michael chabon has co-opted the rich history of comicdom's golden age to produce his signature melodrama. in choosing to totally squander the potential of said history to tell a trite, glitzy story of successful Jewish boys torn apart by war and their love for a woman, he's making light of his superior source materials in a way that's frustrating for anyone who has grown up with serious appreciation for comics. it's clear chabon has read comics and that he likes them, but i'm not altogether sure that he understands them. this book is an overlong, if not quite boring glamorization of lives that siegel, shuster, and the rest never led. his storytelling is corny and obvious, the characters are paper-thin. i'm not clear on his motives for writing this. it feels as if chabon wished to write the epic american novel, but this falls way short.

Only one abnormally enormous ego could've mustered out something so monumental, so very beautiful & elegant as this sparkly-as-chrome novel. It's basically flawless--very concerned with having all sentences that make it up into wondrous, unique gems. Every sentence is constructed with care & CRAFT.

The novel begins by grabbing the reader by the lapels to show how the bonds between cousin geniuses who build an empire out of superhero comics unravel. It takes its time to get us there, so we are in for a cinematographic ride through the years that bookmarked WWII in the great land of opportunity: mainly NYC. There are collisions with history: a legacy left from Houdini is taken up by the ambitious young Josef Kavalier, Dali's life is saved by Kavalier, and Orson Welles inspires Clay to draw on his masterpiece "Citizen Kane" to change the very way storytelling is depicted in the comics. This is a petition, very headstrong and brilliant, to elevate the craft of comic books into a substantial art form. That the heroes of the tale resemble those that they draw is a guise to imbue the fantastic world with the ever-so real. Film equivalents: "The Aviator" (2005), "Citizen Kane."

In fact, it is the story of the baby-faced entrepreneur that K & C tries to emulate, & actually kinda surpasses it. It is about MANNY things, about history of course, but also about that pesky threesome that sometimes forms when great minds align. About the father-son relationship, the partnership between hero & sidekick, the building of something amazing, that lasts for future generations to enjoy or partake in. Is there any other emblem to tie all of this together than that monstrous tower a.k.a. Empire State Building on the book's cover????

Świetna powieść, wspaniała, wielowątkowa, głęboka, ale napisana bez zadęcia i klasycznie elegancka. Uwaga teraz polecę banałami: powieść o miłości, tęsknocie, nienawiści i bolesnym odkrywaniu własnej tożsamości, Nowym Jorku, holokauście, ale też powieść o komiksach i ich roli w kulturze, o potrzebie ucieczki od rzeczywistości. Powieść o komiksach, napisana przed kinowym boomem na super bohaterów, powieść o szukaniu tożsamości zanim platformy streamingowe zaczęły zasypywać nędznymi serialami na ten temat, powieść sama w sobie komiksowa, bajkowa, ale dzięki temu, niesamowicie przyswajalna dla zwykłego czytelnika.

Nie pokuszę się o jakąś głębszą analizę „Niesamowitych przygód…” nie mam na to ani ochoty, ani chęci, zostawmy to anglistom, którzy będą, jeżeli już tego nie robią, rozkładać książkę Chabona na czynniki pierwsze w zaciszach uniwersyteckich gabinetów i czytelni. Nachodzi mnie jednak smutne wrażenie, że gdyby taka książka została napisana w Polsce, to prawdopodobnie przeszłaby bez echa, bez szans na nagrody literackie, bo u nas takich książek się nie docenia, u nas „literatura wysoka”, zresztą tak jak kino, nie ma cieszyć i wzruszać czytelnika, nie ma dać mu drogi ucieczki od codzienności, ma go wbić w ziemię, i przyprawić o ciężką depresję, chwycić za mordę i pokazać: „popatrz: jej nie układa się z matką, a ten jest z familoka i jest gejem – a ty masz tak dobrze w życiu - a teraz dej mnie Nike, albo innego Angelusa”, a wracając do Chabona i jego "Niesamowitych przygód..." to gorąco polecam.

3 1/2 stars

This book is SO difficult to review.

The first half, even the first 2/3 of the book worked for me on so many levels. Joseph’s escape from Prague, his budding friendship with his cousin Sammy and their brave venture into the world of comic books was absolutely delightful. The authors craft as a writer is indisputable.

I would never have thought I would enjoy a book that has the rise of comic books at its centre but this in fact just happened. World War 2 and its effect on the rest of the world was portrayed in such a way so as not to dominate the story but still colouring every interaction with its shadow.

The story is anything but straight forward and it was very interesting to see how all the pieces fit in with each other. But the story really is about the adventures of Joe and unfortunately Sammy’s story is pushed a bit by the way side to make room.

