Welcome to the discussion of Michael Chabon's 2001 Fiction Pulitzer Prize Winner: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. The discussion itself will commence on August 1st. But take advantage of the time until then to explore some of the links at the top of the page - there are interviews with the author and reviews of the book. There's even a link to the author's own web-page. Enjoy.

If you pick-up the book (the hardbound from your bookstore - local or online - from the library - or the paperback that is supposed to be released in a week or two) - I know you'll enjoy the book. It contains some serious themes wrapped around a good story. In addition, there is something just plain fun about reading this one. It's a natural web-discussion book. It's chock-full of historical and pop references and you'll learn a lot - and remember a lot. Really, pure fun. I had a ball. So much fun in fact, that I decided to annotate the book. Click on the Roman Numerals for each Part at the top of the page and you'll be taken to pages of links for further browsing and reading - and viewing - and listening. Yes, there are even a number of songs available to listen to as you explore.

All of this is unnecessary, of course. The book stands on its own, but I think, if you're inclined, you'll have fun being taken back to the era of the novel through the sights and sounds therein. If you'll be joining us on August 1st for the discussion, why not take a minute to let us know here. If you're not ready for that, you can click on SarahT, or my name at the top and drop an e-mail. Let us know your preferences, if any for the discussion. As always, everyone is welcome - there is no club here - just friends gathering around to talk about their reading experience. Hope to see you later.

CharlieW

Just released in the U.K. in paperback form, The Guardian has selected Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay as its Paperback of the week. The reviewer says the book is "wide-ranging, inventive and entirely compelling, Kavalier and Clay deserves a place alongside the best of recent American fiction." No arguments here. We start the discussion on August 1st.

CharlieW

This looks to be a fascinating book, and I really look forward to the discussion. Is there anyone out there thinking of joining Charlie and me?

Hi, guys. I just ordered the book, used, from Amazon. If it gets here quickly, I can be through reading on the first. If not, I'll be here on the first, almost ready. Great promos out there, Charlie!

I'm certainly glad you'll be joining in , betty. With hopes that those who buy paperbacks (release date 7/25) will be joining us also, we'll at a minimum, start out slowly to let everyone catch up.
CharlieW

I'll be around although I had to give my book back to the library. What a beautiful job of preparation was done here! I am most impressed. You have set the stage nicely!

Linda

Thanks, Linda. Please do join in. We'd like to hear from you.


CharlieW

Before we kick off our discussion tomorrow, I've posted a suggested Discussion Schedule through Saturday: Part I. A note about "Discussion Schedules", at least as far as I use them:

• They're suggested only
• They're Discussion, and decidedly not reading schedules

We'd like to focus on the themes and issues that may be raised in each part as we talk about them. But other facets of those same themes and issues may be prominenet in other parts of the book. Please feel free to refer to those connections at any time.

---

To everyone who will join us here actively: Welcome! To those of you who may be reluctant to join in as an active poster, don't hesitate and don't be shy! We'd like to hear from everyone who has opinions on the subject of our discussions. About the only rules we have are the obvious ones: Let's all respect the opinions of others and have fun.


CharlieW

Part I is nothing if not the story of Josef Kavalier's training as an Escape Artist, the planning for and execution of his first great escape. But what about Sammy Clay and his "dreams of Harry Houdini"? Over and over the novel comes back to the image of Houdini. To Sammy, Houdini meant more than just merely escape. He meant Metamorphosis ("Exchange places in 3 seconds"). Transformation. Not only escape from, but transformation to. Beyond escape.

We see right off what Josef is escaping from. But the extent of 17-year old Sammy's bondage isn't immediately clear. Later it will be more so, but what do we see in the beginning? The Houdini poster proclaims that "Nothing on earth can hold Houdini a prisoner." What imprisons Sammy? Do we all dream in one way or another of these escapes - nay, these transformations in our lives at one time or another? Do you get the sense that Josef will be a part of Sammy's escape and transformation - and vice versa? Sammy, it seems, finally has a "confederate." A side-kick. Just like all of the super-hero teams. Or is it Sammy that's the side-kick? The first night of Josef's appearance at Sammy's house, he (Sammy) falls asleep with "the usual caterpillar schemes" in his head. What a wonderful descriptive phrase. And what a nice transition from the first to the second chapter, as it's

"a caterpillar scheme - a dream of fabulous escape - that had ultimately carried Josef Kavalier across Asia and the Pacific to his cousin's narrow bed on Ocean Avenue."

Josef's escape is a harrowing adventure. What a journey: from Prague, by way of Siberia to Tokyo and San Francisco. Made possible in part by both his old mentor Bernard Kornblum and the rediscovered Golem of Prague. What do you make of this Golem? As much as I read about it, I'm not quite sure my mind can grasp it. A failure of imagination, I suppose. What about you? How do you react to the figure of the Golem? This is 1580 - is this mythology or "fact"? Fascinating stuff that I had never heard of before.


CharlieW

Oh good, as I'm only 100 pages into the book, this will allow me to reflect on the pages I have read.

What a book, you need to savor every line, every nuance, and I protest that photo of the author, there's no way such a young man could have this much wisdom, I think maybe the photo is a front for a 90 year old Sage, I love the book.

Who is the sidekick? I think Sammy is. I found Part I to be about Josef, and quite frankly, the figure of Joseph's little brother Thomas is so poignantly written it could be a book in its own right. I can't get past Thomas, and I'm afraid to keep reading to find out what happens to him. What a perfectly presented tale of brothers, it makes my heart ache (now I know why people, after reading an entire book like Oliver Twist, can only say "it made me cry.") For some reason the presentation of the character Thomas wrenches my heart.

Why "caterpillar," tho? What does that word imply? What fun to see the comics of the late 30s and early 40s brought to life again and I note in the afterword the author actually interviewed Stan Lee!? I did not realize he was still alive.

Does anybody but me remember the page after page in the comics of the later 40's and 50's featuring the "cars of the future?" They used to have contests for budding artists to think up what they might look like? I'd like to see some of them now, as I recall they were oval and looked very like some of the prototypes today.

So are we saying that comics satirize or perhaps skewer life itself? I well remember when comics were a dirty word, all I was allowed to read were the early Disney Carl Barks things, in the late 40's, that was felt more wholesome, but there was always somebody with a stack in their car or under their bed, and the worst were the horror comics.

Remember all the glossy musicals and Bugsy Berkeley movies (was it? I'm not old enough to remember the Depression but I have seen some of the extravaganzas) which offset with their glitter the reality of hard times?

Well ESCAPE is the name of the game in Part I, lots of escape, and I love your point about Sammy, Charlie, that we will see later on he's escaping, too.

The Josef scenes were so heart stopping and so real, somehow, even in a casket. I remember in the late 50's do you remember the Hungarian revolution? We had an influx in our own neighborhood of Hungarian refugees, some of them, like Josef, young and having had amazing adventures: one had seized the engine of a train and driven an entire trainload of people to safety, I often wonder where he is today.

The growing menace and horror, the blue stars in the window, just....I don't know, it's no wonder the thing won the Pulitzer Prize, I agree with Michael Dirda on the cover, it deserves it, what a growing sense of fear the reader feels and this reader feels it for Thomas.

Great book.

(I did not realize that Superman could not initially fly?)

The Golem of Prague, again, I did not realize it was an actual physical presence stored in a coffin? And I thought, I understood that it ran amok when loosened, and actually turned on its makers? I thought that was....we need to know more about the Golem....there's so much in this Part I you could discuss IT for a year, escape, the layer upon layer of meaning in each incident, it's very powerful. I'm glad we have Charlie and Sarah here to lead it.

Sorry this is so long,

ginny

Ginny talks about Josef’s brother Thomas. Is this kind of big brother-little brother relationship an archetype of sorts? It does seem to me to be a recurring theme in much of literature, the relationship of two brothers. Did you find that Chabon added something new here? Or redrew a familiar set of characters again – breathed real life into fictional characters we have read about before – or even known in real life? The near drowning of the two brothers was well within the context of the story, didn’t you think? Were you as affected by this portraiture as Ginny? There is something poignant (as Ginny says) about an event happening to a character that changes him forever. Thomas was never the same after his dip in the Moldau. Isn’t it odd that we can be so touched by this kind of life changing event happening to a fictional character? Aren’t fictional characters, after all, supposed to change? That’s good writing, I suppose. I thought the image of Thomas asleep in the ratty sweater that Josef described – that Josef knew had specific meaning about Thomas’ state of mind – was particularly impressive writing.

---

As Ginny hints, "caterpillar," is particularly symbolic of metamorphosis, of transformation. And Houdini of escape. The two concepts are so intertwined in this novel as to make them difficult to untangle. Perhaps they should not be.

---

Ginny wonders if one of the purposes of comics it to “satirize or perhaps skewer life itself.” I think that perhaps they are more so today than in the 30’s and 40’s of the early part of the novel. They also served as “escape” – as ‘fantastic’ escape from the grim realities of war. Served the same function as the depression era musicals that Ginny talked about.

---

Ginny also mentions an image from the Hungarian Revolution. More recently, I’m sure you all may recall the image of the lone protestor in Tiananmen Square in front of the tank.

---

The Golem of Prague- Interesting as a plot aid. An aid in Josef’s escape. And Ginny is correct in remembering that the Golem eventually “ran amok when loosened, and actually turned on its makers.” The turning on it’s makers aspect, of course can be related to other fictional man-made creations, e.g. Frankenstein? So this is a common theme of what happens when Man acts as God. Of course, the Golem makers were acting only under the most holy imperatives. But besides being the means of escape for Josef, are their other ways in which the legend of the Golem parallels action in the novel? Can we make other connections? I’d love to hear your ideas on this.

CharlieW

Hi Everyone,

Wow, this book is exciting and different and reading the posts made me really want to read the book. I don't have my book yet, but I will by this weekend. Until then, I will keep up with the posts and read the links. That will keep me busy for awhile. I started reading the excerpt and could not stop!

TBA(HATS)

TBA!! Hurry hurry, I don't think you'll regret reading this one, it's super. It's not a "quick read," tho, you have to keep stopping and thinking a bit as it keeps hitting long dead bells, at least mine. haahahah

Here's the story of the Golem of Prague by a Rabbi, hopefully it's correct? It's taken from this site The Golem of Prague This shows also the supposed place the Golem rested in Prague.

Rabbi Loeb (Maharal) and the Golem of Prague. by Ilil Arbel, Ph.D



Of all the Golem legends, none is as famous as the story cycle of the Golem of Prague. There had been books, plays, and even films depicting it, and often they included the creator of the Golem of Prague, Rabbi Loeb.

Prague was home to many Jewish scholars and mystics; Rabbi Loeb was probably the most famous. He lived a long life, 1513-1609, and defended his people valiantly against their enemies. His followers loved him so much they called him “The Exalted One.”

Even to a holy man, or a great mystic, creating life is forbidden. It can only be justified if many lives would be saved by doing so, and not always even then. But Rabbi Loeb was instructed to try the horrifying task. He created his Golem with divine help, using Kabbalistic formulas communicated to him in dreams. Acquiring this God-given knowledge was neither simple nor easy. The formulas were given, but deciphering them had to be done by the person himself. Worse, he had to use the Shem Hameforash -- the true name of God, which was known only to a few holy men in each generation, and was very dangerous to pronounce. The power it unleashed could turn against the man who uttered it.

This myth is unusual in that it is supposed to have happened in a specific year -- 1580. There was a new danger brewing in Prague; a notorious priest, Taddeush, planned to accuse the Jews of a new “ritual murder.” Rabbi Loeb heard about it, and to avert the horrible danger, directed a dream question to heaven to help him save his people. He received his answer in an order that is alphabetical in Hebrew:

Ata Bra Golem Devuk Hakhomer VeTigzar Zedim Chevel Torfe Yisroel

The simple meaning was: Make a Golem of clay and you will destroy the entire Jew-baiting company. But this was only part of the message. The inner meaning had to be understood to be effective. Rabbi Loeb extracted the real message by using Zirufim, special Kabbalistic formulas. And when he was done, he knew he could accomplish the creation of a the Golem.

He called two people to assist him. His son-in-law, a Kohen (a Jew descended from the ancient order of priests) and his pupil, a Levite (a Jew descended from the servants of the Temple). He explained that they needed four elements -- fire, water, air and earth. The two assistants represented the fire and water, Rabbi Loeb, air, and the Golem, earth. He explained how they had to purify themselves, because unless they were completely ready, the Shem Hameforash would destroy them.

After a day of purification, they read various chapters from a particularly holy book, Sefer Yezira (The Book of Creation) and then went to the River Moldau. By torchlight, they sculpted a giant body out of river clay. The Golem lay before them, facing the heaven. They placed themselves at his feet, looking at the quiet face.

The Kohen walked seven times around the body, from right to left, reciting special Zirufim. The clay turned bright red, like fire. Then the Levite walked another seven times around the body, from left to right, reciting some more Zirufim. The fire-like redness disappeared, and water flowed through the body. He grew hair and nails. Then Rabbi Loeb walked once around the body, and placed a piece of parchment in his mouth, on which was written Shem Hameforash. He bowed to the East, West, South and North, and all three of them recited together: “And He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.” The Golem opened his eyes and looked at his creator. They dressed him and took him to the synagogue, where he could get ready to start his mission.

Eventually, when the Golem was no longer necessary (and some claim he went mad and became a danger to everyone) Rabbi Loeb decided to return him to the void from which he came. He did that by recalling the Shem Hameforash, and with it the life principle, and thus restored the Golem into lifeless clay. The clay figure had to be hidden in the attic of the synagogue, and no one was permitted to enter it again until many years later. Some writers during the nineteenth century claimed that the outlines of a giant body could still be seen there.

I'm not sure here what that "recalling" of the Shem Hameforash is, or why the Golem's forehead is smooth? Maybe that's the same thing.

I do know the Golem is a figure in many many pieces of literature, the first time I ever read anything more than a reference about him was in some of the short stories of Isaac Beshevis Singer, whom I love.

---

Wonderful questions, Charlie, back tomorrow,

ginny

Hello, "Hats" and welcome to the discussion. We're taking it a bit slow at first, so jump right in when you are able to catch up this weekend.

Thanks, for the link, Ginny. Everyone should remember to check the header also for extensive links for each part of the book, if you are interestesd in further reading. Just click on the Part "I" for a number of links for Part I of the book, for example - and so on for each succeeding part. There is a Legend of the Golem link there also (the same one - from the Encyclopedia Mythica - is part of Ginny's link). Ginny's fills in nicely with a few pictures, and especially valuable was the section on LITERARY ASPECTS OF THE LEGEND OF THE GOLEM.


CharlieW

Unfortunately, the release of the paperback version of our discussion novel was pushed back by 10 days - to August 5th. Some publishers just don't "get it" yet. Nice job, St. Martin's!!
CharlieW

One of the pleasures of reading a book by a writer of such talent as Michael Chabon, are the sentences that mean two and three, and then four things. Meaning upon meaning each time you read them. When Josef came to Kornblum to ask his old master to help him with his escape, Kornblum watches Josef helplessly sift through the remnants of his failed plan. Suddenly "Kornblum's keen ears detected the sound, unmistakable to him, of the tumblers of a great iron lock clicking into place." The great lock betokens hopelessness, the sound of escape routes being closed. Eichmann is mentioned immediately after this. Later we'll come to know that BK is the great lock picker, has taught Josef much about picks and tumblers. A plan has just clicked in BK's head; the tumblers have fallen into place. As the tumblers fall into place, the shackles fall open. These types of metaphors work on their own, but are much more meaningful as they are integrated precisely into the characterizations of the novel.

I mentioned earlier the idea of "caterpillar schemes" drifting from the close of Chapter 1 to the opening of Chapter 2. Sammy drifts asleep in Chapter 1 as Chabon begins the dream come reality in Chapter 2. We have the similar device used at the end of Chapter 2. BK outlines his plan for Josef's escape to as far as Lithuania. From there he's on his own. Josef accepts the plan resignedly, and quotes something the master had taught him long ago: "Forget about what you are escaping from…Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to." Chapter 3 consists of the training and grooming of Josef by Kornblum. Josef had decided at fourteen to "consecrate himself to a life of timely escape." Part of the training had BK stuffing Josef into a "plain pine box" for long periods of time. All of this is a virtual foretelling of Josef's future, of course. It's almost as if BK knew the tools that Josef would one day need to survive. In the end, however, Josef hadn't the patience to follow BK's regimen without pushing it too far too fast. After the Moldau incident, the two parted ways, with BK's final advice being: "Never worry about what you are escaping from…Reserve your anxieties for what you are escaping to." Threads picked up and completed. Just a wonderful way of storytelling.

