The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay: Amazon.de: Michael Chabon: Englische Bücher

Amazon.co.uk

Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses, even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages lurid with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equaliser clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains". Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicentre of comics' golden age.

Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred ageing boys dreaming as hard as they could". Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out of a world gone completely mad. --Mary Park, Amazon.com

Amazon.com

Like the comic books that animate and inspire it, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is both larger than life and of it too. Complete with golems and magic and miraculous escapes and evil nemeses and even hand-to-hand Antarctic battle, it pursues the most important questions of love and war, dreams and art, across pages brimming with longing and hope. Samuel Klayman--self-described little man, city boy, and Jew--first meets Josef Kavalier when his mother shoves him aside in his own bed, telling him to make room for their cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Prague. It's the beginning, however unlikely, of a beautiful friendship. In short order, Sam's talent for pulp plotting meets Joe's faultless, academy-trained line, and a comic-book superhero is born. A sort of lantern-jawed equalizer clad in dark blue long underwear, the Escapist "roams the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains!" Before they know it, Kavalier and Clay (as Sam Klayman has come to be known) find themselves at the epicenter of comics' golden age.

But Joe Kavalier is driven by motives far more complex than your average hack. In fact, his first act as a comic-book artist is to deal Hitler a very literal blow. (The cover of the first issue shows the Escapist delivering "an immortal haymaker" onto the Führer's realistically bloody jaw.) In subsequent years, the Escapist and his superhero allies take on the evil Iron Chain and their leader Attila Haxoff--their battles drawn with an intensity that grows more disturbing as Joe's efforts to rescue his family fail. He's fighting their war with brush and ink, Joe thinks, and the idea sustains him long enough to meet the beautiful Rosa Saks, a surrealist artist and surprisingly retrograde muse. But when even that fiction fails him, Joe performs an escape of his own, leaving Rosa and Sammy to pick up the pieces in some increasingly wrong-headed ways.

More amazing adventures follow--but reader, why spoil the fun? Suffice to say, Michael Chabon writes novels like the Escapist busts locks. Previous books such as The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys have prose of equal shimmer and wit, and yet here he seems to have finally found a canvas big enough for his gifts. The whole enterprise seems animated by love: for his alternately deluded, damaged, and painfully sincere characters; for the quirks and curious innocence of tough-talking wartime New York; and, above all, for comics themselves, "the inspirations and lucubrations of five hundred aging boys dreaming as hard as they could." Far from negating such pleasures, the Holocaust's presence in the novel only makes them more pressing. Art, if not capable of actually fighting evil, can at least offer a gesture of defiance and hope--a way out, in other words, of a world gone completely mad. Comic-book critics, Joe notices, dwell on "the pernicious effect, on young minds, of satisfying the desire to escape. As if there could be any more noble or necessary service in life." Indeed. --Mary Park -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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Go get it! 13. September 2002

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Taschenbuch

Man liest an diesem Platz immer wieder: "Das BESTE Buch, das ich jemals gelesen habe!" Ich wundere mich immer über diese Äusserung, denn ich kann die meisten Romane überhaupt nicht miteinander vergleichen. Alles was ich weiss ist, ob mir ein Roman gefällt oder eben nicht. Und Michael Chabons Roman gefällt außerordentlich gut. Der Autor versteht es wirklich, diese Geschichte um Sam Clay und vor allem Joe Kavalier spannend, mitreißend und bewegend zu erzählen, dass man bald das Gefühl hat, die beiden gut zu kennen. Man folgt ihnen bereitwillig durch die skurrilsten Begebenheiten und Chabon gelingt es immer, diese glaubwürdig zu schildern.
Aus meiner Sicht gibt es nur einen (kleinen) Kritikpunkt: ein Thema des Romans handelt vom neuen Boom der Comicstrips in den 1940ern in New York. Das an sich ist noch interessant, aber Chabon beschreibt dann manche Handlungen und Bilder dieser ersten Comics und das fand ich doch eher langweilig.
Ansonsten kann ich "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" von ganzem Herzen empfehlen und hoffe, dass Chabon noch viele solch hervorragende Werke schreiben wird.

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Not just the title is AMAZING... 26. September 2001

Von "expressyourself"

This is a warning: This book is very hard to put aside. You will have sleepless nights either reading through or wandering what will happen next to Joe and Sam. The Amazing adventures of Cavalier and Clay is a great portrait of a young friendship, the pre-war New York, the comic book business, the nazi terror in prague, escapists and magic, homosexuality and love. This sounds a lot, but it's all woven into a great captivating loveable story: In 1939 Sam's cousin Joe arrives in NYC after his escape from german occupied Prague. they don't hae much in common besides their love for comic books. Together they invent the Escapist and become the new stars in the NYC comic industry. But Joe's only concern is to manage to get his family to come to America as well and flee from the nazis. A lot happens a long the way. And it's all way too surprising to give it away here and now. To everybody who hasn't read it yet, please do so. You won't regret it. It's one of the - if not the - best book I have ever read.

Golem of the comic books 19. Oktober 2008

Von Ana Lisa

Chabon's truly great, excitingly imaginative novel takes place in the Golden Age of American comic books, in the era of the emerging pop-culture and all sorts of superheroes.

The story begins one cold night in Brooklyn when Sammy Clayman shares a cigarette with his cousin who''d just escaped from the Nazi-occupied Prague. Joseph Kavalier is a gifted painter and failed magician ' an escapist, who's tormented by the thoughts of the nebulous destiny of his family who stayed in Czechoslovakia.
That night Sammy explains to Joe what a comic book is and how the whole business works. Together they come up with the idea, shape and form of their own Superman ' the Escapist. The Escapist's character falls to the category of 'the Houdini''s but mixed with Robin Hood''s and a little bit of Albert Schweitzer''s' and his tasks might be described as roaming the globe, performing amazing feats and coming to the aid of those who languish in tyranny's chains.

Realism of New York in the late 1930s, surrealist's parties, emergence of the new styles, pop-culture and movies overlap with the hyperbolic comic-book-ese, the feverous bursts of creativity and insight of the bunch of 'ink-smirched young men, drinking, smoking, lying around with their naked big toes protruding from the tips of their socks.'

Apart from the Joe's love affair with young surrealist Rosa Luxemburg Saks that is interspersed with Sammy's covert romance with a hunky actor playing the role of the Escapist in the radio adaptation of the comics, the novel deals with the business of the mass culture as well as with its aesthetics. The whole novel is constructed as a fake non-fiction dedicated to the real story of the creators of the superhero, complemented by footnotes and excerpts from other relevant sources concerning the subject. Chabon lets his reader in the long forgotten style of Harry Houdini enjoy the illusion.

The whole story concerns escaping from all the types of chains and ingeniously constructed locks generally known as war, love, dreams and fallacies. Joe tries to escape his pain, memories, remorse and the feelings of 'survivor's guilt'. Sammy locks himself in the everyday lies and deep self-denial, depriving himself of love and success and of living his dream.
And finally, another type of escapism is at stake when the government yields to the pressure of the anti-comics, anti-superhero-and-their-little-adjutants lobby and arranges a set of trials with authors and publishers of comics condemning them for deranging the 'innocent minds' of the young children.

Chabon's original almost lyrical style and the ability to avoid the sentimentality and all sorts of threadbare clichés earned him a Pulitzer in 2001 and a contract for a movie to be released in 2009.

Well, just amazing!