When Joe lands in America he is haunted by the fact that his family had to stay behind in occupied Prague and he uses his drawings to vent his rage and frustrations about the war. But soon this is just not enough and that rage spills over into his real life.

I don’t what to go into much detail but rather just want to say that the book starts of showing the sweet and innocent friendship building between Sam and Joe and ends with a bittersweet conclusion at the knocks life dealt them.

I cannot be completely honest in my review if I didn’t mention one small criticism. The author has the propensity to waft on about little details that are not crucial to the plot which made some sections feel overly wordy. This only really started bothering me towards the end of the book when the story slowed down a bit and the characters were under a lot more strain.

So because of this wafting I am still a bit torn between 3 ½ or 4 stars but decided to round it up rather than down.

3.75 stars, rounded up

This long novel opened with a bang, with me thinking that for sure this was going to be a five-star read. I loved its deft blend of the brash—two 20-ish Jewish cousins in go-go New York taking the comic book world by storm with their Escapist hero—with the sorrowful: one of the cousins has just escaped Nazi-occupied Prague, forced to leave the rest of his family behind to an uncertain fate. Alas, the early brio and energy fizzled out by the middle of the book, and it was a long slog to the end.

5★+
“‘The pins have voices,’ he reminded Josef at last. ‘The pick is a tiny telephone wire. The tips of your fingers have ears.’ Josef took a deep breath, slid the pick that was tipped with a small squiggle into the plug of the lock, and again applied the wrench.”

Josef Kavalier, son of highly-regarded doctors in Prague, is learning how to pick locks. I have put off reviewing this because I felt so bereft when I finished that I didn’t want to admit the story had ended. It feels like a family saga covering generations, but in fact, the action is mostly between 1939 and 1954, a mere 15 years. Of course, past family history is remembered, but only as context.

Josef is nineteen years old, living with his Jewish parents and adored younger brother in 1938 as the Nazis are moving in from Poland. His parents raise enough money to send him to his father’s sister in New York, but just before the border, the Nazis “question” his visa, preventing his departure. He can’t bear to disappoint his parents, who are counting on him, so he turns to his old teacher, Bernard Kornblum, who has been helping him learn the magic and card tricks he loves.

Lock-picking, escape, and illusion save him countless times in the book. The whole thing is magic to me, how he gets to New York, becomes best friends with his cousin Sammy Klayman, gets into the comic book business, mixes with the likes of Salvador Dali (saves his life), meets and woos Rosa, all as the war is getting worse in Europe.

America has stayed out of the war and Josef is frustrated not to get any real news, especially about Czechoslovakia. Letters from his family are increasingly censored, and they insist that they are doing well, behaving in a proper, civilised manner to the Germans.

“Josef felt a bloom of dread in his belly, and all at once he was certain that it was not going to matter one iota how his father and the others behaved. Orderly or chaotic, well inventoried and civil or jumbled and squabbling, the Jews of Prague were dust on the boots of the Germans, to be whisked off with an indiscriminate broom. Stoicism and an eye for detail would avail them nothing.”

He's determined to save money as fast as he can to get his family out, beginning with his little brother, Thomas. Meanwhile, Sammy has introduced Josef to comic books. Superman had been issued in 1938, and the boys dream big. One of my favourite chapters just dives into a surreal story about someone else that later reveals itself as their imagined superhero. It’s delightful! I always enjoyed comics, and these guys would have been fun to know.

They get so excited by their wild inspirations that they don’t think about much else.

“But in truth, Sammy and Joe scarcely took note of their surroundings. It was just the clearing in which they had come to pitch the tent of their imaginations.”

Josef Kavalier and Samuel Klayman become Joe and Sam, Kavalier and Clay. The third part of their trio is Rosa Saks, the most gorgeous character, uninhibited, colourful, and a talented artist working for ‘Life’ magazine. Vivid, flirtatious, she’s a bright counterpoint to their conservative, rather glum, upbringings.

“There was something unmistakably exultant about the mess that Rosa had made. Her bedroom-studio was at once the canvas, journal, museum, and midden of her life. She did not “decorate” it; she infused it.”

That pretty much describes her presence in the book. The three of them are artists, Sammy being the better writer, the other two doing the drawing. They are quick, imaginative, and churn out the stories for bosses who keep the purse strings pretty tight.

What Josef relishes is the chance to conquer the Nazis on paper, letting the ‘The Escapist’ overpower the enemy, “the Razi elites of Zothenia, Gothsylvania, Draconia, and other pseudonymous dark bastions of the Iron Chain.” Sammy writes, Josef draws, and their‘Escapist’, has gained a good audience. Josef’s feeling good.