By the way, BK concludes at the same time that Josef just doesn't have the right make up to be a true escape artist. An artist in the sense that BK means it is one who pits himself against the "laws of physics" - against what nature tells us we are not allowed, are not capable of doing as mere mortals. Josef on the other hand is one of those "unfortunate boys" who are drawn to the art of escape for

"dangerously metaphorical reasons. Such men feel imprisoned by invisible chains - walled in, sewn up in layers of batting. For them, the final feat of autoliberation was all too foreseeable."

Pardon my hyperbole - but a magnificent bit of writing. The reasons which are "dangerously metaphorical" for this person Josef Kavalier to Bernhard Kornblum are, for the reader, metaphorically elucidating about the character Josef Kavalier. A double barreled shot-gun that hits its mark twice! Again, the tight integration in the story of characterization and thematic devices is a wonder.

Now. As for the last part of this little excerpt, what is Chabon telling us? The "final feat of autoliberation" (escape) is "all too foreseeable." Is there an inkling of Josef's self-destruction here? More virtual foretelling? What else are we being told here?

These things give the novel such a tight, integrated feel. A look and feel of polished craft. A pleasure to read.


CharlieW

Ah, the gifts of a good writer. Joseph's restrained goodbye scene with his family, and within a few hours, his sobbing guilt behind a train car, was wrenching. That plus the scene with Thomas in the hallway made me think of something completely new about events leading to and including WWII. There were thousands upon thousands of goodbye scenes, six million divided by average family size...but just for the Jews in Germany and surrounding countries. Add to that the goodbye scenes from all of the other countries who were in WWII. Millions of families saying goodbye. All the things left unsaid, anguished over later. The scene with Thomas was so well done, so sad....I've lived that scene in feelings, as I suspect many have.

Would you say that the scene with Thomas in the hallway was easy to write because of its universal appeal, or difficult? In a way, that scene has to carry the book. How much we care for Joseph depends, in part, on that scene.

Does anyone know if Comic books (funny books) were equally or less scrutinized than "serious" reading material? Were the authors able to get away with questionable expressions simply because they were for fun? Same category as toys? Did comic books thrive at the same time that schools were banning questionable books?

Will those that know point out, as we go along, those things in the book that are historically true? Did 2 Jewish boys propose Superman?

betty

Ok, there IS a pinch of Neil Simon here. I wrote elsewhere that the first few pages made me think of Simon, but that it wasn't so, that this author has his own voice, which is true.

However, the humorous moments, and there are plenty (The Women's Daily Wearing for Women's Wear Daily and the first night of smoking in the dark when Joseph asks, "The lamp?" and Sammy replies, "The mother.").....these moments of wit (innocence?) and maybe Jewish rhythm of talk provide humor. Perhaps not Neil Simon, but his familiar subject.

---------------------------------------

Caskets are sent "home" during wars. In one of the many upside-down images, Joseph is leaving home in a casket.

The repeated mention of undersized and oversized people (giants), during a time when medical science had not yet discovered how to treat thyroid and other hormonal imbalances.....this made me think of the out of control imbalances (illness) shaping up in Germany.

betty

Betty- I love your point of view, here. You’ve attached so much importance and meaning into that one scene – put quite a burden onto it. But it passed muster! Honestly, I didn’t think it a particularly “difficult” scene to write, but it may very well have been, given your perspective. Questions like these sometimes get to the core of “talent”, I suppose. What comes “natural” to a writer and what is labored over.

You also speak of the “goodbye scenes.” Remember when Josef was walking thru the streets of Prague in disguise with BK? Part of his fear was the possibility of seeing his family again, at having become, of necessity, invisible to them. Having said his goodbyes already, the possibility of having to relive it again would be daunting.

---

Betty also asks about some of the historical accuracies in the novel. And specifically about the creators of Superman for example. There must have been a ton of research for this book. The creators of superman (those are their real names) are as described. You can read more about them and many of the other people referenced in the book by clicking on the links for each PART of the book. See the header.

The immigrant sub-culture, and especially the Jewish sub-culture that made up a great deal of the graphic art underground is portrayed by Chabon quite well, I thought. And yes, I too laughed at the The Women's Daily Wearing comment by Josef. And as Betty says, there are many other moments of wry humor here to be savored. They can slip by fairly quickly if you’re not attuned to them. Be on the lookout!

Betty – Many thanks for your insight regarding the casket – the upside-down image, as you call it. Of course! And I had missed that one. One of the pleasures of sharing our reading here. Enhanced reading and understanding – and appreciation.

Betty:

“repeated mention of undersized and oversized people (giants), during a time when medical science had not yet discovered how to treat thyroid and other hormonal imbalances.....this made me think of the out of control imbalances (illness) shaping up in Germany. “

Also, this further blurs the line between “real” people and the oversized super-heroes that provided the vicarious solutions to War and Injustice. There’s all kind of this cross-over throughout the book.

Charlie

In some Yiddish literature, a golem means a clumsy person or a blockhead...it can also mean an automaton.

For a more recent novel where a golem plays an important role,you might enjoy reading Snow in August by Pete Hamill.

Well, I see you are off to a good start. Very impressive analyses. Chabon speaks of the Microbe Hunters. Does anyone remember that book?

Remember calling comics "funny books"? I loved 'em! And Superman was my hero. Genuine Escapism right there. He was the one who could conquer all. The world was ok because there was a Superman.

A few choices of wording caught my eye:

"Cagneyesque callousness" - isn't that nifty?

"...becomes an escape artist for dangerously metaphysical reasons."

"Never worry about what you are escaping from. Reserve your anxieties for what you are escaping to."

"There was a residue of summer in the watery blue sky, in the floral smell issueing from the bare throats of passing women."

Looks like he will keep us literate - what a gift of expression and writing he has.

And yes, he is so young...too young to be so good! LOL

Linda

Ed! A golem in Pete Hamill? And in my less than extensive reading on the subject, I had not come across the more vernacular meaning of the term you mention. Automaton, yes, but blockhead, no. That's funny.

The thing that fascinates me about Golem is this notion that the creation invariably seems at some point to rebel in some way against its maker. This common thread runs from Frankenstein and right down to popular fears of robots and artificial intelligence - Hal the Computer, etc. The notion that we play with fire as humans when we play God and that we get burned.

Aren't we the creators of our own personas, of our own lives? Aren't these sometimes not true to our selves? Do we create false fronts to fit in - to succeed? Do we inevitably rebel against these false creations? These less than real, less than authentic alter-egos of ourselves? I guess I'm just trying to find a parallel here with this idea of the Automaton as an ultimately destructive force and make some connection with the novel. Am I stretching? Perhaps.

---

Linda- No, I had not heard of the Microbe Hunters, do not remember it, but it is apparently a widely read book and has been continually in print for some time. You perhaps have read it?

Cagneyesque, yes. And George Raft and Peter Lorre are mentioned too. All wise guy operators. Knew what was up. No suckers them.

---

Now I wonder what you all think about Part I/Chapter 4? Chabon makes a point of talking about how the movements of the Jews within Prague were tracked by the Jewish Council and that there was cooperation with this census taking. Remember how Kornblum finally cracked the mystery of the whereabouts of the Golem? By having the occupants of the apartment building cooperate in placing Stars of David in their windows. This was chilling to me. Any thoughts on this? Earlier, after making a list of every occupant of the building, BK tore up the list in an almost ritualistic manner.

"Contemptible," he said, but Josef was not sure, then or afterward, whom or what he was talking about - the ruse itself, the occupiers who made it plausible, the Jews who had submitted to it without question, or himself for having perpetrated it.

What do you think? Was BK expressing contempt for the cooperation of the occupants? For the Germans? Or was he feeling unclean himself for having mimicked the Germans in this manner? I tend to think that he was expressing contempt for the occupants. But is this fair of him? Having hatched their plan for the Star of David's, Josef didn't think it would work because the occupants wouldn't comply. BK does not have this same faith as Josef and in one way hopes Josef is right, but realizes the plan will probably succeed. And it does.


Charlie

Charlie: Pete Hamill...YES..and a fine read it is.

Re:Your comments about Chap 1, part 4. There is long historical precednt,for some of these events.In the Warsaw Ghetto,during WWII,there was a Jewish Council that took the census for the Nazi's...The members of this council were severly criticized after the war,but there was some attempt to ameliorate the charges by claiming that they were able to save some people,for a while,especially new born babies.

And there is much controversy about the role of French citizens who lived under the Vichy regime and their role in doing a Jewish census and in rounding up the Jews for transport to the camps.

Is the Golem a superhero in his own right?Is the Golem a phantasamorical creation of our own mind,whom we can summon forth to fight our personal battles.. If you were a comic book reader in days gone by..and were a young pre-pubescent young boy,did you love to look at the Charles Atlas ads and yearn not to be a 97 pound weakling? Do you think now..that Chas Atlas represents a Golem?

And to continue your theme of Charles Atlas, Ed, this, in part, answers what Sammy is escaping from....his view of himself, somewhere in the 97 lb. weakling category. The first few pages of the book give much detail on Sammy's low view of himself and describes his physical presence as someone who looks as if he has just been robbed of his lunch money. I love that description.

On the Golem and its iffy status of safety, that one could turn on you with harmful intent.....yes, but that doesn't happen to Joseph. In fact, nothing that could have gone wrong with the plan went wrong. One of the wonderful reviews that Charlie listed above suggested that Joseph, then both boys together, have enormous good fortune. (I haven't read much further than middle of Part 2, so I don't know if this changes or if the critic meant only first sections of the book.) But, given all the risks taken.....Joseph escaping Prague, traveling across Russia, then Japan and the Pacific, then the U.S.; within days of Joseph's arrival, both boys create a whole comic book from scratch OVER A WEEKEND and sucessfully SELL the idea/creation.......the lives of Joseph and Sammy sound like a comic book....goodness triumphs!! The nobody from Brooklyn and the refugee from Prague make it big in New York City!! (Well, I think they make it big...not there yet, but all promo material says they do.)

The opposite is also true, that it sounds like real life for these two young men, not larger than life fantasy, but that's because we already care what happens to them.

All the definitions above say that a successful Golem serves its master, brings good fortune by serving. So, is Sammy a Golem for Joseph?

betty

So glad to read everybody's comments, they are already adding so much to my appreciation of this book and I had a pretty high appreciation to start with. hahahaha

You're so right, Charlie, the annotated links are just wonderful and I've spent a long time wandering among them today (where I found out I have scoliosis, what a Stalin type engine looks like and about the Trans Siberian Railroad)--just neato to have here- did you do them, Charlie? I'm impressed by the "Back to Discussions" link.

You've all said so much I just have to stab wildly, I guess, Charlie mentioned Part IV and asked what we might have thought BK thought was "contemptible?"

What a good question. When I read that passage the first time, I half thought that BK referred to himself but then I wavered back and forth as to whether it might be the residents who did what they were asked without question. We know that BK is a man of precision and control, in fact, most of the pages concerning him stress precision and careful intricate manipulation of tiny objects carefully controlled, in fact, it was fascinating. I think now he meant the people who complied and who put the stars in the window, but I wonder if this is not some kind of historical hindsight, and IF he would really have felt that way at the time?

Why would he feel that way? HE was doing it, HIS was the guilt, not the people who had faith enough to comply? Whose is the greater sin here?

So much of the theme of the book seems to me to be more about faith than escape, in many parts. I think that's what is so poignant about the younger brother, his faith, tho doubting (doubting Thomas) and where it gets him.

Betty asked earlier about how hard it was to write the part in the hall and I had gotten up wondering at how hard it is to portray the younger brother's fear of and simultaneous faith in his older brother, I don't think it's an easy thing to do: I certainly could not have done it, ever. I reread the river scene and found to my shock I had forgotten most of the startling things that happened and focused instead on the emotions I had gotten from it, or else the text is metamorphosing hahahaha.

Thanks for the Caterpillar, explanation, Chas, I had missed that reference entirely, being stuck on the image of crawling slowly for some reason.

Who are the caterpillars in this book, anyway?

---

Here are a few things I did not grasp immediately:

"for the attic under the stair-steped gables of the old Gothic synagogue was a cenotaph." Page 39.

I know what a cenotaph is, what does this sentence mean??

Since a young boy could hopefully hope to turn INTO a Charles Atlas, it's hard to see, for me, how the Golem and Charles Atlas, a real person, compute, could those of you who have made this comparison explain? I remember those ads perfectly, the couple on the beach, the sand kicked into the skinny boy's face, just lift a few muscles and be a Charles Atlas (but not a Golem, surely?)

Oh I remember the photographs which we used to pour over, the ones of acromelagy, for instance, I used to be able to recite the symptoms, wonder why they were so common and why you don't see them today: thyroid treatments?

---

This just blew me away:

With patience and calm, persistence and stoicism, good handwriting and careful labelling, they would meet persecution, indiginty , and hardship head-on.

That is an exquisite sentence, supposedly about labels, but more about the application of every detail to life, itself.

This is on page 58, and immediately after reading the label for Hora's clothes, Josef has a premonition that

it was not going to matter one iota how his father and the others behaved. Orderly or chaotic, well inventotired and civil or jumbled and squabbling the Jews of Prague were dust on the boots of the Germans, to be whisked off with an indiscriminate broom. Stoicism and an eye for detail would avail them nothing.

This paragraph raises for me the same sort of thoughts that Charlie raised in his post about if we create false fronts and perhaps then need to escape from them?

The paragraph seems to say that no matter what defense mechanisms we employ, they won't be a "Golem" for us against the vicissitudes of the world, no charm, no front, no amount of wealth, no reputation, no false face or carefully ordered life can protect us ultimately and that's a hard lesson for a child (or a reader) in the first part of a book, isn't it?

(And, you have to ask, if none of those work, what will?)

ginny

Ed asks if the Golem is a superhero in his own right, and of course, if you have finished the book you know that Joe hopes to resurrect the fortunes of Empire Comics (and Sam Clay) with a new super hero - yes, the Golem. Ed also mentions those Charles Atlas back page ads in the comics (Charles Atlas as personal Golem - great!). And betty ties this Charles Atlas analogy in to Sammy. Even suggests that Sammy is a Golem to Joe. Right on. You guys are turning this every which way. Thank you! By the way, you can view one of these old Charles Atlas ads by going to PT IV of the annotations - or directly here. And thanks for the mention of the links, Ginny. Yes, they are mine, but the Back to Discussion credit goes to Pat Westerdale (Thanks, Pat)

---

What was contemptible? Possibly Ginny, BK was referring to all of the above. In a world gone mad, are we not all guilty?

Not sure I understand where you mean by faith in this context, Ginny. I see escape and transformation yes, but tell me more about this faith.

Cenotaph: As I understand it, Ginny, the Golem, was created at the Altneuschul Synagogue in Prague and rested in its attic, but was removed during a period of threatened "sanitation". Thus, the official resting place became a cenotaph - An empty tomb whose body is elsewhere.

Ginny asked: "if none of those work [our various defense mechanisms], what will?" What will indeed? Let's wait and see if Chabon posits an answer.


Charlie

Maybe trust instead of faith, Charlie, maybe trust. Escape is reactive, isn't it, I'm looking to see if there are any proactive themes in the book, but am meandering all the same. Escape is a coping mechanism in reaction to another thing.

I do like this way of discussing a book, and reading it, because the reader is always formulating ideas as he goes, discarding them like petals from a flower when they don't fit. Right now I'm hung up on the stunning comparisons of trust (formerly known as "faith," hahaha) and the loss of same between all the main characters, I realize the topic du jour is escape, but I'm looking for something more. Perhaps erroneously, it won't be the first time.

Note the instances in which trust has been lost, and their impact on the story line.

You know, I thought I knew what a cenotaph was, first encountered it years ago in EF Benson, actually, and after the movie on same, thought, vaguely, that it referred to the shape, as well, there's one very prominent one in London which in hindsight, the makers of the Mapp & Lucia series must have copied for their own, but wait wait, just LOOK at the descriptions of cenotaph in the links, do you mean to say, Charlie Wendell, that you personally supplied each of these links?

I am astounded and very impressed and (love the back to discussions, Pat W).

OK so that sentence seems to mean that...the attic was a cenotaph, a memorial to a body no longer there? How can an attic be a cenotaph? I apologize for my density here, I realize it means the Golem was spirited away, but how is it a cenotaph which is a memorial?

---

OK folks, this gentile, if the Golem reappears at the end of the book, needs some further beyond the links instruction here in the mythology of the Golem, I need to look beyond what we have discussed apparently.

IF this Golem can be brought forth to conquer the enemy why is he continually moved? Why not just awaken him? And who is to do this? And how? Carve the name of God upon his features again?

