own family members.

Jewish displacement and the larger theme of trauma are omnipresent throughout the novel. By far the most traumatised person in the novel is Grandmother who goes through episodes related to the figure of the “Skinless Horse”. Readers first encounter mention of this when Grandfather also first encounters it, although he does not realize it, in chapter six:

“I am the one who look like the gargoyle”

“Hardly.”

“Yes”, she said. “On the inside”

He let that one pass without comment, taking it for prattle, compliment-fishing; his first misjudgement, his first encounter with the voice of the Skinless Horse. (Chabon “Moonglow” 68)

Continuing from then on, the figure haunts the novel for as long as Grandmother is alive in the story and could be pointed to for being the main catalyst after World War II for many of the events that befall Grandfather and the rest of the family. In chapter eight of the novel, Grandfather and the author discuss the form and look of the Skinless Horse, trying to figure out whether it was an actual horse or rather a humanlike figure with a horse head, limbs and genitalia. It is in this chapter too that some theories of origins of the figure are given. One explanation says it was based on “a picture-book painting of Bottom of Titania” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 84) while a second explanation links it to “the gelding of a draft horse in the stable of her family’s tannery” and “the weird comminglings of men and bleeding hides she had watched come and go across the tannery yard” (Chabon “Moonglow”84).

The most pervasive and timeless explanation for the Skinless Horse however, given during her worst episodes, was that she had been “raped by a stallion or a man with a stallion’s head” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 84). This explanation, as mentioned, was the most timeless one which made it seem to Grandfather that this violation was still happening which is quite common with trauma. The event that took a hold of a person still is present within them, holding a tight grip on their feelings and psyche. As long as the trauma is not overcome and a person does not work through it, they will act out in certain ways. To a certain extent, Grandmother has not fully worked through her trauma. On this subject LaCapra mentions that:

Trauma as experience is Erlebnis rather than Erfahrung. As erlebnis trauma is a shock to the system and may be acted out or compulsively repeated in so-called traumatic memory. Erfahrung involves more viable articulations of experience allowing openings to possible futures. The problem of working through trauma, or more precisely, its recurrent symptoms, is to move from erlebnis to erfahrung to the extent that this movement is possible. (LaCapra 117-118)

In this sense, from the descriptions in chapter eight, it becomes clear that Grandmother is trying to move from the experience of trauma into the being experienced, being at peace with the trauma by providing some explanation of the origin. However, as LaCapra suggest, this move is not always possible due to the nature of the trauma, as seems to be the case with

Grandmother. Although various differing accounts of Grandmother’s time in Europe, as well as reasons for her trauma, are given throughout the novel, it becomes clear when she is committed to a hospital and examined by doctor Medved that there might be things that Grandmother has not told her family or even lied about her past. Initially the reader is led to believe that we will find out what is going on, but that belief is put aside quite quickly as Grandfather refuses the information and decides to accept Grandmother the way she is, not looking to fix her, just wanting her to not be in misery. Readers do find out Grandmother’s secret when the author sets out to find Doctor Medved while working on this “biography” in the year 2013, a long time after both grandparents had passed away. It turns out she adopted the identity of her childhood friend who was deported to Auschwitz to gain access to America. Her friend was the daughter of the tanners and told Grandmother many stories of what happened there. Losing her was a big blow because friendship with her “‘saved my life’ at a time of suicidal ideation” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 355), which was the result of being raped by a local SS Captain. It was also during this rape that an early memory returned to her with the “sight of an engorged ‘skinless’ penis of a stallion” that “flashed through her mind” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 355). This event most likely is chiefly responsible for the look of Grandmother’s tormentor. The rapist also turned out to be the biological father of Grandmother’s daughter, resulting in conflicting feeling towards her as her daughter is both someone she loves and a reminder of one of the main traumatic events that befell her.