“It was six o’clock on a Monday morning in October 1940. He had just won the Second World War, and he was feeling pretty good about it.”

Sammy’s grandmother, Bubbie, haunts the background, a constant reminder of the past. Born in 1846, she came to America at the age of seventy with her youngest child, but her mind hasn’t really made the trip.

“She was a large, boneless woman who draped herself like an old blanket over the chairs of the apartment, staring for hours with her gray eyes at ghosts, figments, recollections, and dust caught in oblique sunbeams, her arms streaked and pocked like relief maps of vast planets, her massive calves stuffed like forcemeat into lung-colored support hose.”

Her cooking and Sammy’s mother’s cooking are memorable. Sammy brings a friend home for his mother’s dinner.

“Dinner was a fur muff, a dozen clothespins, and some old dish towels boiled up with carrots. The fact that the meal was served with a bottle of prepared horseradish enabled Sammy to conclude that it was intended to pass for braised short ribs of beef—flanken.
. . .
‘Did you save room for my babka?’ Bubbie said.
. . .
‘Is babka dessert?’
‘An eternal question among my people,’ Sammy said. ‘There are some who argue that it’s actually a kind of very small hassock.’

There are many stories within stories and some real people interspersed among the fictitious. Much as Chabon did with Moonglow, which many readers thought was a biography (nope*), he has made fiction so real that we want to know these people. We feel we DO know these people. The humour is delightful, some subtle, some must-read-it-to-someone funny.

The heartbreak is devastating. When America does go to war, life changes for them in unimaginable ways and in unexpected places. Suffice to say it’s wonderful, Chabon is terrific, and I’m pleased that the Pulitzer folks got this one right in my, admittedly humble, opinion!

I know nothing about them, but I see there are some more Chabon books about ‘The Escapist’.

*(I've seen many reviews of Moonglow that assume it is an autobiography. In my review of that most excellent book, I added some explanation I found and also a couple of links, if you're interested. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... )

This was a stupendous, super duper story. It had all sorts of great things in it. Possible spoilers....
.......

It had comics, World War II, Jewish culture, men having to hide their true natures, the comic book trials of the 1950's, and so much more.

I was stretching this story out so that I could keep enjoying it, but then I just decided to finish it out because it was immensely good. And it deserved the Pulitzer Prize that it won.

I'm proceeding with discovering the writing of big-name, hyped writers who are well-known but unknown to me. Previously, I experienced my first Zadie Smith. I investigated Don DeLillo and Curtis Sittenfeld, made a detour to Clarice Lispector land, and now it's time for Michael Chabon. Ann Patchett is next, and also up-and-coming star C Pam Zhang.

My verdict: I am calling it quits around page 340; I just don't care. I started by skimming all the comics-related pages, about the industry exploiting the creators, about one hero's impotent fight against nazis through his fictional superhero, and how it wasn't enough for him at some point to continue. I occasionally slowed down for the story of little brother Thomas, stuck in occupied Prague in 1939, an adorable Jewish boy. I also did enjoy Rosa Saks with her crazy energy at first. Then at one point, I noticed I started skimming the Rosa Saks parts as well. I promised myself not to waste my time on books I don't enjoy. I think it's the tone and the pacing, and him focusing on things I don't care about and barely touching on things I do. Well, damn!

4 and a half stars, rounded up.

My first Michael Chabon novel turned out to be a very good, very entertaining and moving read. I confess that I cracked it open with some trepidation, as the reviews for this one are really all over the place, and I had no idea which side of the fence I'd fall on about it...

In the late 1930s, Josef Kavalier is smuggled out of Czechoslovakia by his prestidigitation teacher just before his entire family is rounded up and relocated to a Prague ghetto. Circuitously, he makes his way to Brooklyn, where his cousin Sam Klayman lives with his mother and grandmother. It seems at first that the two young men have nothing in common, but Sam quickly realizes his cousin is an amazing artist, and that his talent could lead to them making a great career with this new media, the comic book. The novel follows their career, but also Joe's (as he is now known) attempts to help his family, Sam's identity crisis, and the story of the woman who will play a huge part in both of their lives, the lovely Rosa Saks.

While it doesn't hurt to know a thing or two about the history of comic books to enjoy this novel, it is also by no means a requirement: Chabon distills his clear adoration for the media in such a way that makes the birth of the modern superhero interesting, informative and thought-provoking. He uses this story to explore topics like family and identity, but in surprisingly fresh ways. What is family when those you love are a world away, how are you supposed to define yourself when you are something you don't even have a word for, how many times can you escape before you realize that you keep running into yourself everywhere you go?