I thought the Golem of Prague was famous for runnning amok?

And yes I did see humor in the attempts to put clothes on him, was that deliberate? It was quite funny.

Why spirit this champion, this imaginary champion away when threat comes near?

???

ginny

Ginny- I think escape is followed often by transformationby metamorphosis - in the novel as in life - so there is the "proactive theme" you're looking for maybe.

I like what Ginny said about "formulating ideas as [we go], discarding them like petals from a flower when they don't fit." (Or like eating an artichoke!)That sure is the way I read, do you? If so, it would seem a natural way to discuss a book also, would it not?

---

Cenotaph: Ginny, you know a link you posted earlier actually had a picture of the "attic" where the clay body of the Golem rested at one time. See the picture on the right. I think the attic where the Golem once lay was not a cenotaph in the meaning of a monument, or memorial to a deceased, with the body being buried elsewhere. Looks like it's being used here in the more simple (etymological sense according to the OED) meaning of just 'empty sepulchre'. You may be right that the use here is not an exactly proper use of the term. The word was new to me.

Ginny asks a good question actually - and I'll paraphrase - if there is eminent danger to the Jewish population of Prague, why not resurrect the cenotaph, instead of spiriting him away? Wouldn't this period of history be a perfect time to resurrect him again?

Well, here's my stab at it, and I think it works thematically, at least. Is it possible the people have lost the ability to perform this ritual? The given knowledge no longer exists? The people have forgotten how? Lost their faith?? (Lost their faith, Ginny?) On the other hand, my modern self would just say that these are all myths and legends anyway. The point is just to protect the icons and artifacts of their religion. So logically, the secret removal to s safer place makes sense.

---

Back to Thomas for a moment. When Josef departs from him the second time, he tells his young brother that he'll be joining him in New York soon enough. He promises Thomas that he "won't rest" until he gets him to New York. This much is true: After Josef arrives in America, he does NOT rest in his efforts to get his family out of Prague. Thomas asks him to promise and then to swear: "Swear by the River Styx." (pg60) Now the River Styx I'm somewhat familiar with, but was not familiar with this particular incantation. Why do you think that Chabon has Thomas ask his brother to utter this particular oath? Josef utters the oath, which seems somehow prophetic enough, and then "kissed his brother on the lips" making the gesture all the more remarkable and chilling. Then goodbye. I'll see you 'on the other side'? The link in Part I to the River Styx (from the Encyclopedia Mythica), is interesting for the possible subtext it adds to this scene. I'm paraphrasing liberally here from that source. The river is the dividing point between the living and the dead. With Josef's kiss (and the oath) to his brother, the prophetic meaning is that Josef is leaving the dead behind - Thomas, and all his Jewish brethren left in Prague. Apparently it is one of the most powerful oaths of the Gods, to swear by the River Styx. So powerful that there are extreme consequences for not keeping your word. One is forced to drink from the River (The River of Hate), and having been forced to, one loses his voice for nine years! This can also be read as prophetic for Josef much later in the novel. I won't be too specific at this point for some of you may not have read the entire book yet. Keep this in mind though, these consequences - one can lose their voices in many ways, even for nine years….

Finally, Thomas has slipped Josef the drawing he did of an imagined fantastical Houdini trick. A token of sorts for safe passage. (A twist on the coins that were placed in the mouths of the dead to allow them safe passage to the underworld across the River Styx?) Josef finds the piece of paper as he passes through the Golden Gate (the Gates of Heaven?). The drawing mirrors the fantastic nature of Josef's own trickery (his escape in the coffin).

"It was the drawing of Harry Houdini, taking a calm cup of tea in the middle of the sky…Josef studied it, feeling as he sailed toward freedom as if he weighed nothing at all, as if every precious burden had been lifted from him."

And so ends Part I. About ready to move on to Parts II and III for next week?


CharlieW

Isn't Grant's Tomb a rather famous example of a cenotaph?

In examining and reexamining a book, it sometimes can be more realisticly received if we do not get too deeply immersed in meanings. Just last week I read a memory of Eudora Welty that made me laugh. The writer had attended a lecture, with an acquaintance, at a college where the professor was lecturing on a book of Welty's. As the lecture was coming to an end, the famous author murmured: "You know, I never thought of that!"

While it is perfectly true that it is rare for any two readers to read exactly the same book, it can also be rather over doing it to wander far away in directions which never even entered the author's mind.

"Swear by the River Styx" I had the feeling that Thomas may have felt that Josef was crossing over the River.

What happens to man after death (crossing the River) has been an evolving system of beliefs throughout human history. At first the spirit left the body, and what came to be known as our souls resided in the place for the dead. Later, the idea of an afterlife was invented, and a rewards system was added - heaven and hell.

Josef certainly had premonitions that those he was leaving behind were left to death._* Or at best left wandering in Purgatory, unable to gain passage "across." And, yes, Pat - Thomas also felt that Josef was crossing the River. Wanted to believe he had, in fact, already crossed._**

For the better part of the book, Josef is obsessed with his mission of getting the rest of his family, and especially Thomas, "across" the River.
CharlieW

<sub>*Looking at the boxes his father had packed (pg 59), Josef "felt, for an instant, that he was admiring the penmanship of someone who had died."

**Thomas said, "You aren't here anymore, remember?"</sub>

Part II begins with more transformation: a name change for both Josef Kavalier and Sammy Klayman. They team up as Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay. Sam introduces Joe to the comics and the reader to the history of the American Comic Book of 1939. I especially loved Chabon's stated "purpose" for the comics:

To express the lust for power and the gaudy sartorial taste of a race of powerless people with no leave to dress themselves. Comic books were Kid Stuff, Pure and true… [pg 77]

I wasn't a huge comic books kid, although I remember the fascination was as much with the books themselves as with all the "stuff" that was advertised in them - many of which Chabon mentions: the "midget radios, X-ray spectacles, and joy buzzers." The chattering teeth, shrunken heads (mom would never go for that purchase!!) and of course, the mini-series of Charles Atlas story/ads. >HR>

Earlier Ed mentioned Golem as superhero and vice versa. Josef explains to Sheldon Anapol that the character he had hastily prepared for his portfolio would be their answer to Superman. Admitting that he had more or less drawn a Golem, Josef says that, "To me, this Superman is…maybe…only an American Golem." [pg 86]

And Ginny had talked about trust a bit back. After Anapol has tentatively ok'd their project and challenged them to produce an issue in two days, they leave to get to work. Sammy expresses some doubt, but Joe turns to Sammy: "But I have belief in you…I trust you." As they walk through the city forming their new character, they come to the conclusion that the central 'hook' they need to come up with to distinguish themselves - to become something other than just mere imitators - is a motivation for the hero. The question of WHY as Sammy puts it. And on their walk they meet up with Julie Glovsky, who perceives the first glimpses of Sammy's nascent homosexuality. Sammy Introduces Joe as his partner.[pg97]

In the move from Pt II Chapter three-to-four, Chabon maneuvers one of his satisfying little twists. I really love how he moves from one Chapter to another. It is really so well crafted. Chapter three (Part II) introduces the WHY of the character he and Joe are working on as new PARTNERS. Chapter four tells the story of Sammy's father, which can also be read as essentially the story of the WHY of Sammy! And the Chapter ends by coming full circle back to the idea of a PARTNER as we are told of the death of Sammy's father:

Alter Klayman had been crushed, and with him Sammy's fondest hope, in the act of escaping from his life, of working with a partner.

Well, as we see, Sammy has found a new PARTNER with which to "escape" from his life. Sammy, in fact, sees Joe as not only a partner, but as a super-hero. This makes him a side-kick to a super-hero, right? As Joe shows off a bit breaking into the artist's studio,

Lit thus from behind by a brimming window, Josef Kavalier seemed to shine, to incandesce.

"Look at him," said Sammy. "Look what he can do."

CharlieW

I got interrupted earlier today in posting this so this does not refer to Charlie's last post, but, Charlie, that's just great on the River Styx, once again I got all caught up with other stuff, Charon, etc., and I think you and Pat have it, this book is so full of layers, isn't it?

In Edit: Good point on the transformation theme, Charlie, not only the names but Josef himself with the light, great point!!

Oh yes, I've seen the photos, in fact, Charlie, I have a friend who loves Prague, and last night on the phone we took forever looking at all the Prague photos in YOUR carefully and amazingly assembled annotated links, she was astounded at the depth of everything, it's a real labor of love and I was proud to see it too. For some reason the photo of Novotný's Footbridge was just beautiful, I've never been to Prague or Praha as they call it, have any of you?

AND....as if all that weren't enough, do any of you take the New Yorker? Remember how we were talking about those old cartoonists and their cars of the future? Well on page 60 in the August 6 New Yorker begins a supposed "nostalgic" revisitation of the old fantasy American dreams on wheels. The only problem I have with it is I think it's tongue in cheek because they don't look like I remember them, but it has been more than 40 years, after all. (And a bit off our Kavalier dates, they say it was in the mid 50's)....but

Never think we here in the Books are not au courant, it's astounding how we always seem to be talking here about what's new or noteworthy.

---

I notice in Part II, (which I LOVE), (is this or is this not a great read)??

Anyway I notice quite a bit about trust betrayed again (and I missed that one, Charlie, need to keep a list,) and some very realistic emotions involved too, with that, and more coffins or sarcophagi, I guess, and the golem reappears too, and I do like your explanation, Charlie, of the attic as cenotaph, and why they moved the golem: or maybe he was, like the Escapist, a creature of the imagination or...faith? Or maybe he was only a lengend to give hope in the first place.

And that Alois Berg and the legend of the Golden Key, I don't mind admitting that I keep thinking there WAS a person by that name and that I got totally hung up in the story only to find it was the creative imagination of the two boys, this is just a fun book, it really is. From the heights of creative exultation to the depths of despair, it's like a roller coaster, up...down. UP...down. I would never have read this book without your mentioning it and will not be sorry I did. I've been watching the reruns of Thirty Something on Bravo and watching Elliott and Michael "create" reminds me a bit of this tho this is done better.

What to look at first? Sammy? Sammy whose trust was betrayed by his father? ("I promise I will take you when I go") (page 108). Betrayed again by Anapol ("he had trusted Anapol, respected him...to be betrayed by him, too, came as a terrible blow....Sammy had believed. He didn't thnk it would be possible to show more initiative, or seize an opportunity more scientifically, than he had in the last three days.)" (Page 155) And Sammy is let down once again, and when the reader reads this passage he remembers all the times he, too, has trusted, and been betrayed, it's really good stuff.

"His faith in himself had been shaken. He didn't now what was right or whose welfare he ought to consider. "

Somebody besides me knows what it feels like to think you have been betrayed, I can see that, that is right on.

But what, then does Sammy do? Does he give in to the demand even in the face of higher money, that they change the cover? What are we seeing here in Sammy?

Don't you love the ending of Part II?

"Sammy, is this a trick?" he whispered. "Or are we serious?"

"You tell me," Sammy said.

OK Part II, OOPS we're to do Part III too? AGGGG I could spend a week on page 113!!!!

Do you think it's an accident that Josef is referred to as having a "cavalier frame?"

How about this gem? "We have the idea that our hearts, once broken, scar over with an indestructible tissue that prevents their ever breaking again in quite the same place..."

How about this one: "It was, in part, a longing--common enough among the inventors of heroes,--to be someone else; to be more than the result of two hundred regimens and scenarios and self-improvement campagins that always ran afoul of his perennial inablitiy to locate an actual self to be improved."

WOW!! WOW WOW, can we relate to any of this in our personal lives? How CAN all this be in one book!! It just dazzles.

ginny

PS: I have enjoyed the annotated links as well and the laptop is not playing sound so I need to go back and hear "Frenesi," but I didn't see anything on inkers and pencilers and I myself just found out that a comic strip is not done by one person but penciled by one and inked by another and colored by a third, and only found that out by inquiring into Carl Barks memorabilia. I think we're learning a great deal here in this book about the creative process and how a cartoonist works.

I'm very excited to learn that Andrea will be joining us here, she's heard so much about this book she's scrambling to catch up, this will be wonderful, and till she does, and TBA gets here and Linda and Betty and Ed, (hey there our ED!!! So glad to see you again!) Charlie, can we look at some of the points you've raised?

In a world gone mad, are we not all guilty?

Are we?? How? What constitutes guilt? What a fabulous question, I love it. ARE we all guilty?? My immediate thought is heck no. Not me. I'm only guilty for what I failed to do: sins of commission or omission, right?

Can we discuss this thought?

Part II begins with more transformation: a name change for both Josef Kavalier and Sammy Klayman.

That's not all, either. Sammy, our Sammy, how does he keep going? Betrayed by his father and then, let's face it, Sammy's the idea man, Sammy's the creator, it's Sammy who puts his backside out and tries and what happens?

They shake Josef's hand? They call in other Editors? Sammy is the creator, he's done everything he can and he's relegated to second place and we see how that hurts and what does he DO?

Well, as we see, Sammy has found a new PARTNER with which to "escape" from his life. Sammy, in fact, sees Joe as not only a partner, but as a super-hero. This makes him a side-kick to a super-hero, right? As Joe shows off a bit breaking into the artist's studio...

Look at him," said Sammy. "Look what he can do."

That's what Sammy does. Now which one IS the hero here?

So far I'm totally bowled over by Sammy.

ginny

Am reading. Will comment later. The links above are just terrific, Charlie. I, too, loved the bridge, Ginny, and reading that the towers at either end have been there much longer than the current bridge.

Hi All,

I have my book, but I am lagging behind. So, this post might not make much sense. I need to read further.

I have met Sammy and his cousin Josef, and I am very glad that Josef made it out alive. I do wonder about the Golem. I have often read that the Nazis had an interest and stole famous art pieces during the war. Now, from what I understand this Golem must be gotten out out of the country safely. I am just wondering how big is the Golem. Is it huge, small, or in between?

HATS (TBA)

This is such a poignant statement. It takes thought just to comprehend it. Kornblum tells Josef,

"Forget about what you are escaping from....Reserve your anxiety for what you are escaping to."

Kornblum seems not only wise about escapist tricks. He also seems wise in the art of living.

Hattie

I found the answer!! Yes! I am so excited! The Golem? The size?

"The casket in which the Golem of Prague had been laid was the simple pine box prescribed by jewish law, but wide as a door and long enough to hold two adolescent boys head to toe."

Ooooh, I feel better. So sorry for this many posts. Just trying to get back involved, but it is not hard with such a good plot.

I am sorry I have not been in - have lost the ability to connect to my ISP at home. Still working on the problem.

Sarah!!! We have missed you, hope you get in here soon!

Hattie, your enthusiasm is catching, and I hope those reading this might give this...you'd have to call it spectaclar book a try.

Now skip this, TBA, don't read it?

---

I've been reading more of the links in the heading, specifically the critical reviews, wondering if I'm just totally off or what?

The New York Times review makes some interesting observations on the golem, you all may want to check those reviews out:

The novel's perversely rollicking first 65 pages, set in Prague during the Nazi occupation, introduce its two interrelated themes: escape and the mystery of the Prague golem, a legendary automaton-giant created from mud by a 16th-century rabbi. For the purposes of the novel, Chabon offers the conceit that the golem actually existed and was hidden in a Prague apartment house, where it awaits the day it will deliver the Jews from their enemies.

Now I found that interesting, "for the purposes of the novel, Chabon offers the conceit...." Interesting!

The inanimate figure is given a new hiding place in Lithuania, but it is recalled repeatedly in the novel, every time one character provides another with the passage to freedom.

I had noticed that the word golem kept reappearing but had not caught the interconnectedness, did you all? And is this critic's POV valid?

Sammy Clay, the Brooklyn golem, lies inanimate until Joe arrives (indeed, Joe first meets him in the bed they're forced to share). And soon Sammy, a protean storyteller, has vivified his friend and partner Joe, who turns into a kind of superhero himself, as if conjured from his cousin's imagination: he is agile, good-looking, suave and deft at drawing, language, dancing and sleight of hand.

Now that's what Betty said earlier, or asked, do you all see Sammy as a golem for Josef, or as this critic does as well: a sleeping golem or as part of this interconnected chain of events??

I'm not sure here and not willing to miss something important, how do you all see Sammy in relation to what the critic says here??

I almost lean toward saying it's the other way around?

????