Aside from adopting a new identity, Grandmother also almost starved, had to steal or prostitute herself for food in order to survive and went through various illnesses and her menstrual cycle was severely disrupted, making her unable to conceive later in life. In order to actually reach America, Grandmother had to fabricate an entire narrative of survival which she based on fellow inmates’ stories, even going so far to get a tattoo similar to the other camp survivors. As a result, Grandmother can be read as a very conflicted character. On one hand, she tries to overcome the trauma she suffered by being a good mother and wife and living a normal life but, on the other hand, the normal life, the identity she constructed within that life, and various aspect of that life, such as her daughter are constant reminders of that trauma. This shows readers a specific kind of trauma. Although the novel does not give the person suffering from trauma a name, it creates a character readers can relate to. They might recognize a member of their own family in Grandmother and by projecting the fictional traumas present, they might come to a closer understanding of what personal trauma means.

Grandfather’s trauma works differently from Grandmother’s. Not a survivor but a soldier, his experience of the Holocaust was different. He did witness the horrors of the camps when he went to Nordhausen, the author telling readers “I imagine, what he saw around Dora- Mittelbau may have brought him to the point of tears or nausea” and afterwards “he looked around to find a fitting object of his rage when his tour of this particular hell and its environs was complete” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 254). The things Grandfather witnessed there also shattered his belief in Wernher Von Braun. From a short passage in chapter 21 detailing a motorcycle ride, it showed that Grandfather had always figured Von Braun to be a kindred spirit, aiming towards the goal of lunar exploration:

Grandfather would remember thinking, as he headed for Nordhausen, that he could not wait to show it to his new friend Wernher Von Braun. They would tool around the autobahns of post war Germany, Von Braun riding in the sidecar like a gentle-nature bear. (Chabon, “Moonglow” 238)

The revelation that Von Braun would do the horrible things Nazis do upset Grandfather greatly and made him determined to catch Von Braun by himself. It also made him question his own dreams; “once your dream revealed itself, like most dreams, to be nothing but a current of raw compulsion flowing through a circuitry of delusion and lies, then that was the time to give it up. That was the time to damn your dreams and trust your eyes” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 255). It seems that shattered dreams make up a large part of Grandfather’s trauma and problems during his life. The juxtaposition of Grandfather and Grandmother’s suffering within the novel indicates to readers that there is a range of variation when it comes to trauma. Readers previously might have considered trauma to be one experience that applies to many people. This novel shows that there is no clear cut definition or way of explaining trauma easily. Readers come to understand that each trauma is different and often highly personal.

Other aspects of Grandfather’s trauma come from the experience of war, like the loss of comrades in battle in the shape of Aughenbaugh, seeing death and destruction from up close, experiencing humanity’s worst. The result is that after the war, Grandfather suffered “from a form of spiritual aphasia. No matter how many times he pored over them, he had trouble assigning sense or value to the things he had seen and done during the war” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 93). This example has clearer more tangible meaning as the loss of a friend is easier to understand than a big trauma. By giving relatable examples of loss and suffering, Chabon is able to appeal to reader’s experiences and emotional imagination. Through

identification with the examples, readers acquire a better idea of the suffering of the characters and, by extension, the trauma of the Holocaust. It is only when he meets Grandmother that some sense of purpose returns to him in the form of lust. Aware of the fact that she too had been damaged by the war, he saw her potential to be mended as a way for himself to be mended too, a way for him to overcome some of the trauma he experienced, a way to work through it all.

The second aspect that occurs in Chabon’s work and returns in Moonglow is escapism. This warrants a close look as it is connected to the main motif in the novel: the motif of lunar exploration, stargazing and everything related to space and astronomy in the novel. Starting out with the title, Moonglow was a song by Benny Goodman, recorded in 1933. The song even occurs in the novel, when Aughenbaugh is whistling it in chapter 11 while entering the room Grandfather is reading in. The title, the very thing readers read first, already alludes to a time that has passed. It shows a connection to a history from long ago while it is also linked to the motif of the moon. What is more, the novel pretends the whole metaphor related to the moon was Grandfather’s idea;

“Anyway, it’s a pretty good story”, I said. “You have to admit”

“Yeah?” He crumpled up the Kleenex, having dispatched the solitary tear. “You can have it. I’m giving it to you. After I’m gone, write it down. Explain everything. Make it mean something. Use a lot of those fancy metaphors of yours. Put the whole thing into proper chronological order, not like this this mishmash I’m making you. Start with the night I was born. March Second, 1915. There was a lunar eclipse that night, you know what that is?”

“When the earth’s shadow falls across the moon.”

