{"id":7135,"date":"2025-12-26T10:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T15:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.laserfarm.com\/?p=7135"},"modified":"2025-12-26T10:38:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T15:38:10","slug":"book-review-the-amazing-adventures-of-kavalier-and-clay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.laserfarm.com\/?p=7135","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay<\/em><\/strong> by Michael Chabon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweeping is a weird word to describe a novel. It sounds like it should be a negative thing. \u201cThis book is really sweeping\u2026if you know what I mean. As in, it\u2019s sweeping up the garbage! Ha!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it\u2019s just me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, this book is sweeping. In a good way! It\u2019s a sweeping American epic about the birth of comic books and the struggles of two young artists in the mid-1900s New York. Joe Kavalier, a Jewish immigrant who escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia (using magic tricks!), and his cousin Sammy Clay dream up a comic book character called The Escapist and see their creation take off.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though this is fiction, everything feels real. Michael Chabon clearly did his homework to add a lot of cool, fascinating details about this early era of comic book publishing. But there\u2019s a lot more to the story than just these two kids making comics. Their lives take turns, they fall in love, they deal with the harsh realities of mid-century life. But all those traditional Great American Novel ingredients are mixed in with details about publishing, storytelling and myth creation. The result is a great book that works on a meta-level\u2026if you stop to think about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t often re-read books, but lately I\u2019ve been feeling like taking this off the shelf and giving it another read. It might hit different now that we’re living in the post-Avengers: Endgame<\/em> world. (I know there have been more comic book movies since Endgame<\/em>, but most of those have been sweeping\u2026in the bad way.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019re in the final week of my Reading is Fundamental campaign! Click here to donate!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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