[EDIT: This posted before reading Ginny's latest]Good stuff, Ginny. Yes, Pg 113. Why not? You have quoted the very moment that The Escapist was born. And the common germination and appeal of superheroes: the desire to be someone else. Or, put another way, as Chabon does in talking about Sammy's mixed longing and desire: the desire to inhabit another body, if only for a time. The desire to be other. I personally think this one part particularly brilliant. And isn't there some common ground between superhero comics of the 40's and 50's and the self-improvement movement of the 90's? Sounds ridiculous, I know. Ok, OK. I confess to not being a big self-help improvement fan. Aren't these fads like the latest diet? Here today and gone tomorrow - on to the next latest and greatest thing? And why? The market is so huge for these things and they keep coming atcha! Wow is right, Ginny: the "perennial inability to locate an actual self to be improved." And the contrast between Joe and Sammy here!: Joe exudes competence and faith in himself. Sammy is only able to fake these things after great and long effort.

Ginny has called me on this hyperbole. (I hate it when they do that!!) "In a world gone mad, are we not all guilty?" The context (pg45) was Kornblum's "contemptible" comment. Well, what do others think? Was I blowing smoke? There seem to be times in history when it all seems psychotic. None of it makes sense. There's just too much evil in the world. Things are so off kilter. Perhaps this is just a way of making the incomprehensible comprehensible. Spreading the guilt around is just another way of coming to terms with that which is unfathomable…

Betty/Hats we'll be here a bit. Don't worry about my plodding linear progression. We can jump back to anything that strikes your fancy as you're reading.

HATS - That is a great line, isn't it? (Kornblum has a few). And the special thing about them is how they fit into the characterization and the plot (thematically) at the same time. I know what I'm trying to say here, but I know I'm not making it too coherent…This is terrific advice that a master of Escape might teach a student. (I wouldn't be surprised if something very similar can't be culled from the writing of Houdini. It's all about focus, isn't it? About concentration? So it is surely something that a Bernard Kornblum might say. But look at the possible meanings in the larger context of the themes of the novel. First of all it is essential advice for Josef in order to be steeled for the mental strain that an escape like the one he undertakes must entail. Yet he is escaping into the unknown, and the advice has a ring of prophecy to it also. I am just astounded at the number of times a seemingly simple, but obviously eloquent sentence can speak to us on many, many levels. Great writing. Heck. Hats said it better than I did, anyway: "Kornblum seems not only wise about escapist tricks. He also seems wise in the art of living." Good work on your Golem question too, Hats.

Sarah- Sorry for the terrible time you're having with your ISP. WE don't realize how much we come to rely on this "service" until it's not available to us, and we feel so cut off.


CharlieW

Ginny: Are you saying that the NYTimes guy questions the historical authenticity of the Golem and implies it's use is a fictional conceit - historically inaccurate? Frankly, this question nags at me too. Real or myth?

GINNY!! Now I must humbly admit to having never made the connection between the Golem and Sammy - CLAY-MAN! of course!! THANKS! GOLEM FOR EACH OTHER, perhaps. (That's what friends are for…….)


CharlieW

First. Whaddya call those things? Those quotes at the front of books? The technical term? There must be one. Help.

Anyway, there are two in this one (should have brought these in before). The first one is from Will Eisner (the inventor of the "comic art-shop", much like the one that Sammy put together after his pitch to his boss, Anapol). The quote:

"We have this history of impossible solutions for insoluble problems"

Interesting comment. What was he talking about? The "we"? He's probably talking about the appeal of comics. For what are our super-heroes if not those very impossible solutions for some of our insoluble problems. But he could also be talking about the very American experience. The "we" could be "us" as Americans, who also could be said to be a people that offers those impossible solutions to insoluble problems.

The second quote, we should take up in Part VI. Very interesting stuff, there. Don't let me forget.

---

By the way. I've read this book pretty closely twice now. And Ginny comes up with something that I'd verlooked - something that many of you might have found obvious. That's the point we should remember here. We all can bring something for each other to our readings together. I get something, you get something, she gets something...Don't ever think that some observation you might wish to make is not important. Very likely it is something that someone else has overlooked. Bring it on!! That's the great thing about discussing a book like this. The sum are better tghan the parts. DOn't ever be shy. We want to hear from you! (see James Montgomery Flagg, pg 150....)


CharlieW

Check out the last paragraph in Part II, Chapter6. This is just one of many that made this so fun to read for me. A simple act of placing a drawing in an envelope is fleshed out by off-hand references and just plain fun details. There are many, many of these and they bring to mind nothing if not those classic cartoon panels that are chock full of details that can be overlooked or savored.

---

More golem stuff: (Pg 119)

"Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation. Every golem in the history of the world…was summoned into existence through language, through murmuring, recital, and kabbalistic chitchat - was, literally, talked into life. Kavalier and Clay - whose golem was to be formed of black lines and the four-color dots of the lithographer - lay down…and started to talk."

True enough. From what we've read, it is understood that the golem is brought to life this way - by the incantation of certain words in a certain order. How elegant to talk of the creative process in the same way. Fascinating.

The Hebrew word for TRUTH is 'emet. This is the word that is sometimes inscribed on the forehead of the Golem. {Remember Superman: Truth, Justice, and the American Way?]. Traditionally Golem were "deconstructed" after their making. How? By erasing the first letter of 'emet to leave the word met - The Hebrew word for dead!!

And more. Remember the Sorcerer's Apprentice from the Disney Classic movie Fantasia? We've touched on the fact the Golem of Prague "ran amok." How?

Even one as great as the Maharal was an inadvertent victim when his golem was used for a mundane task. Though he had left instructions with his wife, Perele, that Yoselle the Mute was to be left alone, she took it upon herself to put him to work. She showed him how to draw water and pour it into a barrel, then left him to complete the job without further supervision. Yoselle returned time and again to the barrel, never stopping, even after the barrel began to overflow. Still he continued, until the Maharal's house was flooded

If you want to read more of this article about golem, it's from a good essay that appeared in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. I've linked to it in Part VI, but you can find it here.


CharlieW

Oh Charlie, so mudh to think about, you dazzle, as per usual, I got up thinking about the golem and need to read further, (have always been partial to writers who use the concept of "conceit,") and behold, whlie trying to choke down a piece of toast for breakfast, behold something on the television spoke to this thought of yours above: And isn't there some common ground between superhero comics of the 40's and 50's and the self-improvement movement of the 90's?

The gentleman on the television this morning looked straight at me and seriously intoned, "Are you hurt? Have you been injured in an accident? Does the insurance company refuse to pay? Is there no money coming in and (turns sidewise for full profile effect....one imagines one hears some sort of subliminal Superman theme....) you don't know what to do?

He spins back full face: "Call Harris and Graves!! (or Friddle and Waikert!) (or ...Ghostbusters!! modern day golems, all?)

"We can help!"

(I guess this would be a very poor time to introduce the notion of a Godfather type of character and his influence????) ???? Talk about a golem run amok?

Charlie, your image above reminds me of the Sorcerer's Apprentice cartoon that Disney did in Fantasia? The little broom carrying the pails of water? It's amazing to see the interconnectedness of themes in literature, I'm enjoying this a great deal.

Back later on the great points you've raised.

(By the way, Everybody, to explain the TBA, this is not an inside joke? Hats (Hattie) had written a while back that she, among other things this summer, had TBA. I, having racked my poor brain for some idea of what awful disease that might be, finally broke down and asked. It turns out it was a typo, but she liked it so well she rechristened herself TBA and I like it too, as even in my old age, that's how I think of myself, TBA, so now you know!)

So MUCH to say on this Part II,

TBA II

Charlie, fabulous fabulous article linked above in your post! Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts.

AND it mentions Fantasia and Mickey Mouse (I hate to say this but the old Disney comics took up a LOT of issues that would surprise you, get your hands on a vintage Donald Duck sometime)...

Check out these excerpts:



Many schools, such as the Hasidim, held that the Hebrew word 'emet [truth] should be inscribed upon the forehead of the golem. Among a number of methods of de-constructing a golem, a common one was the erasure of aleph, the first letter of `emet. This leaves the word met [dead] which destroys the golem.



AHA! Now we see what was on and removed from the forehead, tho our golem has nothing on his?

And check out the anxiety of a person who was not tall enough to erase it?

[E]very day he gains weight and becomes somewhat larger and stronger than all the others in the house, regardless of how little he was to begin with. But one man's golem once grew so tall, and he heedlessly let him keep on growing so long that he could no longer reach his forehead. In terror he ordered the servant to take off his boots, thinking that when he bent down he could reach his forehead. So it happened, and the first letter was successfully erased, but the whole heap of clay fell on the Jew and crushed him.

Oh boy and talk about is the guilt ours in a world gone mad and sins of commission and ommission? Check this out:

Therefore, the second theme which is stressed is the purity of purpose with which the task must be approached. A golem cannot be created for the purpose of evil (having no human soul, any sin the golem commits is a sin of the creator, not the creation.



And following that, here's a really electric thought:

Abulafia's words are strong reminders that it is not enough to say or feel that the task undertaken is a holy one. The purity of purpose must be "soul deep." Therefore, it does not matter whether a golem is to be used for evil purposes. Anything less than a perfect purpose is not enough.

Wow. We could discuss this one aspect for eons?

I did like this, tho:



The Talmud says that "two scholars sharpen each other's minds in the study of the law" (B Shabbat 63a).

Love it, that's what we try to do here, in our book discussions, and in this one you can feel the current.

ginny

Good Morning Charlie and Ginny,

Sorry about Sarah's "thingamigig." I will be glad to see her here. I have started Part II, and I am still relishing in the fact that Josef made it out of Prague alive.

The whole funeral idea was wonderful, the blue stars in every window accept one ( I became confused there and had to reread to see what was happening). I took the blue Stars of David to be a symbol that Josef would gain the victory and escape successfully.

I hated to see him leave Thomas behind, but I have hope that Thomas might appear again, hopefully in New York.

I have begun Part II, and hearing Sam and Joe throw ideas up in the air about their fanciful creation is fun and exciting. They are very talented and creative, but I can tell that Sam is the thinker.

Charlie, did you choose this book? You have good taste! Thanks.

Charlie, I just checked out that link. How funnnny and appropriate!

Ginny raises the “purity of purpose” cautionary warnings about the improper use of golem. This would seem to me to be another common connection between golem and comic superheroes. Much is made of the purity of purpose in many hero stories, including the one of our Escapist. Superpowers are more often than not proscribed, unless used for “good”, unless used in the quest for “truth” {‘emet}, are they not?

Loved that selection from Shabbat, Ginny. Thank you.

---

Hats- Your thoughts about the ‘blue stars” are very interesting. I read that part completely literally, without a though as to their possible pointing to something else. Thanks for your take on it.

Both Sarah and I thought this one would be fun to do so decided to team up on it. Now she can’t join the party!! But maybe she can still get in here later, though. Hope so.

Charlie

Charlie, I too hope Sarah can join. Poor Tom has a bad leg, but he takes his uncle's place in the magic act. It just proves we never know when we will be asked to act in untried and seemingly difficult circumstances.

There are so many wonderful quotes in this books, thoughts to ponder over and over again.

"Freedom was a debt that could be be repaid only by purchasing the freedom of others."

There’s the theme of ‘rising above’ one’s infirmities implicit in a lot of the super-hero alter egos’s isn’t there? Rising above our problems. For every Clark Kent, immobilized by insecurity, there’s a Superman ready to take on all the evils that bedevil us. Tom Mayflower throws off his crutch and begins to make a difference in the world. The make-over, the transformation will allow us to do great things. We CAN metamophose (sp??) into that being that we wish we were. All it takes is the Golden Key – the secret to success is just around the corner. 97-pound weakling no more!

Charlie

Hats- That sounds like a quote from the Tom Mayflower episode, right? You can just see the cape flowing in the breeze as the orchestra crescendos.

Part II-Chapter 8 is the self-contained story of The Escapist and how Tom Mayflower (Sammy Clay) is transformed into that character. One of the characters in the retinue of Misterioso the Great is Alois Berg (Big Al) - an obvious stand-in for Sammy's father.

Have you noticed the phrases auto-liberation (used in many references to Houdini escapes) and self-liberation (used here on pg 132 in reference to Max Mayflower's training and growth). Interesting phrases, I think. Do you think they have application to the general broad themes of the novel? Can the novel be read on one level as about self-liberation? Keep that on the backburner as you read.

Well, I said that Chapter 8 is self-contained, but remember, Chapter 7 ended with Sammy saying to Joe, "Let's take a walk." Chapter 8 ends with this:

"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."

Wonderful stuff. The two young men are, of course, Joe and Sammy on their walk. Chapter 9 begins with their continued walk "along the trembling hem of reality that separated New York City from Empire City." Great phrase that. Chabon is a master at blurring that tentative space between the real and the imagined. I love that "hem of reality."

These transitions are so cinematic. I say cinematic, but one could also say so vivid that it is easy to visualize them.


CharlieW

Jumping ahead a bit her, I just wanted to point out that Chabon plays this same game with us again. A fine transition from the sighting of a Luna moth (III-12) to the creation of Sammy and Joe’s next major character in the self-contained chapter (III-13): Luna Moth.
CharlieW

Speaking of Luna Moth, I just finished reading that self-contained chapter III-13. I'm only mentioning it in reference to form of the book. These transitions from one chapter into the next, Charlie, that you continue to mention....finally, I got a fix on what the whole form reminds me of. In an opera, or a stage musical, there are many transitions. Sometimes the scene freezes and a scrim comes down (black mesh material); then the interlude begins. Or, sometimes, with beautiful (magical) lighting, one scene fades as the next materializes into view.....then, the interlude, sometimes a dream sequence, sometimes a ballet. When the dream or ballet is over, the main scene comes to life again.

Am I the only one who feels as if we're watching a play? I can hear so many of these lines spoken, as if from a stage. Usually, when I read fiction, I can get lost in the story and think I'm reading reality. In this book, I never quite forget we're in a make-believe setting. Did anyone see the movie Dick Tracey? Every color was exaggerated and the lines spoken were exaggerated. I keep feeling a similar, if not quite so obvious, level of fantasy here. I don't relate less to any character or feel less....there is just a heightened coloring....or, something, can't think of how to explain this.

Ginny, what was in your thinking when you were going to disagree with my seeing Sammy as Golem to Joe? Remember? You were about to "see the other side" or something. A line or two from a review that stayed with me about a Golem is that he serves his master, is there to be of help to another, the one who brought him to life. Were you thinking about the "bringing to life" task?

Charlie, oh, wow, what a neat connection, seeing the comics of the 40s in the same light as subsequent decades' self-help metamorphoses. I would include all the decades, though, not just the 90s. In both business and the diet/exercise world, there have been fad theories, one after another. Get rich quick and Get strong/healthy quick schemes are never ending. Dress for Success transformations. Business management quality circles. Weight Watchers. Consult any popular magazine in any decade and there are promises of leaving behind who you are and becoming the thing of your dreams. And, hey, let's add the whole decade of the 60s, start to finish, when we believed we could transform the world by making love, not war. John Lennon as Golem as we Imagined a world capable of peace.

betty

Betty, I agree. It feels like I am in the middle of the play, no hint of reality. I find it amazing that Joe and Sammy can put their life's hopes and desires into their characters, into their make believe world.

Joe sees the downfall of Hitler's tyranny, the end of the war and the freedom of his family. Is this part of that "purity of purpose?" Without these thoughts, could The Escapist have ever truly come into being? Come out of their heads and onto the written page?

During the process, Sammy keeps asking the question "Why?" Why does The Escapist put his Houdini art into action? What is the reason? Sammy feels The Escapist must have a reason for acting. Without a reason, the whole idea fails.

I can see that Joe never forgets his past, his roots, where he has come from, Prague to New York. His past drives him forward. The picture of The Escapist slamming Hitler's Jaw is really a picture of Joe fighting Hitler.

His refusal to remove Hitler from the cover is his way of holding on to his purpose, to hold in his memory why he is fighting to make a dollar. It is to help his family out of bondage, to help his family escape. He has wrapped all of his artwork around a cause.

If Joe can see his family freed, I think that he will feel "self-liberated." I am thinking again of the fact that I can not feel "self liberated" unless or until I pay a debt, and the debt is freeing someone else.

Yes, betty. We’re talking about the same thing and describing it from our different frames of reference – much like we talk about the books we discuss. You talk about these scenes as if watching a play. I’m very cinema oriented – my favorite movies are those self-referential movies about movies or movie-making. But one scene fading as the next materializes is just the feeling I have with some of these transitions.

You make a good point about the movie Dick Tracey. I think Chabon is just after this slightly elevated level of exaggeration, this “heightened coloring” as you call it. Do other feel this also? Hats, does. It is intentional, don’t you think? Even the plethora of details falls into this same category – a heightened sense of the surroundings and of things.

Thanks for amplifying on my self-help concept, betty. Yes, all the examples, which eluded me, are right on the mark. And Lennon’s Imagine, too. Yes, yes, yes. (Wait till Ginny sees this!!)