“Very significant, I’m sure it’s a perfect metaphor for something. Start with that.”

(Chabon “Moonglow” 241)

Readers already know that no chronological order was put in place but the idea, the motif related to the moon and its exploration is very much present in the book. It is important once again to not just accept this passage as historical truth; readers have to remain aware of the danger of metaphors. It seems that Chabon comments with this passage on how writers and readers apprehend an event through figurative language and, while doing so, exploring the role of the metaphor as an agent in both our knowledge of past events and, as it is present in a lot of Chabon’s writing, the Holocaust as well as our responses to it. The suggested metaphor itself was turned into a motif which then came to be linked to escapism. There are a couple of

passages throughout the book that turn Grandfather’s passion for astronomy into escapism. One of the earliest is presented to reader in the eighth chapter. The time in the setting is shortly before Grandfather’s hearing related to the assault of his employer, the outburst of anger that was the culmination of frustration with Grandmother’s episodes of the Skinless Horse coming back. He is looking at the sky through a telescope and looks at how his life would be less filled with trouble if he were to live on the moon:

In his imagination, he built my grandmother a city on the moon and escaped by rocket with her and my mother to settle there and live in peace. At first it was a domed city to afford a stunning view with every earthrise of all the strife and unhappiness they had left behind. Over the years the configuration changed [...] but two principles, two rules of the game, endured: On the moon there was no capital to grind the working moonman down. And on the Moon, 230,000 miles from the stench of history, there was no madness or memory of loss. The thing that made space flight difficult was the thing that, to my grandfather, made it beautiful: To reach escape velocity, my grandmother, like any spacefarer, would be obliged to leave almost everything behind her. (Chabon, “Moonglow” 86)

This idea of escaping to the moon primarily comes from Grandfather’s anger at getting fired earlier and being ground down by capital. This passage also suggests that one of the main reasons for Grandfather wanting to escape is to help and save Grandmother. Throughout the novel, Grandfather shows signs of having somewhat of a hero-complex, a need to save those around them. He believes that if he could somehow make his family escape to the moon, a sense of normalcy would return, helping Grandmother leave behind her trauma, helping her overcome her struggle with the Skinless Horse. Leaving behind trauma, escaping it is not the same as working through it however and Grandfather’s approach of trying to mend Grandmother by either ignoring it or trying to just leave it behind does not work. What does happen is that Grandfather’s escapism, similar to what happened in Kavalier and Clay, results in him finding refuge in the creative art of model rocket building.

Being trained as an engineer, Grandfather always had a fondness for machines and making things. In building models, he combines that fondness with his interest in rocketry and space exploration and his escapist urges. Building rockets is what gets him out of jail earlier after his demonstration is seen by an interested salesman and helps him get his life back on track afterwards. When Grandmother passes away some time after, around the same time he lost his company, model building work for NASA indirectly brought his way by Wernher Von Braun at the twelfth space congress “had helped him emerge from mourning the loss” (Chabon,

“Moonglow” 405). That way, Moonglow also serves as an example for the redemptive power of creative art. Although this specific escapism does not work for Grandmother, it is arguable that she escapes too into herself and her own stories. According to the author’s mother “She was always making things up when I was little” [...] I used to catch her out all the time. She called them ‘stories’” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 426), which were either a coping mechanism for her own trauma or a way to make sure her true past did not get discovered by her family. The author also has experiences with Grandmother telling him stories using fortune telling cards which he remembers when he was staying at is grandparents’ house as a kid; “I thought of the stories that my grandmother had built for me out of those cards when they had turned up in the past” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 376). These stories were something that frightened the author at that time but it was an activity that Grandmother seemed to enjoy, so much even that she would take offence on the instances in which the author did not want to partake in the story time. Both Grandparents had their own escapes to deal with their respective and each other's issues and trying to overcome them in order to find happiness together.

