They Got Me: Book Report #2 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

It took way too many years, but they finally got me.

If I were a superhero, and I had a league of some kind, two of my greatest allies would be friends Caleb and Phip. I'm not sure if any of the three of us would be the "hero", really, as we all fashion ourselves as sidekicks, but if I have to fight evil, I would fight with those guys.

I can't remember when Caleb told me the best book he ever read was Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, but it was a long time ago. Normally, I follow Caleb's advice, and it's usually good (the flea market in Ohio last summer), though not always (the software for making our own hip hop songs). But for whatever reason, I ignored his very strong recommendation for this book. He still forgave me, and still held on to an entire collection of Star Wars Pez Dispensers he bought for me, and a Jim Harbaugh action figure, also years ago, which I had left at his house in Chicago.

Fast forward to two years ago, when Phip, my brother from another mother, handed me the same book and told me to "read it." I didn't. Instead, I lost it. Well, I found it again on the last day of school and decided that the universe had sent me plenty of reasons to read the book.

So I did.

Holy Great Writing Batman: What A Book!

Quickly: it tells of two young cousins in New York City at the dawn of WWII, one who had recently escaped the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. It was also the dawn of the "Golden Age" of comic books, and the two cousins decide to team up to create their own comics. Comic books are about heroes, and the thing about heroes in comic books is that good and evil are so often so recognizable, and heroes, like that great comic-book hero Superman, are most often motivated by the purest motivations. In real life, not so much. The book shows us comic book heroes, flawed human heroes, and the intersection of them both, sprinkled with magic and mysticism.

Great read. I laughed. I cried. I went "KABLAM" and "KABLOOEY". I loved it.

Why did I wait so long?

By the way, the photo at the top of this post is The Escapist, the comic book hero created by the fictional heroes of the book. Of the three of us, he looks the most like Phip.