Hats, I think you cut right to the heart of it. There must be purity of purpose for the creation of a golem. Otherwise it won’t come into “being.” The evil in the world calls into being our golems, doesn’t it. Could The Escapist exist without a Hitler? Could a Superman exist without injustice? Not only are we talking about purity of purpose, but aren’t we talking about the creative process also? Reversing this, does the creative process require a purity of purpose? Feed it? Excellent analysis, Hats!

Charlie

Here's what's throwing me, though it's fun to see the confusion and fun to keep listening to Chabon.....this written New York of the 30s, 40s is dark, as in Gotham dark. But it's still a make-believe dark, as in the colorful Dick Tracey movie.

When I read the 3-word asides Joe and Sammy say to each other that no one else hears, I can't tell if it's Gotham wiseguy speak.....or if it's Neil Simon Jewish speak....that lighthearted banter that only Simon can do.

All of Neil Simon's characters needed saving....like Sammy....all those young Jewish boys who felt they would never make it into adulthood...all of whom would have sent away for the muscle-man makeovers in the comics.

So, did Joe save Sammy or did Sammy save Joe?

betty

I'm sorry to behind in the reading,but my daughter just gave birth to our second grandchild...Andrew David..and with going back & forth,etc,I've fallen behind..so I'll try to catch up or just make a comment here and there.

Charlie;I mentioned a golem in Snow in August and I see that Showtime cable is presenting a TV movie of this novel next week (Sunday,I believe)

There was a comment about self-liberation a few posts back,and I was wondering if anyone sees a relationship between self liberation and self delusion? Houdini was a great escape artist,but I recall reading that he was a master trickster and was able to hide various keys on or in his body. I would guess that the poster of Houdini is a reminder that a man or woman can escape from any physical bondage...I wonder if that includes escaping from either psychological or self inflicted bondage?

Charlie: Since you like movies about making movies,try to get a copy of Lulu on the Bridge...it's one of Harvey Keitel's lesser known gems.

Gee, when is New York NOT dark: in science fiction, in the comics? Something about the size and "reputation" of The Apple, I guess that inspires artists to "draw" it that way? Impersonal=Dark. Large=Impenetrable.

Betty, I'm just not sufficiently familiar with Neil Simon to comment on your suggestions, but I do take your meaning about needing saving.

Betty asks, "So, did Joe save Sammy or did Sammy save Joe?" Hmmmm. Golem helps those who help themselves? Self-liberation and all that...

---

Congratulations, Ed, on your daughter's child!
Thanks for the heads up. The adaptation you mentioned is on Showtime at 8:00 PM on Sunday. I had the pleasure of seeing Lulu on the Bridge a few months ago. Grew up on Truffaut and Godard and other French New Wave movies about movies. Early Bogdanovich. Cinema Paradiso...The Player....8 ½. ….For another time……

Anyway, Ed's got my head spinning. The other side of self-liberation….Is it a pie-in-the-sky trick? Just another easy fix? Doesn't Kornblum seem to say that one has to have escaped those mental shackles in order to be able to escape the physical bonds? Puzzlement.


CharlieW

II-9 (Page 155): "I wish he was real" Joe says to Sammy about their newly created fantasy - The Escapist. And isn't the also one of the attractions of all super-heroes ever invented? Continuing their conversation, Sammy tells Joe Page 136) "…in that sense, see, he really will be real. The Escapist. He will be doing what we're saying he can do." The Escapist will make them enough money so that Joe will be able to set his family free. The hem of reality will be sewn together….

And speaking of the creative process, which we've touched on a few times already - what a nice snapshot of it in II-11 after Sammy has gathered the team and they all get to work on the various parts of the Comic book they're assembling.


CharlieW

Charlie, Ginny, Betty, Ed. Sarah, et al:  I have r/c my book and spent the afternoon reading it in the pool.  I love this guy.  I love these characters.  All of them!  Joe admits that in his panache is his family's hope of salvation.  What a great thought that emits.  he has safelyarrived in NY City to meet his aunt and family & Sammy (the ringmaster) is negotiating at this point with Anapol as they review Joe's sketches of the  golem, his new Superman. We are treated here with the fart jokes   and I  cracked up with the description of how Sammy spent an afternoon smashing on his portfolio with a hammer, spilling coffee on it  and walking across it in his mom's high heels.  This is classic Neil Simon, I agree.

Question- pg. 63. What does the word "oshmyany" mean?  I missed that whole thing.

I loved the way our author transported the casket with its valuable cargo dressed in poor old Alois Hora's "giant" suit.to safety.  It broke my heart to know that Josef had to leave his younger brother Thomas after finding him in the abandoned home.  How moving this was:  Josef felt a bloom of dread in his belly and all at once he was certain it was not going to matter one iota how his father and the others behaved.  His point of premonition of doom of the horror to come!!!

Bless that little waif that sent me this book.  It is wonderful and I am happy to be joining you.

Hey, there, ALF - Don't get the pages wet!

Oshmyany is nothing more than a town on the border between Poland and Lithuania. Reaching it means he's almost out of Poland and into Russian territory. Anyone see any meaning beyond that?

Glad you're with us (now, I wonder who that little waif was???)
CharlieW

The creative process. Is art itself, regardless of style, by its very nature "escapist"? Is the fiction form "escapist"? It's this 'hem of reality' that really has me fascinated. This perhaps fragile juncture between art and reality.

Here we have the two main fictional characters and a number of minor ones and a few meta-fictional characters. But surrounding them all are real people who once lived and breathed, starting with Harry Houdini and including actual appearances by Al Smith, Salvador and Gala Dali, Raymond Scott, Loren MacIver, Uta Hagen, Jose Ferrer, Max Ernst, and perhaps Max Schmeling. There are at least references to Nikola Tesla, Louis Pasteur, Jack London, Norman Rockwell, J. C. Leyendecker, Alex Raymond, Milt Caniff, Chester Gould, Harold Gray, William Hogarth, Lee Falk, George Herriman, E. C. Segar, Rabbi Loeb, Johann Hofzinser, Leos Janacek, Adolf Eichman, Adolf Hitler, Alfred Adler, Alexandre Dumas, Emil Jannings, Guglielmo Marconi, Paul Klee, Jerry Siegel, Joe Schuster, Karol Szymanowski, George Raft, John Garfield, Joseph Conrad, John Held, Al Capp, Fay Wray, Peter Lorre, Rosa Luxembourg, Norman Thomas, Gaston Leroux, Joseph Bramah, James Montgomery Flagg, Heinrich Kley, Artie Shaw, Gene Krupa, Charles Atlas, Chung Ling Soo, Gabby Hartnett, Dr. Frederick Wertham, Peter Breughel, Burne Hogarth, Bob Kane, Louis Fine, Buster Keaton, Ace Parker, Franchot Tone, Will Eisner, Gustav Lidenthal, Wendell Wilkie, Lionel Hampton, Louis Armstrong, A. C. Sandino, Torquemada, Ed Sullivan, Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden, Joseph Ferdnand Cheval, Andre Breton, Peter Blume, Edwin Dickinson, Joseph Cornell, The Nicholas Brothers, Arthur Rimbaud, Alfred Jarry, Hieronymous Bosch, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, Ignatius Donnelly, Franz Schubert, Robert Delaunay, Felix Mendelssohn, Peter Tchaikovsky, Frederick Nietzsche, Eduard Velazquez, Linda Darnell, Dolores Del Rio, and John Barrymore. Phew!

This is only Part I-III.

Why does Chabon surround his fictional characters with all of these real people and references? We haven't even touched on the historical facts put in evidence - which will include a major and recurring part to be played by an actual book written by a Dr. Frederick Wertham in 1954. What is Chabon about here? Blurring the lines? But for what purpose?
CharlieW

Talking about the creative process, get this:
German author Harry Mulisch 1998 novel, The Procedure, has been translated into english.

From the Publisher

Harry Mulisch's last novel, The Discovery of Heaven, was published to critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. The Times Literary Supplement called it an "exhilarating, magnificent and dangerous book" and John Updike in The New Yorker compared Mulisch's "magnum opus" to Joyce's Finnegans Wake, Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain, and Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Mulisch's new novel, The Procedure, is about everything you could say about the world, mankind, time, life, birth and death, man and woman, love and creation, ethics and genetics.

In the late-sixteenth century, Rabbi Jehudah Low, in order to guarantee the safety of the Jews in Prague, tries to make a golem with the aid of a third-century Cabalist text. Four hundred years later Viktor Werner, a biologist, causes an international uproar when he creates in his laboratory a complex organic clay crystal that can reproduce and which has a metabolism. He has, in effect, manufactured a primitive organism out of inorganic materials. We learn of Viktor's life after his discovery as he starts new research and is pursued by his own inner and outer demons. In this elegantly written and immaculately constructed story of two men who suffer similar punishments for their hubris, Harry Mulisch attempts nothing less than to unravel the structure and meaning of man's being, [emphasis mine]

And note the connections made in this excerpt from the Complete Review website, [emphasis mine]-

The procedure of the title is both literally a process as well as a trial. The novel is divided into three sections -- (legal) acts or reports labeled A, B, and C -- each further divided into chapters (called notebooks here). The first section deals with Speaking, the second with the Speaker, the third with Conversation. The first section deals most directly with creation, as the author commences his undertaking, the elements from which he will create his work simply the letters of the alphabet. The chapters of this section progress from the abstract Man to the more specific Person to the artificial creation (the Golem) to the author's creation (and central character of the book), Victor Werker. Mulisch considers the creative process in all its aspects in these introductory chapters, from God's creation of Adam, Lilith (his first wife), and then Eve to authorial creation of a literary character. The chapter on the golem is a tour-de-force, and regardless of how familiar the tale is, Mulisch manages to convince with it again. Mulisch's circuitous approach to beginning his actual tale may seem odd at first -- an intrusive author debating how to go about his task, comparing himself to a god, historical examples, and the like. The digressions and considerations are, however, expertly served, and all do serve a purpose as the big picture comes together. Conception and creation -- artistic or otherwise -- are complex and arduous undertakings. The golem serves as a warning to the dangers of man meddling in the creative process.

My, wouldn't this be a great follow up to our present read!! If only I had a second life...
CharlieW

Shazam!!! What a find, Charlie. So, the author of Procedure (in his creative process) talks of authoring at the beginning, and then in section something, part 3, authors (creates) a fictional character who creates life from lifeless form? (This sounds like a joke, but when you told it, it sounded serious.) I think the whole world is caught up in thoughts of producing life...I mean that literally, although we spend our lives meaning it socially and romantically and ten other ways.

Your interest in the hem of realism....fiction could never mean anything, much less shake us to the core at times, unless we recognized it. And we do recognize it (ourselves?) without all the hundreds of historical names, don't we? Is Chabon showing off? If so, why don't I mind it?

--------------------------------------

Eve was Adam's second wife?

betty

I have fun looking in once in a while and learning the tricks of the SeniorNet discussions, and learn more about The Adventures of K. and C. I HAD to jump in just now, Charlie, because you mentioned Harry Mulisch, one of my favorite writers too. He also wrote THE ASSAULT, a book-turned-into-movie that won the Oscar (foreign) movie award quite a few years ago. However, he is not a German, but a Dutch author. Chabon's book sounds very interesting, as you all present it, ine

 The "hem of reality"  image fascinates Chas.  Isn't that what life is, in essence?  Don't we all find ourselves on the edge, the periphery, skirting (hemming) around, bordering and verging on life and/or fantasy?   I used to call it being at the brink!  Doesn't  this "hem of reality" encompass our boundaries, the edges/fringe  of our very existence?   Of something or other!   We look into /at the comic book heros from the exterior box of  reality.  We know that barrier is there between reality and fantasy but we want to breach it, break in .  We want to "escape" over that threshold  and join the masterful creators  in their illusions.   I think we are all escapists.  Aren't we all creative escapists when we adopt to bolt, dodge an issue or evade someone?  Who amongst us hasn't "skirted" an issue or an ally?  Heck ,  I'm the queen of evasiveness, bouncing in a millisecond from sensibility and solidity to extensive flights of fancy.  We escape into books, hard labor, child rearing.  Whatever!   I used to have an imaginary friend that I escaped with as I recited stories I concocted.  Why do we escape?  What impels us?  That , sir , is the question.  Sammy wished to escape with the Mighty Molecule,  Tommy with his brother, Joe with the Golem, Max Mayflower (the master of selfliberation) was reminded that freedom was a debt that could be repaid only by purchasing the freedom of others.  We share in the authors escape don't we as we hop aboard and ride his train of imagination.  I love this escapist theory. I'm sounding psychotic with these admissions.

Poor Joe, the loss of his father has sent him into a talespin. His thoughts are confused. Should he go to Canada? The answer is yes, no, yes, no again. Then, he faces his biggest challenge. Every German appears to be the enemy. If not careful the ugly monster of racism will fill his own heart and soul.

I am thinking one of his lessons in life will be to "liberate" himself from the "tyranny" of hate and learn every German is not a bad German.

Wow! He did spit on the guy's shoe, and he's a big guy. Thank goodness, he just belted Joe and did not kill him.

I meant to thank you, Alf, for saying "classic Neil Simon." I was getting kinda lonely saying that name all by myself.

You wrote just above "We want to escape over that threshhold and join the masterful creators in their illusions" and "We share in the authors escape, don't we," then you listed all those wonderful things into which we escape. This is so interesting, this way you are connecting to this story. Not once had I thought of how we escape......I'm connecting all the way at the other end of this story. I'm connecting with Joe's deepening frustration, with the barriers he's dealing with, with "life" being not quite within his control. These troubles that are made so believable by Chabon (the scene with his brother in the hallway) are ultimately comforting, even validating....I'm reminded I'm not the only one who has tough times. The Golem/Escapist/Neil Simon layer is great fun and challenging, but that's not where I'm connected. The "real life" of Joe and his distant family (and the tragedy I fear is probable) is where I'm connected. (Uh...Is this the same subject, Alf, or are these two separate subjects?) What a terrific book this is.

betty

No, it is the same subject Betty. the story of life and how it grabs up and bites you when you least expect it. I keep thinking of History: The Novel while reading this book. Maybe it is due to the stench of Hitler approaching . Many facets has this jewel, hey?

WOW, has this thing taken off, before I can get back in here, you're all flying, SHAZAAAMMMMM (in the best Gomer Pyle tradition, in my case) indeed, Betty, wow!

Wow, Charlie on the Harry Mulisch, hi, Ine! Hi, Andrea! Hey our Ed, congratulations on your new grandchild!! ! Hey, there's our Betty!! Hi, Hats! Linda and Pat !! And I hope I have not left anybody out! The gang's all here, and room around the campfire for more, too, everybody scoot over, this is so fun!

I had printed out all the previous posts and find to my shock and horror that I had been repeating some of the themes our Charlie was (hey, I'm in good company anyway) and thought I'd only address your POSTS this time so I don't get in more trouble.

---

Charlie, it's Betty with Sammy as golem and YOU with Sammy as "CLAY-Man, " I did not see that till you mentioned it, tho I would love to and will take the credit for it?

OK, Betty, way back there you asked who is the golem, Joe or Sammy? I haven't seen Sammy at this point as a Golem, at all, despite his name, and despite the fact that he was portrayed as sleeping, because I think that Sammy shows incredible strength and will from the get go. I don't see the transformation? The child was betrayed by his father, and even tho he's the creative one he gets put aside as editor and Joe's hand gets shaken, I know how that feels. But Sammy not only keeps going, he is able to exalt Joe, that takes a great deal that Joe did not cause, to me. It's possible I'm reading way way too much into these characters, but everybody reread page 113, and the bottom of 112, I'm really impressed with Sammy...

And that brings me to the second point you all raised and that's the theater here and many of you seem to be feeling as if you were watching a play, and the book itself has many images of the curtain being drawn, etc. But I tell you truly when the story of Tom and Alois was revealed to be voices from the basement grate and just a figment of Sammy's and Joe's imaginations, I was startled because, like Grandpa in the song Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer...."but as for me and Grandpa, we believe!"

I believed. Ever since this book started I have been IN it, I've been WITH the characters. As I've said, perhaps I'm projecting too much, but these characters are so real to me, little Thomas, Sammy, even BK.

That's one of the things I also wanted to mention, Ed and I are from the same Hometown, and as a child I got to see a lot of different cultures and people. One time we were visiting quite an old man who spoke only Yiddish and he went to the closet and brought out a violin. The length of time it took him to get that out and tuned and everything seemed like an eternity to hyper little me, full of odd careful twists and turns...just an eternity, and then he handed it to me and indicated I should play (!!??) and a million cats screeched in the room, I almost dropped it. Then he went to the huge old radio and turned it on and immediately (must have been pre set to the station) an orchestra scratchy and fading filled the room and he picked up that thing and played with them and it was glorious. It was an epiphany for a hyper little kid. Then he turned the channel and played with another orchestra and another and another, and when it was over he carefully, slowly and ritually put it back.