Speaking of being together, family is another key aspect of this novel. As mentioned previously, family is a common topic of post-postmodern novels and in this regard, Moonglow is no exception. The novel weaves the main story of the grandparents together with the minor plotlines of the two generations that come after at various times, and various ages. The novel gives the account of Grandfather’s youth and his somewhat strained relationship with his parents and his connection with his brother. It describes how Grandmother lost her family, how she met Grandfather as well as how their family together came to be. The novel also alludes to the meeting between the author’s Mother and his Father and even gives some information on the author’s past divorce too. Family in Moonglow is present in all chapters of the novel and provides the backdrop against which much of the narrative unfolds. It is a tool of setting as much as it aims to frame some of the tragic events that happened to the characters. The fact that this is a family story adds more depth than if things were happening to total strangers and in true Post-postmodern sense, the structure of family is used in the narrative as a way to develop a deeper understanding of events. This approach to family is Post-postmodern, rather than Postmodern, because the use of family is more humane and personal than the predecessor. The Post-postmodern approach can be attributed to a renewed belief in the possibility of representation in art as well as Chabon’s belief in subjective expressions. The characters are relatable and through this relatability, readers may project the

perceived emotions and experiences on their surroundings with the result of experiencing the character’s trauma vicariously.

The final aspect looked at in this segment is the novel’s relationship with regards to history or ‘truth’ and fiction. In Moonglow the awareness of the divide between the two is somewhat reduced as by the format. Although the novel uses narrative strategies like what is normally used in novels, it is set up as a biography relating an actual deathbed confession. This fact is further complicated by the use of Chabon’s own family name within the book suggesting that this is his family history. There are also allusions to events that have happened from the things related to the Holocaust in Nordhausen and the space congress, to books mentioned in footnotes that actually exist. All of this blurs the lines between fact and fiction. Chabon is very much aware of this blurring these lines, in an interview with PBS from 2016, he mentions:

You’re telling a lie when you’re writing a novel. A novel is a lie. It’s the only good kind of lie. It’s the lie that you’re telling to someone with their permission, and not only with their permission, but at their invitation. […] So, the reader comes to the novel and says, lie to me. I want to hear it. Like, tell me a story. […] And that’s part of what is so beautiful about that particular relationship, is that it’s a kind of voluntary permission to deception, just like with magic. We turn to fiction, we turn to a novel because fiction persuades us. All art persuades us that there is a pattern to life, that there is meaning to life, that if you look at life the right way, you can see sense in it, you can find meaning in it. It might not be true. Maybe that’s an illusion. Maybe that’s like the greatest illusion of the magic act of literature, but I don’t care. That’s what is good about it. That’s what we turn to it for. (Transcript from PBS interview)

Chabon equates his storytelling in Moonglow with lying. In telling his lies, he almost aggressively invents an entirely new family history and argues that he does so because the reader wants to see a pattern to life. It does not matter whether that life is past or present. As long as it relates meaning. And the meaning it relates ties back to making trauma comprehensible and noting the importance of family.

An example of how this happens in the novel occurs in chapter 31. The passage cited below occurs as an observation from the author, in-book Michael Chabon, on discovering the notes of doctor Medved detailing Grandmother’s mental health, symptoms and what lay at the base of it:

[…]That my grandmother had been born to a life, with a biography, very different than the one I had always been told, that she had perpetrated such a charged deception on everyone for so long-

messed my up for a long time. One by one I began to subject my memories of my grandmother, of the things she had told me and the way she behaved, to a formal review, a kind of failure analysis, searching and testing them for their conceit of deceit. […] I kept it from my mother and the rest of the world until I began to research and write this memoir, abandoning- repudiating- a novelistic approach to the material. (Chabon, “Moonglow” 356)

In this fragment the author within the book acts like there are actual memories and experiences connected to the character of Grandmother who the author of the book made up. The reaction that is described is realistic and not unlike what a person in real life would do if they were faced with such life changing information. The Chabon within the book then comments on the novel itself in a metafictional turn, saying that Moonglow is in fact a memoir. This is an ironic turn that again blurs the line between the thing in the novel that are true, and the things that are made up. This is game that Chabon plays in all of the works that were analysed earlier. Although Chabon mentions in Moonglow that “sometimes even lovers of fiction can be satisfied by only the truth” (Chabon, “Moonglow” 356), but it that he himself is only satisfied when he has been able to put forward his stories, his fictional truths, and give them meaning so they in turn can provide meaning to his readers. Fiction and fact are actually intertwined in Chabon’s work and this is ultimately part of his post-postmodern project.

