The incredible adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The incredible adventures of Kavalier & Clay (original title: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay ) is a novel first published in 2000 by the American writer Michael Chabon , which was awarded, among other things, the Pulitzer Prize .
The novel tells the life of two Jewish cousins before, during and after the Second World War , who had a major influence on the development of comics . Kavalier und Clay received almost unanimous positive reviews from literary critics and developed into a bestseller in the USA. The novel was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN / Faulkner Award in 2000. The writer Bret Easton Ellis described it in 2006 as "one of the three great novels of my generation". The literary magazine The New York Review of Books described the novel as Chabons masterpiece . In 2015, this novel was chosen by the BBC's selection of the best 20 novels from 2000 to 2014 as one of the most important works of this century to date.
The preparatory work for the filming began in 2001, but the film is still in the so-called development hell .
content
The novel begins in 1939 with the arrival of 19-year-old Josef "Joe" Kavalier in New York, who is accepted into the Klayman family, to whom he is related. Joe Kavalier is a refugee who is the only one of his middle-class Jewish family to manage to escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia . His mentor, the magician Kornblum, helped him to escape, and he and the inanimate Golem smuggled him to Lithuania. Among other things, his younger brother Thomas remains in Prague.
Joe Kavalier finds a friend in Sammy Klayman, his 17-year-old cousin: Both are artistically gifted and connected to the Jewish magician Harry Houdini . Joe Kavalier studied magic and escape art as a hobby in Prague parallel to his studies at the art college . Sammy Klayman is the son of "Mighty Molecule", a variety artist, and is hoping for a career as a writer. Sammy Klayman manages to get Joe a job as an illustrator for the company "Empire Novelty", which produces joke articles. Sheldon Anapol, owner of the company, who is fascinated by the success of the recently published Superman comics , tries to win part of this market for himself based on the drawing and writing talent of the two. Under the name "Sam Clay" Sammy begins to write adventure stories, which are illustrated by Joe. Originally, the main aim of these comics was to promote the joke articles from the company "Empire Novelty". Your central figure is the "escapist", an anti-fascist superhero, in which the characteristics of Captain America , Harry Houdini and Batman are united. The “Escapist” is a great success, but Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay receive - as was customary at the time - as a team of authors only a small part of the income from their publisher. It takes both of them a long time to realize that they are being exploited because they are both burdened with private problems. Joe Kavalier tries to help his family escape from Nazi-occupied Prague and has fallen in love with Rosa Saks, who also has artistic ambitions. Sam Clay is uncertain about his sexual orientation and tries to advance his writing career.
Joe Kavalier fails to bring his family to America. Although he got his younger brother Thomas a place on board a ship that brings Jewish children to the USA, this is torpedoed by German submarines during the crossing. Not knowing that Rosa Saks is pregnant by him, the desperate Joe volunteers after the news of his brother's death in the Navy to fight against Germans. As part of his military service, Joe Kavalier has to serve in a lonely naval base in Antarctica. At the beginning of the Antarctic winter, while the station cannot be reached from the outside, almost everyone stationed there is killed in an accident. The only survivor besides Joe died of appendicitis towards the end of winter. Joe Kavalier then returns to New York, but does not feel able to face Rosa and Sammy. He lives in a small office in the Empire State Building and only interacts with a small group of other magicians.
Meanwhile, Sam Clay has entered into a relationship with Tracy Bacon, the radio voice of the "Escapist". Tracy Bacon is offered the lead role in the planned adaptation of The Escapist, which Bacon accepts. He asks Sam Clay to move to Hollywood with him, an offer that Sam Clay initially accepts. A little later they are guests at a private party where only homosexuals are present. The party is interrupted by the police and almost everyone is arrested. Sam Clay and one other guest escape arrest in a hiding place, but are discovered by two FBI agents who sexually abuse them. Clay then decides not to go to Hollywood with Tracy Bacon. He cannot imagine a life in which he will always face criminal prosecution because of his relationship with Tracy Bacon. In a marriage of convenience, he marries pregnant Rosa, who is aware of his sexual orientation. They move to a suburb on Long Island, where they raise Tommy Clay as their child and try to give themselves the appearance of a traditionally intact family.
However, Sammy Clay and Rosa Clay Saks are unable to hide all of their secrets from the adolescent Tommy. Like his biological father, Tommy Clay is passionate about magic; During a visit to a shop that sells material for magicians, he meets his biological father, whom he recognizes from photos, but initially thinks he is his missing uncle. He initially received secret lessons from Joe Kavalier and eventually led him back together with Sammy Clay and Rosa Clay Saks. Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier start working on comics again. Sammy Clay's homosexuality becomes public at a live televised hearing on the impact of comics on juvenile delinquency. Despite the efforts of Joe Kavalier and Rosa Saks, Sammy Clay leaves the family in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.
Features of the narrative
Many occurrences in the novel are based on the lives of artists who have had a lasting impact on the development of comics. Michael Chabon dedicated the afterword to the novel Jack Kirby , one of the most influential and well-known cartoonists of American comics. Other real people mentioned in contemporary history are Bob Kane , Stan Lee , Jerry Siegel , Joe Shuster , Joe Simon , Will Eisner and Jim Steranko . Other historical figures who appear in the course of the plot include Salvador Dalí , Max Ernst , Al Smith , Orson Welles and Fredric Wertham . The narrative action spans a period from 1939 to 1953, which is considered the golden age of comics.
reception
Florian Felix Weyh largely panned the novel in a review for Deutschlandfunk in 2002. Although he attributes it to linguistic extravagance, excessive inventiveness and wealth of detail, he also mentions it as an epic aimed at American reading needs and accuses him of a synthetic knitting pattern that leaves a stale taste. His criticism ends with the words:
“The corset of action worked out on the drawing board lacks any inner economy. A comic novel: Anything can happen at any time, so it does. Chabon's world is the colorful adjectival description of improbable scenes, his dialogues, on the other hand, remain unpointed and bland - even though comics actually live on speech bubbles! But comfortably, there are still cultural differences between America and the Old World. To determine this, however, a sample of three dozen pages is sufficient, then you know which cultural continent you belong to. "
The criticism of the FAZ is much more positive: It is about successful magical realism and Michael Chabon rightly received the Pulitzer Prize for this novel. Chabon managed to mask his own aesthetic and historical knowledge and to tell all events like a consistently developing adventure story from the middle of the twentieth century. The taz review sees it similarly: It is a great, large-format painting of America in the forties and fifties.
Single receipts
- ↑ "Chabon, Michael: INTRODUCTION" ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Contemporary Literary Criticism . Ed. Jeffrey W. Hunter. Vol. 149. Thomson Gale, 2002. eNotes.com. 2006. Retrieved July 27, 2007.
- ^ Birnbaum, Robert. "Bret Easton Ellis" , The Morning News , January 19, 2006. Retrieved on October 28 of 2008.
- ↑ Leonard, John. "Meshuga Alaska" , The New York Review of Books , June 14, 2007. Accessed July 27 of 2007.
- ↑ Critique in Deutschlandfunk, accessed on December 24, 2013
- ^ Review of the novel in the FAZ on August 26, 2002, accessed on December 24, 2013
- ^ Review of the novel in the taz of October 1, 2002, accessed on December 24, 2013