I was stunned, and he was not the only one who did every day things with such care and precision. I think the author captured this thing that BK did with the perfect POV, as well, that of a child watching and trying to make sense of it. The book blows me away.

Charlie I loved this from you: "But look at the possible meanings in the larger context of the themes of the novel."

That's the part where I'm falling down as I'm totally HOOKED on the plot and the characters.

I'm wondering about that Purity of Purpose thing and how one might determine how pure a purpose actually is? Would we say, for instance, that the Crusades were pure of purpose but the result was a bit poor? Is the author saying of that piece we brought in here on golems that IF the thing runs amok the sin is with the creator, who, as we see in Charlie's new piece on Harry Mulisch, must consider himself god or godlike to create. And of course that brings me to Charlie's creation thing, to create is the ultimate, I loved Chabon's this: "Sammy felt an ache in his chest that turned out to be, as so often occurs when memory and desire conjoin with a transient effect of weather (hahahaha) the pang of creation." (page 112) This author, always always, in the middle of something really fine throws a wry...is this where you get Simon, Betty, also, humor in the thing, sometimes you have to laugh out loud. It's wry, or droll or something, it's fine, that's what it is, and it makes reading it a pleasure.

Auto liberation? Self Liberation? Loved Ed's take on that, and this question he posed: I was wondering if anyone sees a relationship between self liberation and self delusion? Houdini was a great escape artist,but I recall reading that he was a master trickster and was able to hide various keys on or in his body. I would guess that the poster of Houdini is a reminder that a man or woman can escape from any physical bondage...I wonder if that includes escaping from either psychological or self inflicted bondage? "

But, listen, in answer to this, Houdini was a showman, right? He played at escape, right? He tied himself up or had somebody else do it, in real life, what? It was a trick. What do we know of Eric Weiss? Charlie's got a link but in real life what did he escape and what do we all escape, loved your take on that Andrea, and that's a great question you ask, too, "Why do we escape?"

Ine, you will find this an electric bunch if you can get the book and a VERY worthy discussion!

Here's a thought I've been wrestling with this morning: idealism. Is it possible that each of us has a different idealism and that to the extent that it is compromised, to that extent we need to escape from the bounds of whatever life we now hold, and is it possible to ever live in harmony with that idealism without withdrawing into a hermit like isolation?

ginny

I would attempt that last question, Ginny, but I'm out of breath from yelling, OUCH. What, you have my place bugged?

I suspect that idealism is a perception that we all suffer from,and if you can accept the premise that perception is reality,then we all live in our own "ideal" world. But,after a certain age,although we may thirst for an ideal (utopian)existence,that idealism is only in our own heads.

I would say that the Norman Rockwell ideal of life,does not and never has existed..but that doen't mean that one should give up trying..the achievement of an "ideal" is never as good as the journey to get to that place.

Would we all like our own "personal golem" to handle all of our own negative aspects of life?

HO!!

Our Ed is definitely BACK!!

But wait wait, Betty....bugged? Did you say you were buggy? Honestly, Betty, I'm telling you as a friend: you simply MUST get over your phobia about Exterminators! Think of them as Super X Men! hahahahhaa

Now I'm not even going to sully the waters, and I'm going to let Ed's fine lines stand there gleaming, but can a person keep this idealism into old age or is it something that dies with youth and other youthful things like comic books, due to too many slings and arrows (and bugs) and the natural vicissitudes of life?

ginny

Betty- You're really getting into the spirit. Shazam!!! Ouch!!! And as for Lilith as the first wife of Adam - well…talk about a whole 'nother discussion. Betty, you really must check out the Lilith myths and origins. A good place to start is Lilith (The Independent Jewish Women's Magazine). I think you'll be particularly interested in some of the explanations as to why Adam became "disenchanted" with Lilith. He wanted a better, more cooperative model!! There are wildly divergent and controversial reasons for her replacement by Eve. Fascinating stuff, as well. But don't get lost. We want you back HERE!!

---

Hello, Ine. Thanks for correcting me on Mulisch's nationality. Where would be a good place to start with Mulisch, if one hasn't read him before? A good introduction?

---

Alf, Alf, Alf. Nice post. And an honest one. I agree with, betty. Loved your angle, so THANKS for getting in here with us. "We escape into books, hard labor, child rearing." !!! Are we all escapists? I agree that might be a good description for fiction lovers. We pick at that threshold like a loose thread, no? Nope. You sound pretty realistic to me.

---

But Ginny, doesn't Sammy somehow "serve" Joe (as golem)? He seems always to be there for him - always seems to accede to his wishes.

Oh, there's a lot of laughing out loud in this one, too, ginny. Some really funny stuff here. Like when Joe and Sammy after their frenetic weekend creation, pitch The Escapist to Anapol. He's not buying it:

"You know I have no patience with nonsense," said the Northeast's leading wholesaler of chattering windup mandibles."

Now that's funny!

Well, ouch ginny too, And OUCH, ED!! Sometimes I wonder if my own personal golem isn't the one that gets up everyday and goes to work for me while I lay abed sleeping - only whole again of an evening.
Charlie

I wonder if people were put off by the title of the book? It certainly seems to be doing well in sales and has been on the hardcover and then the paperback bestsellers list for awhile. Chabon is not just drawing 'cartoon' characters here, though. One need only look at our introduction to George Deasey (II-12, pg 155-6), the cynical editor of Racy magazine. What a full and complete look at Deasey in just one paragraph - we know a lot about the man already. If you had to write a description of a person in just one paragraph, would you know where to start? Economy of writing.

---

Another golem reference on pg 171 - in a series of strolls around New York, Joe and Sammy fill out two more whole comic books with a series of characters. Created while "talking and dreaming and walking in circles in the prescribed manner of golem makers."

---

Although Joe ands Sammy are making some good money Joe begins to experience doubts: "His sense of entrapment in the toils of bureaucracy, of being powerless to help or free his family…", what Chabon calls the "shark of dread" (pg 180) . Dread seems to emanate from the stomach, doesn't it? The feeling in the pit of….What image could be more fearsome than a shark gnawing at your stomach?

Naturally then, when after learning of his father's death he takes off for Canada to DO something, rather than wait around. Finally though, he decides against this course of action: "He could not abandon them [his family] further by running off and trying, like the Escapist, single-handedly to end the war. It was imperative for him to remain focused on the possible."

The hem of reality again. Joe has a strong impulse to take on the persona of his alter-ego and pursue his enemies on the field of battle in a super-heroic fashion. Finally though, he separates the hem of reality from that nether world of his creation. The Razis are not the enemy and he doesn't live in Empire City. It's the Nazis that are threatening all that is right and good in his world and he lives in New York City. How strong do you think Joe's impulses are to take on this persona? Are his impulses stronger because he lives with and in that made up world every day, where the solutions are not so out of reach? Are we talking about the line here between rational and irrational action?


CharlieW

Has put me in comic book mode. I am even finding myself looking for comics as I go past a magazine rack in a store.

It's amazing how comics reflected the times. And Joe! He was The Escapist! He was trying to "move Americans to anger against Hitler." And yet he couldn't win the war - his fight was only imaginary. This was his raison d'etre - otherwise life would have no meaning.

I remember seeing some cartoons with swastikas and anti-Hitler themes. Elmer Fudd? Bugs Bunny? Porky Pig?

Gives us a new meaning to those comic books. Maybe war is why our movies, etc., are so violent.

This part of the book puts me back in my youth so much! It is fun to remember sitting for long periods of time looking at those magnificent panels of drawings with the "PING" "BAM" "BOIIIING" "POW" and so many things going on in one panel it required a lot of time to digest it all and then I would go back again and again and "read" some more of those luscious pictures - very enjoyable for me.

My husband's brother and a friend spent time in the Pacific during the war. His friend drew some pictures of what happened on the ship when they were being bombed. This pictures were very bloody and violent. Neither men ever, ever talked about the war.

I enjoyed the description of the cover of the "funny book" with Hitler. 1939! Joe's heart was sure in his work. A dreamer maybe, but talented and determined when it came to his family. I'm with Joe - I would love to have had Hitler stopped in 1939.

"The sky in the East was a bright Superman blue." That sure hits the kid in me and makes me smile. And he was worried women wouldn't like the comics part of the book. Oh my gosh, I loved every minute of it. I saved comics, traded them, even fought over them once or twice. But most of all I read them and cherished them.

Linda

There is a very interesting book review today,Aug 10 in the NY Times. The title of the book is Houdini,Tarzan and the perfect Man,by John F.Kasson.

Although I don't think I would read the book (at least not in H.B.)but a short paragraph in the review about Houdini seems to lend some additional thread to the fabric of this discussionas it purports to explain some of the motivation behind Houdini. I found it to be thought provoking in conjunction with K & C .

Linda-

I never was that big into comics myself - the exception being Mad magazine and (I hate to admit this) Archie comics! You say that "It's amazing how comics reflected the times." The author is pretty clear that they reflected the times as far as the war was concerned and how the comics dealt with that. But do you think that the comics reflected the times after the war also? And in what ways?

Linda remembers "some cartoons with swastikas and anti-Hitler themes", but the author brought up another aspect of this that I found interesting. Along about the time of the first Carl Ebling episode, "Joe became aware of the possibility of an adult readership for his work." He was disturbed that his work would have a weird sort of appeal to "such a man" as Carl Ebling. [see page 204]:

"Joe Kavalier was not the only creator of comic books to perceive the mirror-image fascism inherent in his anti-fascist superman - Will Eisner…quite deliberately dressed his Allied-hero Blackhawks in uniforms modeled on the elegant death's head garb of the Waffen SS."

An example of a Blackhawks cover can be found in the links for Part III in the header - or click here.

Joe begins to question his methods, if not his motivations:

"Now it occurred to Joe to wonder if all they had been doing, all along, was indulging their own worst impulses and assuring the creation of another generation of men who revered only strength and domination."

A provocative thought. Similar debates continue to rage to this day. This time regarding the effects of violence in Hollywood, on television, and in music, on our youth. The fear being the same, that we are engendering a culture of violence. Fostering a new generation of callous amorality.

Linda says that Joe "was The Escapist." And in this same section, Chabon once again blurs that border, works at that hem of reality as Joe confronts Carl Ebling in the guise of Tom Mayflower and even leaves him an autograph as The Escapist.


CharlieW

Saw your post after I posted mine, Ed. Let me go check that out. Thanks.


CharlieW

Thanks for bringing that here, Ed. Teddy Roosevelt as 97-lb. weakling! And this excerpt!!:

The performance known as "Metamorphosis" - in which Houdini began the act bound and tied inside a box, then magically exchanged places with his female assistant, who ended up bound and tied in the same box - could be viewed as a man's miraculous release from confinement and the corresponding capture of a woman [emphasis mine]

Like Adam switching Lilith for Eve [waiting for betty on that one]! Yes. Joe's escape from Prague in the sealed box of a golem, was his own metamorphosis, a latter day Houdini switch.


CharlieW

But have we begun discussing Part III? If so, maybe I'm not far along enough in it but behold, DID Hitler appear on the cover or not? What did I miss here? I was all agog to find out, and....WHAMMO! Nothing so far that I've read in Part III?? hahahaha, I'm hanging on a string myself here.

I'm still off in golem land, trying to understand the golem concept, is he is or is he ain't a real body, getting all mixed up with the difference (is there one??) in auto liberation and self liberation? Worrying over the transubstantiation theme (is there one?) and worrying whether I'm the only kid in the world who did not read Marvel comics?

Oh and hey, how about the new book on Houdini: Houdini's Box, gthe Art of Escape by Adam Phillips? In this book Phillips "mainatains there is a trace of the man in each of us because we all spend part of our time trying --literally or figuratively-- to escape." Phillips is a British psychoanalyist, more anon....

ginny

Ginny- See pg 169 (footnote) for confirmation that Joe and Sammy stood their ground and got the cover they wanted.

Trying to escape….there are other escapes in the book yet to come. I don't think that Chabon would disagree with the premise of Phillips' book as you have stated it, Ginny.


CharlieW

On the two themes of transformation and escape...in the book and in our discussion of whether or not each rings true universally....I see the wish for transformation everywhere, across time and groups. When I get skinny, when I get strong, when I get rich, when I have more time, when I feel more confident, then I will.....live. Obsessing on transformation (metamorphosis) and putting off living today....I see this cultural habit everywhere, and, uh, have lived it often enough. The Escapist and Superman fit nicely into wishing to be more than who we are.

On the theme of escape, this is so weird, but I read all your examples, Ginny, and each one makes sense, but I don't identify at all. Maybe I'm used to using other words (just guessing here because I really can't get hold of it), like denial or defensive behavior or fear or avoidance. Those don't sound right, though. Or, in this book, the need for escape is real , the need for those who are about to die by the millions need to escape authentic oppression and hatred. Joe's escalating frustration is so real to me (Neil Simon sounding moments of comic relief work because of their contrast to Joe's fear). Anyway, maybe someone else can go beyond the ridiculous examples in my head (people use alcohol to escape feelings, etc.).

-----------------------------------------

Didn't mean to keep you waiting, Charlie. I appreciated the link to the Lilith stuff, but (and this is terrible) I can't work up any interest. She can be first wife. Fine, fine. Did she get to keep the garden?

betty

Ah, Charlie, you are so right. I saw the Sotheby's footnote, I laughed at the Sotheby's footnote and I missed entirely the subtle "knockout Kavalier punch," and was breathlessly waiting for the denoument? hahahahaa Don't you love a book in which the writing makes you stop or you miss something, makes you stop skimming thru and take it more closely and how often, let's be honest, do you encounter such a thing?

If we think of the golem as any sort of "savior" for any old sort of problem then you can apply him to any situation, can't you, and the Godfather image is not so far fetched.

Ed posed the thought that maybe "idealism is only in our own heads," and boy that's a powder keg, what else is only in our own heads?

That makes me reflect that THIS, the Books & Literature sections of SeniorNet, all 200+ books read, 30 Discussion Leaders, 5 year track record, and magnificent electric posters strong, THIS was once all in our heads, too, no?

Going off on another tangent, the issue of transubstantiation, lingering on that for a moment, (and it would probably help if I spelled it correctly, one s:) as it relates to metamorphosis: and metamorphosis is a "transformation, as by magic or sorcery, a marked change in appearance, character, condition or function, or Biol: a change in form and often habits during development after the embryonic stage, as in insects (and we've seen the caterpillar image here)."

Whereas transubstantiation is "to change one substance into another, transmute (which itself means to change from one form, nature, substance or state into another)."

Transubstantiation, of course, is assumed in the Eucharist and thus it makes me wonder if it's assumed in the golem or in Superman (man of steel, Kryptonite).

So, is Pinnochio an example of transubstantiation or of metamorphosis, is the golem? And why does it matter? It doesn't, this is what passes for my comments on trying to understand the ideas presented in the book and by those participating here, but it IS delicious to contemplate.

ginny

I have always been able to tell how thoroughly  I have enjoyed a book by the approach I have to its ending.  I have only 38 pages left to its conclusion and I do not want this novel to end.  I am going to lose my friends that I've come to love so well.

Panels!  Panels, yes that's the word I kept groping for.  I could not remember what the artists call the "site" where their characteritures  (how do you spell that?) are born.

Poor crippled Sammy's dreams of flight and transformation out of Brooklynn have come to fruition as he's matured, having to fight his own demons.  Betrayal, shame  and humiliation continue to prevail on Sam's loving, affectionate nature.

The Escapist has toured fictionalized Europe, liberated the unfortunate  and convened with the scattered masters of the globe.  At 58, I well remember reading of these exploits, begging, borrowing and trading comics.

Charlies "Hem"  theme is brought out again (pg. 150) as Sammy imagines Joe, lost in reverie recalling his homeland and the hem lace of his mother's slip.

The futility of Joe's  despair and rage becomes apparent to us.  The yawn that racked him was the product of his anger and not his fatigue. (175)
(190)  Joe thought back to that morning, when he had stuck his head out into the day and felt as powerful as the Escapist, surging with the mystic Tibetan energies of his rage.  God!  I love that!
 When attacked by Ebling, with the blackjack, the pain swept away the last of the shame and remorse and he became aware of a freshet of anger in his heart.  I swear could this guy suffer any more anger and endure it?  Anger and resentment slowly burn into his heart and I am saddened.  It urges me to reach out and want to comfort him.