2.3 Other Post-postmodern Techniques

In this final part, three more techniques will be examined because they occur in some way in Chabon’s selected works. These techniques are considered to either be Post-postmodernist or they have been existing previously and now make a notable return. They are specifically connected to metafiction, the idea of the double and parody. These elements will be discussed using a main example from one of the novels discussed earlier followed by a brief indication of how they occur in the others to indicate that they are present there as well. The idea here is that, aside from the five recurring aspects, Chabon uses other specifically Post-postmodern techniques and as a result establish him even more as a Post-postmodern author. Also these techniques aid in the project of representing trauma as something accessible to readers.

The first technique that Chabon uses is that of invoking metafictional elements. The example that will be discussed here was already alluded to in the opening theoretical part on metafiction: the epigraphs. Chabon also uses metafiction in the form of footnotes to show that

his historically influenced stories are fiction, or at least, fictionalized accounts of a person’s experiences. The use of epigraphs, aside from being a Post-postmodern example of intertextuality, already tells the story that follows and in doing so, Chabon does not repress aspects of his fictional stories but makes them visible via metafiction. Take for example the epigraph from Moonglow, a quote from Wernher Von Braun “There’s no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it’s all dark” (Chabon, Moonglow Epigraph). In the novel Von Braun appears as a character on multiple occasions so that could be seen as one reason for using a quote as the epigraph but there is a bit more at play. First it alludes to the main trope in the novel of lunar exploration and Grandfather’s wish to escape to the moon. Second it feels like a comment on the novel being a pretend biography. By saying that it is all dark, it can be read as a comment on the subjectivity of memory and the difficulty of knowing history. Readers can be quite literally in the dark about the past, just like the author telling the story within the novel was in the dark of his grandfather’s past. In telling this story and highlighting it through use of this particular epigraph, Chabon urges readers to examine this story closely as well as re-examine what they think they know of the past.

The other epigraphs in Chabon’s selected works do similar things. In The Yiddish Policemen’s Union there is a quote from Edward Lear that says “and they went to sea in a sieve” (Chabon, Yiddish Policemen epigraph) taken from the nonsense poem The Jumblies. The idea of using a sieve as a boat is a bad idea at the best of times but in relation to the novel, it alludes to the complicated situation that was caused by Jewish displacement to Alaska. With the reversion of the settlement act, the Alaskan Jews seems to be in a sinking ship themselves. In The Final Solution, the epigraph is by Mary Jo Salter and reads “The distinction’s fine between detection and invention” (Chabon, Final Solution epigraph) and is a comment on the fact that this novel deals with a detective who fails to solve a case and might be tempted to invent a resolution to the story. At the same time, it alludes to Chabon playing once again with fiction and reality. The author did not detect a story but invented one. As was shown previously, this divide is not always clearly marked and Chabon continuously transgresses this line. In the case of this novel, this is done by juxtaposing a fictional detective and character with the traumatic history of the Holocaust. Finally in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay there are two epigraphs; one taken from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Wakefield that reads “Wonderful escape” and the other is a quote from Will Eisner that says “We have this history of impossible solutions for insoluble problems” (Chabon, Kavalier & Clay epigraph). These epigraphs refer to the idea of escapism in the story that follows while

also commenting on the difficulty that is linked of coming to terms with losing family in the Holocaust. Difficult, yet not impossible as the novel suggests that comic books, and by extension creative acts can serve as a recuperative solution to come to terms with trauma. All of these epigraphs share the metafictional attribute of summarizing and commenting on the story that follows. These epigraphs do not only serve as intertextual references that place the novel in a framework of thematically similar novels, poems or speeches. They are also connected to the novels’ main themes and as a result link back to the five aspects analysed earlier. These attributes once again establish Chabon’s work as being Post-postmodern.

