Title: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and ClayAuthor: Michael Chabon
I picked this book up expecting not to like it much, so I was in for a surprise when I devoured it in two days of plane flights before and after the Boston Marathon. I read it at the same time I was reading the early chapters of Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer and I found myself literally forcing myself to read more slowly and devour Chabon's words.
And what words they were. Chabon tells the story of Josef Kavalier and Sam Clay, cousins who meet in Brooklyn after Kavalier escapes from Prague before the start of WWII. Sam wants out of his dead-end job, and with his ideas and Joe's art skills, the two create comic book heroes that catapult them into the high life. Since the book evokes pop art images and colors, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the writing is over-the-top and splashy too. Chabon does it well, without turning his characters intothe two-dimensional figures that Kavalier and Clay specialize in.
No comments:
Post a Comment