What am I saying?   This guy isn't real.  Or is he?  How many Joes do we pass daily?  How much outrage and pique follow us in our own hearts?  Mr. Chabron has captured this pain to perfection.  We actually SEE the red, angry passion here on pg 245.  Joe felt the familiar exultation, the epinephrine flame that burned away doubt and confusion and left only a pure, clear, colorless vapor of rage.

Wow!  Kazamm, is right.  That left me with the chills.

Beuracracy is a mysterious force.  Now anyone care to tackle that theme?

Betty- I'm not sure how far you've read here, and if you've finished. Up to the general point of where we're at in the discussion, the primary "escape" is Joe's from Prague, and perhaps Sammy's from the place of the Flat Bushes. I think there are other forms of escape to come. Other forms that may also be called by some of the words you use.

And Alf, you found another "hem" reference!

Ginny- Wouldn't transforming clay into a living thing - creating "life" - qualify as transubstantiation?
Charlie

As I recall "transubstantiation" is when the accidents remain the same but the substance is changed. The bread still looks like bread, but the inner substance has changed.

Alf, I felt the same toward the end. I wanted it to go on and on. I hope he will write a follow-up to show what they are doing next! Yes, they are a part of us.

Linda

Chabon mixes fact, fiction and meta-fiction together here again with the bomb scare of III-6. Although we don't know it at the time, Carl Ebling is beginning to take action against The Escapist in the guise of The Saboteur. Meanwhile, at a party celebrating the World's Fair after the incident, Salvador Dali is lecturing in a Diving Suit. This actually happened and I loved this conjunction of a real event into the lives of our fictional characters (you can check the links in the header for Part III)! Here also, Joe finally recognizes Rosa Saks and we can see the various threads of the novel begin to come together. Joe ends up saving the life of Salvador Dali: "The near death of a world-famous painter in a diving accident, in a Greenwich Village drawing room, contributed an unimpeachable Surrealist luster to the party." I loved that line.

Rosa invites Joe up to her studio/bedroom and although Joe goes he hesitates. He feels this is too much like living his own life and has some guilt about allowing himself pleasures.

"His life in America was a conditional thing, provisional, unencumbered with personal connections beyond his friendship and partnership with Sammy Clay."

Joe, having escaped from Prague, has also escaped from his own life in some ways. Betty might say is in denial about certain things. It's this attitude about the "provisional" nature of his life that intrigues. How many of us live our lives "provisionally" - until the real thing comes along…until we're past our current troubles and responsibilities? Putting off that clear eyed look at our circumstances that avoid the life of authenticity that so many of us turn from?

We learn a lot more definitively about Sammy (III-10), here also. Had you had inklings up to this point? Sammy has been disturbed by a homosexual kiss seen in the kitchen and sought out Joe in Rosa's room. Sammy is fascinated and repelled at the same time, and jealous of Joe.

"What had so rattled Sammy about the scene he had witnessed? What was he afraid of? Why was he running away?"

Rosa, shocking him, asks Joe: "Is he a fairy?" But Joe seems to understand. So we see another facet to Sammy's "escape" as well as Joe's here. Pulling together the plot a little tighter, we learn that Rosa works for the TVA (Transatlantic Rescue Agency) - an agency that tries to get kids out of Europe. Joe promptly makes an appointment to meet with the agency.

The Funny-Book war has heated up and so has the plot.


CharlieW

Finally caught up to Part IV and so know what Betty is talking about with Luna Moth (we have those here, they scared me the first time I saw them, too) and Andrea with the rage scene, the "Joes among us," yes, it was good.

Hats, I think you are right, in the case of the Eucharist but the definition of transubstantiation in other applications may allow for more change than internal? I really don't know!! I think Charlie is right on the clay to person application, as well...but truth to tell, the whole idea is so far over my head I have no clue, just as I have no clue if there's a difference in auto and self liberation are different or synonymous? I can't find "autoliberation" in my dictionary. It's fascinating to linger over words and concepts, and I note in this section that transformation is again mentioned, on page 258, pertaining to Rosa, even referring to her as "caterpillar girl." I'm starting to wonder which characters are NOT going to undergo a transformation???

Is there any character at this point who has not undergone a transformation? If I said Sammy would everybody wince?

Now I need to go back to the annotated links and look up every reference. Franchot Tone!! I remember him!

Cliffhangers, don't you LOVE the way Part III ends? I was worried a little about Part III there, seemed to drift a bit then BLAMMO!! WHAM!! back on course with a vengeance.

This one sentence here:

"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."

To me, Part III with all it's splendid offerings, was worth it for that. Sammy laughed nervously when he heard it. I laughed when I heard it, is it a laughing matter? Do you know anybody who thinks that anything worth doing has a price attached to it?

Charlie mentions the term "Funny papers." I got up this morning remembering Joe's farewell to his...was it family? "See you in the funny papers." Remember that one? Why DO we agonize over the strange things which come out of our mouths at the MOST inopportune times, have you ever done that?

Comics...funny papers...nobody would call Maus funny or a comic, it seems that's an entire subject we have not covered. Ethel and Albert isn't funny either, just read that one.

Oh and he got me again, Judy and the Book of Lo? hahahaah I got pretty far into that one, to the top of 269 before I caught on again, very clever. I think this time it was the use of the present tense that clued me into the fact that we were inside another creation. Need to go back and look and see if he did that on the Alois Berg/ Tom explanation and LOVED the description of the new Mistress of the Night and her sense of humor, hahahahaa. Reminds me of Michelle however you spell Phiffer's Catwoman in the Batman series.

A great complicated plot here, we not only see how Joe and Sammy feel about things (no, Charlie, I had no idea and still don't actually about any leanings of Sammy, this is the first time I've seen another character has referred to this?) but also Anapol tossing and turning in his bed. In this way we can get both sides of the picture: sort of an omniscient reader except we did not know that Dr. Kavalier had died?

Did any of you think when he saw his father that it was a sign or something that he might be dead?

I know quite a few people who have berated themselves for more than half a century that they were not present at the death of a parent, I'm not sure why it seems to cause such grief.

In poor Joe's case, it's so hard because he tries so hard and is so helpless, and he's still trying with the Transatlantic Rescue Agency, for Thomas. The actuality of such an undertaking would be heartbreaking.

Hysterical footnote on page 225, just a HOOT.

Was anybody but me taken a bit aback by Rosa's comment on page 261, "How is your finger?"

ginny

Ginny. I'm thinking auto and self liberation are interchangeable terms - but I could be wrong. Any aspiring Escapists out there to set me straight on this?

Thanks for bringing up the reference to Rosa as "caterpillar girl" and "moth girl". Remember the dreams of "fabulous escape" back in Part I - the "caterpillar schemes"? Rosa seems a different person to Joe at work and at other times. How common this is, really. Don't so many of us go through these daily mini-transformations in different parts of our lives?

Ginny asks: "Is there any character at this point who has not undergone a transformation? If I said Sammy would everybody wince?" Well, I wouldn't wince, but there are many transformations to come in Part IV, including a huge one for Sammy. And including one on the nature of Joe's art and comic style. Which Ginny alludes to with strips like Maus.

Yes. Cliffhangers, Ginny. Don't they have a little bit of the "serial" in them" The fade out at a climactic point, and a fade in in the next Chapter with the situation obviously (although not directly stated) resolved.

---

George Deasey is sure some cynic, eh? On the other hand, why did he show Sammy and Joe a way out of their predicament at the end of Part III?

Why were you "taken aback" by Rosa's comment on Joe's finger? Hmm?

---

About ready to tackle some of Part IV this week?


Charlie

"Is there any character who has not undergone a transformation," you ask, Ginny. And, no, I wouldn't wince if you suggested "except Sammy." I'll answer the first question by saying that I'm undergoing a transformation. I saw golems and transformations everywhere for a while. Major themes seemed relevant to many individual characters. Now, it seems less important (to me) to analyze how perfectly anyone fits into categories of golem, escape, transformation, etc. These and related themes virtually permeate the story and I will still see them everywhere, as the author planned, I think....but now I'd like to wait unil we are looking at the whole book before deciding if someone was more transformed than someone else, or fit the role of golem, etc.

------------------------------------------------

You also mentioned Charlie's question about the "leanings of Sammy," ...that Charlie caught a hint and you did not. I'm not sure what Charlie saw, but what made me wonder was the length Chabon went...to giving us a visual picture of Sammy's physical presence. Not that anything else was that under-drawn, but Sammy was endlessly detailed, to the point of charicature, I'd say....not of homosexual, per se, but of weakling. THAT's what caught my attention and made me wonder why the pronounced weakling image? What did Chabon think we would make of that?

----------------------------------------

My Mother didn't "berate" herself, Ginny, when she wasn't at her mother's side when she died this spring. It was so painful for her, though, because she had been with her many hours each day for almost two years, a difficult two years. Then, at the end, when the doctor thought there was time for Mother to go home to sleep (my mother isn't in great health and many were worried about her loss of sleep and her deep fatigue....and Grandmother was stable, though in a coma). So, Mother drove 6 blocks home to sleep for a few hours. My mother's brothers, who only had been "visitors" during the many months of long-term care, were with my Grandmother when Mother went home to sleep. Grandmother died within an hour of Mother leaving. When I brought it up later and asked how she felt about this, she said "so sad, so sad." In just this particular story and circumstances, I think Mother missed out on the end of this long journey with Grandmother. They did it together, but Mother was absent when it ended. Or, she felt that way, I think. Sorry for the long example, but Grandmother's been on my mind this week. Her birthday is tomorrow.

betty

Betty, wants to hold off on any final judgments about character transformations. Fair enough, betty (that avoids transformation of our opinions along the way).

---

Betty, if I read her right, hints at a rather pointed criticism of Chabon for choosing to "caricature" Sammy in a particular way. The "pronounced weakling image". What do YOU think the author was after here? Is it possible that the image he is showing us, of a slightly 'damaged' Sammy - is nothing less than Sammy's image of himself? Rather a good question, betty. What do others think here?

---

It's my feeling that people 'berate' themselves at the loss of family mostly when there are unresolved issues. Things not settled.

To answer an earlier question that Ginny posed: As readers, did we take it as a sign that Joe's father was dead when he saw someone resembling him on the gangplank? I did not at the time - only in hindsight, much like Joe. Incidentally, there is a similar sign, I think, in Part IV. At the "last known appearance of the Amazing Cavalieri", Joe tells young Stanley Konigsberg: "You remind me of someone."


Charlie

Ginny talked of the cliffhanger that ended Part III - Sammy's forthcoming offer "to perjure himself" in order to get the upper hand on Anapol. Will it work? Will Joe be able to stay true to the "power" of his art? Will they have to "lay off the Nazis for awhile"?

Part IV and it's the Golden Age. 1941 and it's the Golden Age of comics and the Golden Age for earnings for K&C (nearly $60m between then). No immediate word on the details of Sammy's "perjury" offer - but the results are obvious. Don't you like it when a writer knows what to tell us and what to let us infer?

Joe and Rosa and Sammy seem to have settled down as a little domestic trio, although when Sammy looks at Joe and Rosa he muses about the "hole" in his own life. It's at this point that Sammy meets Tracy Bacon, someone whom he recognizes as lonely - like himself. In one of the funnier scenes in the book, Sammy brings Tracy home for dinner with Mom - to Flatbush. "Where is the actual flat bush?" Bacon wants to know! The banter between Tracy and Sammy is some of the funniest dialogue in the book. And the throw-away asides are Neil Simon bordering on Woody Allen. How about this one, referring to Tracy: "He was golden and beautiful, and he knew how to peel a potato." Or, "His cheeks were rosy with the intensity of his pleasure in the meal. It was either that or the horseradish." Funny stuff! At the end of IV-2 [pg 313], Sammy's mother gives him a look: "Though it would recur often enough in his memory in later years, he would never know exactly what she had meant by that look." What did she mean by that look?


Charlie

Oh good point, Charlie on the Stanley Konigsberg thing, I noticed that but without any foreboding, it appears, having finished Part IV, (because like Lays potato chips, you can't start it and not finish it) I should have been more on the alert.

Good point also on this one: Don't you like it when a writer knows what to tell us and what to let us infer?

I noticed, now that you mention it, that the author cares enough about Sammy to do some foreshadowing to brace the reader: for instance, the beginning of Chapter 7, when he says, "--the moment when, for the first time in his life, he was fully conscious of his own happiness--was a night that he would never discuss with anyone at all." (page 541)

OK this is a shift. Heretofore we, the readers, have been "living" the book. Strange things happen, we have to figure out where we are and what's going on...tantalizing bits are thrown out and amazing adventures...heck, the Saboteur: half the time you don't know IF you're in a comic book or not? So when this little foreshadowing happens, or maybe I should say this....what IS it? We had Dr. Kavalier appearing, that, I guess was foreshadowing, too? Or was it? Is that some sort of "sign" of impending death I'm unaware of?? Anyway, when this occurred, the writer jumped out of the book at me for the first time, in essence saying, ok be good to Sammy here, or at least that's how I took it.

Likewise I see a shift in the characters and like Betty am now going to withhold my thoughts on who's who as regards which one is the golem. When you read, you change your own mind continually and that's what's happening to me, here.

I thought perhaps Rosa's remark about his finger was too prescient? (sp)How did Rosa know that his finger was important in the act??

There's a lot in this Part. I sat and actually howled over "Where is the actual flat bush?" (page 306)

And having just had my son and his friends from work over to dinner on Friday and my sons and new daughter in law to dinner on Sunday and having listened to a lecture on over cooked food, etc., and having witnessed for myself biscuits which did not rise and resembled hockey pucks, I just DIED over this:

Dinner was a fur muff, a dozen clothespins, and some old dish towels boiled up with carrots.

hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

This dialogue:

"An eternal question among my people," Sammy said. "There are some who argue that it's actually a kind of very small hassock."

actually brought tears from laughing to my eyes, not to mention, "She must have been lighting gas stoves for thirty years, but each time it was as if entering a burning building." You got that right, Young Man!! hahahahahah

Yes, Sir! I'm with Ethel there all the way. What's a mother for, anyway? Why get third degree burns? Ounce of prevention...etc.

---

Yes, let's talk about this line:

"Will he," she said, and, lifting the wrapped dish, she looked him in the eye for the first time all evening.

Though it would recur often enough in his memory in later years, he would never know exactly what she had meant by that look.

Wonder why she brought that up? It's nice to know that a look and a simple question will be remembered years later by handsome successful and powerful sons, I must remember that. I think I will begin trying it out next Sunday, will let you know how it worked (they will probably put me in an asylum).

ginny

Yes, I enjoyed the part where Sammy took his friend to mom's. And I roared when it said the door buzzer was like the sound of his mom's voice. There were some choice words about mom and her cooking,t oo..

Meeting Owen Meany, dancing with Joseph Cottom, dancing to a swing band. It was somehow reminiscent of F. Scott Fitzgerald. The people, the music, the society, I guess. I know, I know, wrong decade.

Linda

Linda, I have to tell you all this, I missed the doorbell. When I read this book it immediately sends me off on tangents of my own life? And I went off on the chicken tangent when I just reread the doorbell, that is so funny, thank you for calling our attention to it!!! hahahahaha

Want to know what my voice sounds like? Well we, as some of you know, live on a farm and we had chickens and you know how a chicken sounds: braaaaack! Squaaaaak! Well my oldest son's name is Scott and one day he and his dad were out in the field, and Scott kept saying, listen, Mama is calling me...can't you hear it? And they listened and heard what sounded to them like me calling "Scott!" So he said he better go and see what I wanted?

But it wasn't me, it was a chicken, and they have never let me live it down so I can relate to buzzers hahahahahahahah that sound like a Mother's voice. hahahahahahahaah

Sorry, just had to tell that true story.

Squaakkkkk!

Ginny- The author not only has a good sense of what to tell us and when, but he knows when to release information early to cushion the blow later on (as you have indicated). This is the difference between a writer who plays with your emotions and one who tells us a story and lets his characters touch us legitimately. We are not hit with Thomas' death like a sack of bricks, we have forebodings and intimations, and are therefore more touched and sympathize with those he leaves behind all the more. As Ginny says - he CARES about his characters, not about manipulating the emotions of the reader. We should respect that, as he respects us.

C'mon, Ginny. You've got to be a better cook than that!! Or is it that Philly upbringing? That was too funny. I see that you and Linda found a lot of humor in this part, just as I did…

OK, that line again:
At the end of IV-2 [pg 313], Sammy's mother gives him a look: "Though it would recur often enough in his memory in later years, he would never know exactly what she had meant by that look." What did she mean by that look?