A second recurring technique is the use of the double. According to Gordon Slethaug, the idea related to the double “is an ancient on. It has roots in the earliest Western literature and it enjoys an astonishing capacity for survival and recombination” (Slethaug 8). This idea of the double, pervasive throughout literature from the past, can be also placed here under the marvellous or the fantastic aspects that Post-postmodernism uses. In similar fashion to the idea of escapism, the double “has come to stand outside of the conventions of the real world in order to assess and counter conventionally accepted psychological reality” (Slethaug 19). This means that the use of the double in Chabon’s selected work, when read as being Post- postmodern, also help in examining the traumatic pasts and experiences put forward while at the same time exploring what lies outside historical conventions. This way, the double serves as yet another tool for Chabon to explore trauma and make it mean something as it “opens a window onto the psychological and social disorder and illegality, onto what lays outside of the structures of dominant value systems” (Slethaug 19). One of the clearest examples present in Chabon’s writing was previously mentioned with regards to Moonglow; the character of the grandmother has a double in the figure of the Skinless horse. Aside from serving as the embodiment of Grandmother’s trauma, this grotesque shadow figure can also be read as an allegorical double for inner psychological turmoil. In episodes that manifest because of the Skinless horse, darker aspects of the personality come forward. Through this literary trope, readers are allowed a look into someone’s hidden inner world and given an idea of how trauma manifests. Readers are allowed to examine and learn from Grandmother’s experiences and situation. This way, Chabon is provided a way of overcoming the difficulties in representing trauma to a certain extent while he provides a way for readers to gain new relate to traumatic experiences.

There are many other doublings in Chabon’s work and one way to explain the many examples is to see literature as a way to illuminate the duality of the world and the author as well as a way of show unconscious connections and revealing meaning where previously there was thought to be none. Another example in Chabon’s work is the doubling of Joe Kavalier and the Golem in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Through juxtaposing the agency of Joe with the passive nature and the inability to speak of the Golem, Chabon not only explores a rich Jewish tradition and culture but also develops a new strategy to express the turmoil that ensues in the novel related to the Second World War. It showcases the powerlessness with regards to violence against the Jews. The golem will not come back to life again and save the persecuted Jews, Joe cannot save his family despite trying his best. Ultimately though, the Golem and Joe come together through redemptive creative art and the Golem becomes the medium on the comic book page through which a story of suffering, loss and trauma can be told. The other noteworthy example is the doubling of Linus and his parrot Bruno. The muteness of the boy apposed with the talkative nature of the bird explores the idea of tracing the quieted experiences of trauma of Holocaust survivors. Like the old detective, readers want to figure out the reasons for his silence and interpret the experiences these two characters went through. The parrot is a vessel of telling an impossible story and contrasts the silence of the survivor while exploring the implications of giving representative testimony.

A final technique that was already discussed earlier in this dissertation is parody. Chabon parodies everything from the genres of the memoir and detective novels, to testimony as well as the templates provided by historical and genre fiction. As an author using parody, this gives Chabon a means of literary freedom, using the ironic distance that parody affords to spin his own unique fictions that repeat, yet differ from what is already present in reality. More than mere textual imitation of another text’s genre, form or structure, this can result in new meanings and significance when they are read by a contemporary audience. Chabon uses parody and delivers very self-aware literature to his audience which is what is needed to examine history in fiction. As Jerome De Groot argues: “If a historical novel is not self-aware, interested in undermining its own authority and legitimacy, then it might be failing in its duty to history” (De Groot 108) which means, applied to Chabon, that through parody, the authority of history is challenged. It is in this challenge that new insights can be gained. In Moonglow, Chabon parodies the style and format of the biography to tell a story about the past that focusses on trauma within a framework of family. In The Final Solution and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union Chabon parodies the genre of the detective novel to explore

themes of Jewish displacement, trauma and alternative histories. In The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Chabon parodies the historical novel to tell a coming-of-age story that deals with the Second World War from a safe distance while framing it with the loss of family. All of this parodying provides readers with narratives to related to and explore. This allows them to identify with the traumatic experiences put forward within the various novels.

2.4 Result

The result of the presence of the five themes of trauma, Jewish displacement, family, escapism and games with fact and fiction in the selected works, combined with the usage of Postmodern techniques and expansion and transgression of those techniques, strongly show Michael Chabon in a Post-postmodern light. The use of history, the exploration of trauma as well as the use of parody are key features in his writing that is aimed to get readers to examine the truths they think they know. Possible histories and traumatic experiences are examined through identification with the characters and stories held within the novels. Michael Chabon, although professing he lies to his audience, still manages to enthral them with his own brand of redemptive creative art, offering a way to talk about the difficult experiences related to the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. Not only does writing then overcome some of the difficulties of representing traumatic experience, Chabon succeeds in making unspeakable things speakable, just as he succeeds to move past the inability of Postmodernist fiction and makes literature mean something again.

