“Joe, on the floor, was aware for a moment that he was lying on a sour-smelling oval braided rug, in an apartment recently vacated by a girl who had impressed him, in the few instants of their acquaintance, as the most beautiful he had ever seen in his life, in a building whose face he had scaled so that he could begin to produce comic books for a company that sold farting pillows, in Manhattan, New York, where he had come by way of Lithuania, Siberia, and Japan.”
Stunning in its breadth, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" pulled off the truly impressive feat of being a novel of 700 pages that left you wanting more.
“‘There is only one sure means in life,’ Deasey said, ‘of ensuring that you are not ground into paste by disappointment, futility, and disillusion. And that is always to ensure, to the utmost of your ability, that you are doing it solely for the money.’”
Michael Chabon's New York City of the 1940s is full of hope and despair, opportunity and obstacle, love and pain. The author has created vivid backdrops, rich back stories, and engrossing historical context to populate this terrain.
“The sound of their raised voices carries up through the complicated antique ductwork of the grand old theater, rising and echoing through the pipes until it emerges through a grate in the sidewalk, where it can be heard clearly by a couple of young men who are walking past, their collars raised against the cold October night, dreaming their elaborate dream,wishing their wish, teasing their golem into life.”
Chabon's prose manages to be sentimental, hysterical, beautiful, and moving all at the same time. True-to-life dialogue colors in real depth for Sam Clay and Joe Kavalieri, making them relatable and extraordinary.
“It was marvelous that in this big town he had managed to rediscover, a year later, the girl with the miraculous behind.”
“ … There was a general impression of imminent catastrophe and red lipstick.”
The author has fun with many offshoots of the main storyline, particularly with a fraught Antarctic adventure. Chabon turns Kavalier & Clay into manifestations of the comics they create -- building a stunning, accessible, and compelling novel along the way.
“He had escaped, in his life, from ropes, chains, boxes, bags, and crates, from handcuffs and shackles, from countries and regimes, from the arms of a woman who loved him, from crashed airplanes and an opiate addiction and from an entire frozen continent intent on causing his death.”
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