Chabon's prose is clean and fluid, but also quite clever: some readers clearly find him a little too clever, but I didn't feel that way. That's how someone writes when they are passionate about a topic and can't wait to share it with others. I did find the book a touch too long, but it kept taking me to very unexpected places and I never really felt it drag, so I am happy to round up my 4 and a half stars to a 5. A really great book that made me quite curious to read more from Michael Chabon!

I’m a fan of Michael Chabon even though he carries a man purse.

Joe Kavalier is a young artist who had also trained to be a magician and escape artist in Prague. When the Nazis invade in 1939, Joe is able to escape to America with the plan that he’ll find a way to get the rest of his family out. In New York, he meets his cousin Sam Clay. Sam is an artist of limited talent who has been doing drawings for the ads of a novelty toy company, but the recent boom of superhero comics thanks to the newly created Superman has inspired him to try and break into that budding industry.

When Sam sees Joe’s artistic talent, they form a partnership and Sam talks the owner of the novelty company into launching a comic line featuring masked men. Joe and Sam create a group of comic characters including The Escapist, a magician and escape artist who is also endowed with super strength by an ancient secret society to help free the oppressed. Sam’s story telling instincts and Joe’s art quickly make The Escapist one of the most popular comics on the market.

However, Joe’s inability to get his family out of Europe due to anti-Semitic German bureaucracy and US government red tape continually leaves him frustrated and angry. Falling in love only makes him feel guiltier for his happiness and success. Meanwhile, Sam buries himself in work to avoid admitting that he’s a homosexual until a relationship with a radio actor forces him to confront his nature.

Chabon’s a comic geek, and he really understands the medium at a DNA level. This is obviously his ode to the Golden Age of comics when the industry was born. My favorite part of the book is where Joe and Sam are trying to come up with a new hero, and their conversation about what will work and what won’t is a great deconstruction of what makes for a good superhero. The following weekend they spend with a group of artists cooking up several heroes to fill out an entire comic book made me feel the energy and creativity that seemed to be present in air of the New York comic scene in those days.

The book also highlights the flaws of funny books of the time, too. Chabon makes it clear that a lot of the stuff that came out was schlock thrown together cheaply and quickly, and the stories about creators getting ripped off by publishers are legion.

We also get into how comics were thought of back then. Despite their large sales, they were shunned and mocked by the general public and seen as lurid trash for children. Joe and Sam are proud of their creations, but they’re also embarrassed to be writing about men in tights. Joe often feels that he’s wasting his time with war looming and his family trapped in Europe, but it’s giving him the money he needs to try and get them out so he takes out his frustration by having The Escapist beating the Nazis in the pages of the comic book.

The first half of the book is the portion that I really love. There’s a point where Sam & Joe attend the premiere of Citizen Kane, and its clever story structure and inventive camera angles inspire them to push their own work into a more adult direction. (It’s also a nice nod to the way that comics eventually started breaking the old nine panel per page format and became more cinematic.) To me, that’s the high water mark of the book because for one brief shining moment, the two men see what a comic book could become and temporarily manage to push their own self-imposed limitations aside to create something new. Unfortunately, like any Golden Age, it doesn’t last

Joe can’t let go of his desire for the kind of justice that a character like The Escapist deals out regularly because he‘s looking for the wrong kind of satisfaction. Sam wants so badly to be ‘normal’ and respected that he ends up living a lie and trying to be anything but what he is: a gay writer of pulp fiction.

Chabon has crafted a great look at a bygone era and meshed it with a pretty good story about a couple of likeable characters so embroiled in their own private triumphs and tragedies that they don’t realize that they’re among the pioneers of a new art form even as they create it.

I started collecting comic books when I was 12 years old. Like most 12-year-olds, I wasn't particularly discriminating, picking up whatever I could afford with my allowance at the local Mac's Milk. If it was a Marvel team book, and there, I probably bought it. (I was never as much interested in the single-person titles.) It wasn't until much later, when I met my husband, that he started to introduce me to specific authors, instead of specific titles, authors we would follow across titles and sometimes companies.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

chabon's a good writer, and for the first 50 pages or so, I thought it was gonna be a good one. but then it just started to suck. I shouldn't even have finished it, but I did. can't believe it won a pulizter or whatever. he beats you over the head with the escape/escapist theme, the reader had totally figured out that the main dude is gay for like 150 pages before the gay guy does, argh god it was awful....