Conclusion

This dissertation set out to shine its light on Michael Chabon’s Post-postmodern tendencies and how this manifests in Chabon’s fiction. I wanted to look at the idea of restoration of meaning and representation of trauma juxtaposed with formal experimentation in literature. This dissertation examined these novels, and by extension Chabon’s writing, with the idea that they are Post-postmodern works aimed at reconstruction rather than Postmodern deconstruction and scepticism. I also argued that there are distinct recurring themes and strategies in various of Michael Chabon’s novels that connect history and trauma through fiction and that the author uses these themes in a Post-postmodern sense with the goal of making trauma speakable and fiction relevant and meaningful again following a time in which Postmodernist writing had trouble expressing and achieving these effects.

In the theoretical part, the occurrence of trauma in literature, the genre of historical fiction and some aspects of Post-postmodernism were briefly examined. With regards to trauma, Michael Chabon has to be careful when he is constructing his stories so he does not appropriate the stories of trauma. Instead, he should examine these kinds of narratives as an important explanatory vehicle to shed new light on various historical events. Chabon’s writing expands the reach of interpretation and representation of the event and its impact. In relation to historical fiction, Chabon is considered as both a novelist and would-be historian. He is using the historical novel, its tropes, metaphors, prose and narrative style to interpret and render a version of the past to his historically removed audience. He questions what is known through juxtaposition with things that are made up to bring himself and his audience closer to understanding the implications of the Holocaust’s traumatic past. As he is telling his historical stories, Chabon unsettles and desacralizes the trauma by taking liberties seemingly as an attempt to work through some of the trauma that remains in society. All of this, Chabon does in a Post-postmodern way. His brand of literature moves beyond postmodern keystones, such as silence and apathy, caused by the postmodern condition with the performance recuperative

acts. Chabon seeks to restore the loss of the sense of historicity and explores subjectivity as something to explore. If subjectivity is inescapable, then Chabon decides to use and even celebrate it. His stories deal with communal bonds between people, friends and family and this can cause empathy in readers. It allows for identification with characters who suffer and it provides readers with new language to talk about trauma.

In order to argue that Chabon’s work in a general sense talked about trauma and history in Post-postmodern ways, some common ground was found between the four of Chabon’s selected novels. The novels The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Final Solution, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Moonglow all covered to a certain extent themes related to family, escapism, playing with fact and fiction, trauma and the subtheme of trauma: Jewish displacement. The presence of these themes shows a red thread running through Chabon’s writing. It seems a recurring pattern of aspects around which the author weaves his stories. Trauma is framed in understandable thematic categories and readers are able to easily relate to them. They identify with the character’s suffering, understand the bonds characters share through the frame of family. Readers dream of escaping along with the characters and this escape succeeds through alleviating the burden of a heavy history by mixing it with fiction. And these get another Post-postmodern push in the back through the use of parody and metafiction and revisiting the idea of the double. Chabon employs other techniques that the reader may know and aims them towards recovery, towards understanding.

The presence of the five themes of trauma, Jewish displacement, family, escapism and games with fact and fiction in the selected works is combined with the usage of Postmodern techniques. Chabon expands as well as transgresses those techniques using his own brand of fiction that lies and obscures the line between fact and fiction. This strongly shows Michael Chabon in a Post-postmodern light. The use of history, the exploration of trauma as well as the use of parody are key features in his writing. This is writing that is aimed at getting readers to examine the truths they think they know. Possible histories and traumatic experiences are examined through identification with the characters and stories held within the novels. Michael Chabon, although professing he lies to his audience, still manages to enthral them with his own brand of redemptive creative art, offering a way to talk about the difficult experiences related to the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. Not only does writing then overcome some of the difficulties of representing traumatic experience, Chabon succeeds in making unspeakable things speakable, just as he succeeds to move past the inability of

Postmodernist fiction and give literature back some of its possibility of meaningful representation of reality.

Bibliography

Primary works:

Chabon, Michael. Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands. Fourth Estate, 2010. EPUB.

