It’s been a while since I started this blog and, let’s be frank, I’ve made a lot of promises, making good on some, and completely neglecting to fulfill others. One of these promises I made in writing the mission statement to this blog, “A Gentleman’s Mission,” and also in writing the very subtitle you see at the top of this blog everyday. That is, I have called this a blog with a focus on three things: Music, Food & Drink, and Literature. This is not to say that what I have written is without any literary merit, but, really, it has had nothing to do with literature. So today that changes, with a new feature I would like to call, “Booked Solid”.
Dedicated to the books that grab your attention and keep it, until you’re (drum roll…) Booked Solid (rim shot!), Booked Solid is about the paper snacks you devour in one sitting, the modest meals you finish in a matter of days, or the banquets upon which you feast for weeks, even months. Any book that consumes, and is in turn consumed, is one worthy of Booked Solid.
The first installment: Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.
One of three covers for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
Michael Chabon, a Pulitzer Prize-winner and all-around whiz kiz whose masters thesis was immediately published upon his graduation and revered as a nifty slice of genius, is, by all accounts, a damn good writer. Kavalier & Clay is no exception.
Widely considered Chabon’s masterpiece, the novel follows the lives to two fictitious characters, Sammy Klayman, a Jewish Brooklynite with big dreams and bigger stories, and Joseph Kavalier, Sammy’s cousin, a Czech-born artist who “immigrates” (you will see just what I mean) to the U.S. in search of modest success and the money necessary to help his family escape from Nazi-occupied Prague, as they both attempt to realize a dream in a very real time. Including encounters with notable celebrities like Orson Wells, Salvador Dali, Stan Lee and Max Baer, the novel is steeped with the perils and privileges of American Pop Culture, laden with themes of bigotry, Pre and Post-War America, homosexuality, the American Dream, and packed so full of substance you can almost feel all 700+ pages struggling to rip themselves from their binding.
This is, indisputably, a book for the ages and destined to be viewed as one of the greatest novels of the 21st century. It may be long, but it sucks you in, destroys your sense of time, and ushers you along on an incredible journey through a remarkable era, one of the Second World War and the Golden Age of comic books. Each read is consistently satisfying and joyful, rife with Chabon’s exceptional wit, dazzling turns of phrase and seemingly limitless vocabulary.
I implore you to set aside some time, get comfortable, lay down with this and really, really book yourself. While, to many including myself, this book will be seen, and hefted, as quite an undertaking, getting to know these magnificent characters, the world in which they live, and accompanying them on their amazing adventures (pun intended) is, in a massive understatement, time well booked.