Chabon, Michael. Moonglow. 4th Estate, 2016.

Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. New York (N.Y.): Random House,

2000.EPUB

Chabon, Michael. The Final Solution. Harper Perennial, 2008. EPUB

Chabon, Michael. The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Fourth Estate, 2007. EPUB

Secondary works:

Books:

Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. ---. Unclaimed

Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

De Groot, Jerome. The Historical Novel. London: Routledge, 2010.

Foley, Barbara. Telling the Truth: the Theory and Practice of Documentary Fiction. Ithaca (N.Y.): Cornell

university press, 1986.

Slethaug, Gordon. “History of the double. Traditional and Postmodern versions”. The play of the double in

postmodern American fiction. Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1993.

Hirsch, Marianne. “Surviving Images: Holocaust Photographs and the Work of Postmemory.” The Yale Journal

of Criticism, 14(1), 2001, 5-37.

Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody: the Teachings of Twentieth-century Art Forms. New York (N.Y.):

Methuen, 1985.

Hutcheon, Linda. “The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History.” Cultural Critique, vol. 5, 1987, pp.

179–207., people.ds.cam.ac.uk/paa25/Papers/PoMo_files/Linda%20Hutcheon.pdf .

LaCapra, Dominick. History in transit. Experience, identity, critical theory. Ithaca. Cornell UP, 2004.

Luckhurst, Roger.”Introduction”. The Trauma Question. Taylor and Francis, 2013.

Rousselot, Elodie. Exoticizing the Past In Contemporary Neo-historical Fiction. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2014.

Young, James E. Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation.

Indiana University Press, 1990

Scholarly Articles:

Scanlan, M. "Strange Times to be a Jew: Alternative History after 9/11." MFS Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 57

no. 3, 2011, pp. 503-531. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/mfs.2011.0067

Newspaper Articles:

Delistraty, Cody. “In.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 19 June 2017, www.newyorker.com/books/page-

turner/in-moonglow-michael-chabon-builds-a-scale-model-of-the-broken-world.

Hensher, Philip. “Moonglow by Michael Chabon review – a novel posing as a family memoir.” The Guardian,

Guardian News and Media, 3 Feb. 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/03/moonglow-by-

michael-chabon-review.

Preston, Alex. “Moonglow by Michael Chabon review – much more than a memoir.” The Guardian, Guardian

News and Media, 10 Jan. 2017, www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/10/moonglow-michael-

chabon-review.

Scholes, Lucy. “Moonglow by Michael Chabon, book review: It playfully teases the reader at every turn.” The

Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 25 Jan. 2017, www.independent.co.uk/arts-

entertainment/books/reviews/moonglow-michael-chabon-book-review-a7546396.html.

Websites

Lear, Edward. “The Jumblies by Edward Lear.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation,

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/54364/the-jumblies.

“Michael Chabon blends fact and fiction to create 'a truth'.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 25 Nov. 2016,

www.pbs.org/newshour/show/michael-chabon-blends-fact-fiction-create-truth.

“Nonfiction novel.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 3 Oct. 2013,

www.britannica.com/art/historical-novel.

Dewey, Joseph. “Understanding Michael Chabon.” Google Books, The University of South Carolina Press, 2014,

books.google.be/books?id=L827BwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Understanding%2BMichael

%2BChabon%2BJoseph%2BDewey&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj82anJ27HYAhUPZVAKHTJwC

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Kellermann, Peter Felix. “Sociodrama and Collective Trauma.” Google Books, Jessica Kingsley Publishers,

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e&q&f=true.

Master Dissertations which inspired me:

Corveleyn, Evelien, and Pieter Vermeulen. The Promised Land of Salmon and Furs. Counterfactual History and

Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. 2011.

Desmecht, Tine, et al. The Language of Trauma: Memories of World War Ii In Post-9/11 Jewish American

Literature. 2017.

Hooftman, Andreas, and Philippe Codde. Discovering Trauma In Michael Chabon's 'the Amazing Adventures of

Kavalier and Clay'. 2007.

Vandenhaute, Anna, et al. Jewish American Identity Crisis and the Satirical Alternate History Novel. Analysis of

Philip Roth's The Ghost Writer and The Plot Against America. 2017.