This is preceded by Sammy telling his mother that he'd like to meet someone (like Joe has met Rosa). His mother says she'd like that too and asks "how was he?" - and at Sammy's "Who's that?", nods to the other room, where Tracy is. Sammy tells his mother that Tracy will "do just fine" meaning that he'll make a good Escapist.

"Will he," she said, and, lifting the wrapped dish, she looked him in the eye for the first time all evening. Though it would recur often enough in his memory in later years, he would never know exactly what she had meant by that look.

At first, I thought this indicated some knowledge by his mother that Tracy and her son may be becoming lovers. I've changed my mind on re-reading. Now I believe that it was only Sammy's being uncomfortable in the company of his mother under the circumstances - he feeling that she was sensing more than she did. I think her questions were innocent ones, and that he was just projecting his discomfort. It's open to either interpretation, I think. Good writing.

---

Linda, wrong decade, maybe, but….But he did capture the feeling of the era through its pop culture, the same as you describe the Lost (was it?) Generation.


Charlie

Anyone looking for the buzzer turn to page 307 <hb).

He did a tremendous job with the era of the pre-war and war years. And he's such a youngun'!

Dali adds a surrealist feel to the book, but I felt many things in the book were in the surrealism vein. Or was it just crazy circumstances?

Enjoyed your story, Ginny!

You're right, Charlie, about Chabon cushioning the blow of Thomas. I was surprised he did it that way. It might have had even more impact, but, as you say, he respects his characters, too. Interesting viewpoint. Never thought of that before.

Linda

Linda- You're exactly right about Dali's appearance in the book (and I repeat this was, at least partly, a real incident). As if on cue, the novel took a definite surrealist turn after that didn't it? Especially where Joe's art was concerned. Starting with his creation of Luna Moth, inspired by Moth Girl Rosa, Joe was introduced to "American sources of the Surrealist idea" [319] by Rosa's father - ironically after having saved the life of Mr. Surrealism himself. His Luna Moth "lay poised on the needle-sharp fulcrum between the marvelous and the vulgar that was, to Rosa, the balancing point of Surrealism." An interesting time for Joe, here, this Golden Age. He's beginning to grow into a man.

"It was as if, she [Rosa] thought, he had been engaged in a process of transferring himself from Czechoslovakia to America, from Prague to New York, a little at a time, and every day there was more of him on this side of the ocean."

That's a bit surrealistic in and of itself, isn't it. Talk about a transformation! At the same time Joe is beginning "to envision the transformation of his brother into an American boy." Segmental transference and mental transformation….

It's at this point that Joe receives "the last letter that [he] was ever to receive from his mother." It's an interesting prop for Joe and gives rise to this line from Part IV (The Golden Age) - a line which I can't quite get my head around. Help me out here?: [pg 325]

Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity

What does this mean to you?
Charlie

The golden age line stumped me, also, but then I thought how easy it recently has been, during our economic "good times," to neglect (disregard) those whose lives have not been good. I suppose this is true of any era that gets a positive label. The "good old days" usually disregards all but white males. I'm not sure, though, if any of this applies...it's just what the line make me think.

betty

Good question, Charlie. I've really enjoyed all the links about Parts III and IV, I did not know Franchot Tone starred much less won an Oscar for Mutiny on the Bounty, the old one, that's very interesting. Alas, the site "A Tribute to Franchot Tone" did not reveal any untoward leanings, I would like to learn more.

The August 20/ August 27 issue of US News has a huge section on the Super Hero and the Real Hero. It says Heroes:

Go beyond the call of duty

Act wisely under pressure

Risk their life, their fortune, or their reputation

Champion a good cause

Serve as a calling to our higher selves

You can't say we're not au courant here!

I was likewise shocked while watching the tail end of Antique Roadshow Monday night to see one of the experts exclaiming over a book apparently signed by the greats of the cartoon world, Windsor McKay, a man I had never heard of until this book, his autograph and musings were especially pointed out and the book was full of creative scribblings and drawings. Unfortunately I missed most of the description. It's amazing how, when you read something, that the elements in the book stand out in everything you see and do.

How reading adds to our life.

---

I have a question, too: what does "Kayn ayn hora," mean (Let's hope he has a chance? or something else?) What is a trayf? I'm assuming it's not good I'd like to know what it means?

---

On the letter from Joe's mother, I was confused as to why he did not open it? Afraid of the contents? Afraid of what it might reveal?

I think the statement "Every golden age is as much a matter of disregard as of felicity" might be a condemnation or wry remark on the dual levels present at all times. You might call it a Golden Age but in order to keep that level of gold, that felicity, you might need to disregard more painful realities or thoughts. At least that's how I read it. When you consider the "Golden Ages" of anything there is usually an undercurrent of something else very ungolden going on.

ginny

I think that a "golden age" refers to the loss of innocence.

In real life,I remember reading and collecting comic books,and in the reading,being transported to a world that was greater than the reality of my "real world" and in that other world anything was/is possible..invcluding becoming a super hero myself.

The possibility of great imaginative thinking and creations always exited while reading comic books.The only comic I ever recall having any social message was Will Eisner's The Spirit..which to this day remains one of my all time favorites.

Of course,if my mother had never thrown away by collection of DC comics and Marvel comics,I might be enjoying a "golden age" today.

Re: Trayf....trayf is a yiddishism for something..especially food,that is not Kosher..although it can perjoratively be used as an insult to describe a person. (such as..oy,he's so stupid that he must have brains made from trayf)

Thank you, Ed, I can't seem to remember how trayf is pronounced but I remember how it was said? As many times as I've heard it, is it "treff?"

I believe I have only heard it used in the more perjorative meanings. (Remind me to tell you all about my youthful summers working in Kosher hotels in the Borscht Belt when you are totally bored someday)...hahaha

I liked your take on the Golden Age, concept, Ed. My mother threw away all my 5 and 10 cent comics, too, don't we all wish.

ginny

Betty, I think what you say fits, and really falls in line with both what Ginny and Ed are saying. Ed, in fact, adds another dimension and brings up possibly another major theme in the novel: The loss of innocence. We haven't talked about that much, if at all. Perhaps because of our approach here - the loss of innocence is in the latter part of the book. We build up and to the Golden Age of Part IV.

Funny, I was concentrating on the word 'felicity' and paid scant attention to the word "disregard". The key word, of course.

Ginny talked about the letter from Joe's mother and was "confused as to why he did not open it?" I am sure he WAS afraid of what it might reveal, having gotten the news of his father earlier. Don't you think that his not opening it was "as much a matter of disregard as of felicity?" He was embarrassed at himself for not opening it. "He was twenty years old, and he had fallen in love with Rosa Saks." He was afraid of bad news interfering with the good news of his Golden Age. WE know the contents of the letter (although Joe does not) and his mother tells him to forget them - to begin to live his own life. This is in fact, at least for the moment, what he is doing, no? Following the advice of an unread letter…The reminder it periodically gives him in his pocket is another of those very nicely constructed lines:

"there came the crinkling of pap; the flutter of a wing; the ghostly foolscap whisper from home; and for a moment he would hang his head in shame."

Ginny says: "When you consider the "Golden Ages" of anything there is usually an undercurrent of something else very ungolden going on." And an adjunct to these theories of Golden Ages is this from pg 340: "One of the sturdiest precepts of the study of human delusion is that every golden age is either past or in the offing (Ginny's "aetataureate delusion."). Most usually in the past, I think.

When we're young it's in the offing and when we're 'of an age' it's in the past though another one is coming, but we won't be around for it!!

---

Ginny- Where is the "Kayn ayn hora" reference? Thanks Ed, for the other explanation.
Charlie

Super-hero as alter-ego? The Walter Mitty syndrome? Do you have a super-hero inside waiting to be set free? The super-heroes of Carl Ebling and Joe Kavalier battle each other as The Saboteur vs. The Escapist.

"…but the stuttering doormat with whom he must share his existence…"

Share his existence, indeed.

After the bar mitzvah, after the explosion, the letter from his mother lost, unread…

…"he began to understand the nature of magic. The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place." [pg 339]

Like the illusion of innocence.
Charlie

Since there was a question about kine-ahora, I wanted to give the meaning. This is from Joys of Yiddish by Leo Rosten. "1 The magical phrase uttered to ward off the evil eye, a reflex of mumbo-jumbo employed to protect a child or loved one. 2. The phrase uttered to show that one's praises are genuine and not contaminated by envy-i.e., "I cast no evil eye...." That man is an angel, kine-ahora"

Thank you Risa for that explanation, we appreciate that. Are you reading this story? Have you been enjoying the yiddish phrases?

Risa, thanks for that. Now if Ginny would only tell me where this phrase occurred, I could put the pieces together!!! It wasn't in the Max Schmeling episode (Max was giving Joe and SAmmy the "fish-eye") so it would have helped there...
Charlie

Going back to look at Chabon's context, once again, of disregard and happiness ("felicity") in a golden age, I see Joe's continued transformation from Prague to America (gaining weight and gaining a girlfriend) includes a decrease in thoughts of his family. You know, even if his concern for his family had been at a normal level....but, in his situation, what's normal?...he's been obsessed...but even if the thoughts had been at a normal level, he's right on schedule, age wise, to turn to thoughts of self over thoughts of family. The 20s up to early 30s is major self-absorption time.

Joe's moments of shame...I'll bet some of us identify with this. During long stretches of time in my 20s and 30s, when things were going 100 miles an hour and I was ecstatic to be alive....what family? Oh, yeah, family. CALL your mother. Ok, ok, ok.

I've just written my mother this week that my long talks with my son over the past few months involve my saying "uh huh" for 3 hours. I told her that I so clearly see my self-absorbed self in him at this age. I asked her if it was too late to say I'm sorry. (I've already said I'm sorry about the late teen stuff.)

-----------------------------------------------

Chabon's images/descriptions are just wonderful. When Joe spotted the smoke offstage, Chabon ended a sentence with "....smoke that was scribbling the air." I love it when someone goes to that much trouble for an image. Scribbling the air.

I forgot to mark the page, but somewhere in the last section or so, Joe, still learning catchy phrases in English, said, "That gives me the creep." I laughed and laughed over that one. Creep, all by itself, sounds so funny to me.

We talked before of the exaggerated world of the story as one indication of similarity to a comic book world. I found another possible example of similarity, not of exaggeration, but of inanimate objects quietly alive. Page 346. "The refrigerators hummed softly to themselves." The sentence is lovely, and that's why I stopped, but then the image made me think of a make-believe world.

betty

"The refrigerators hummed softly to themselves."

I remember seeing that, too, Betty. He has a magnificent way with words.

Thanks, Risa, for clarifying that phrase. Very helpful. Now if Charlie can find the page...

Linda

Chabon uses imagery so well and is a wonderful writer. I have enjoyed reading all your comments. Going back to the phrase, "Kay ayn hora" - you can find it on page 512, Sammy and Bacon are at Sammy's mother apt for dinner. After Sammy says that he thinks Joe will stay after the War, his mother says "Kayn ayn Hora,... Let's hope he has a choice."

Thanks a lot, Risa. You know how those things can bother a person! Tell me, have you read Michael Chabon before? And if not, may IO ask why you chose to read this one?

Good choice to point out Chabon's use of imagery, betty. Some writers use images you've heard before, but do them very nicely. Chabon has used many here, like the one you chose, that you've never heard before. And he uses them very nicely, indeed.


Charlie

When Joe and Sammy are invited to the premier of Citizen Kane, they see the future of comic books

It was that Citizen Kane represented, more than any other movie Joe had ever seen, the total blending of narration and image that was - didn't Sammy see it? - the fundamental principle of comic book storytelling, and the irreducible nut of their partnership.

J Joe the image maker and Sammy the storyteller. They were so blown away by the ideas floating around in their heads from the movie that they pitch a whole new way of making comics to Anapol. Anapol tells them they can give it a try, but with one caveat: They must "stop the fighting" - lay off the Nazis. To Sammy's surprise (and Anapol's), Joe readily agrees. To your surprise?


Charlie

Not surprised, Charlie, because I thought Joe had already turned to "doll" comics, or Luna Moth dreamy scenes, precursor to 60s psychodelic images. Wasn't it a footnote that placed the Luna Moth image into the 60s? I instantly had a memory of a psychodelic angel with wild colored wings. So, I wonder if Chabon's Luna Moth was inspired by a real image.

By the way, it took a few references to "doll" before I remembered that during the 30s, 40s, "doll" was an endearment for a woman, much as honey, sugar, sweetie. (Consider yourself lectured on these "endearments" and I won't have to type it. Thanks.)

betty

Risa, thank you SOO much, I love that, doesn't it remind you of the Chinese? A similar thing is said by Wang Lung in The Good Earth, for instance, about his baby son. I love that. And isn't it echoed in the Italian "malocchio" as well?

This is great, WELCOME to the Books!

---

Am I the only person on earth who has not been able to sit thru a performance of Citizen Kane? Who does not care for the late great and impossibly vain Orson Welles? Who can't see the tag line of the movie "Rosebud," without thinking what it really referred to?

I was for the purposes of this discussion, going to force self to watch the thing, but I think I'll pass, pearls before swine you know. My impression of genius is David Mamet and Glengarry GlenRoss , now THAT was genius.

Anyway.

One thing that interests me in this book is the different themes and the way they converge and separate and converge again, it's like a dance and ever since the NY Times alerted me to the presence of the golem's setting off a new theme, I've been on hyper alert to see if there are other indicators of themes being announced. The impression you get is of a very carefully crafted story line so any divergence after a while is startling, at least that's how I see it.

For instance, Bernard Kornblum's house appears on page 415 again? What does that mean?

I was surprised, Charlie by the agreement till I saw the coda. I keep wondering what inspired this book, there seems to be a lot of inside knowledge of the world of the cartoonist here.

---

We haven't talked about Rosa much, despite her overwhelming presence in the book. I'm wondering why Joe does not seem inclined to marry her?

---

What does this mean on page 375: "even John Garfield would have had to agree that their behavior since that night in the lightning storm...." What's the deal with John Garfield?

ginny

I must have first watched Citizen Kane just at the right time.....right when I got interested in movie history and major shifts in how movies are made. Welles introduced major changes in style and production. The politics of releasing the movie is also fascinating. Because of Hearst's power in the country, it's really a wonder that the movie was ever released.

Ginny: Not necessarily germane to this discussion,but what's your criteria for genius? (Re:Citizen Kane)

The depiction of Kane in the film is someone bigger than life...as are the comic superheroes...complete with sidekick? (as portrayed by Joseph Cotton)

Does it seem to you as though the sidekicks are equivalent to a Greek Chorus?

There was once a terrific documentary on PBS about the making of Citizen Kane..if you ever get a chance to see it,it might change your opinion about the film.

Yes, Mamet is a genius of playwriting..but he might be standing on Welles' shoulders. (Speaking of Mamet,have you seen State and Main?)

Betty- Some of those footnotes are pretty interesting as far as form is concerned. Some refer to real events and some to imaginary ones - further picking at the seam of reality. Luna Moth was most interesting to me in that the same image played a prominent part in Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, discussed here earlier this year. (and betty - my consciousness has been sufficiently raised - rest the keys!!

Orson Welles was quite enamored of magic himself. Back in the day, we had a wonderful theater in Cambridge, called The Orson Welles Theater. That's where I learned my way around foreign films and modern cinema. He visited once and brought in a movie he made called "F" is for Fake. Can't argue with Ginny's "impossibly vain" attribution - but he was a pioneer - although he didn't do much of anything worthwhile after A Touch of Evil (1958)…..ah, but if he had done only THAT! No other movie quite like it.

Ginny: "Bernard Kornblum's house appears on page 415 again"? Well his house doesn't appear but he remembers the LAST time he drowned. That was in The Moldau and he was saved by Kornblum. Remember the conceit here, temporarily, is that he has drowned and ended up in Gravesend! Then he just remembers that the last time he was this drunk, was when he showed up at BK's house in Prague after his first aborted 'escape.'

---

John Garfield is just a macho image for Sammy, don't you think, Ginny? Along about this time, Tracy takes to calling Sammy Clay Boy, by the way…


Charlie

Hang on, I'm working on this, unbelievable!!

Golden Boy Garfield!



Check it out:

JOHN GARFIELD 1913-1952. Befitting his tough guy persona, John Garfield was born Jacob Julius Garfinkle on New York's Lower East Side and spent his early life in reform schools, where he took up an interest in boxing and drama. Embittered over being passed over for the lead in GOLDEN BOY—a role which was written for him—he signed a contract with Warner Bros. and made his motion picture debut in 1938. Though he tried valiantly to break from the studio's typecasting him as a tough guy, Garfield appeared in such films as THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL, THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE and NOBODY LIVES FOREVER. Unfortunately, Garfield's career was cut short by his untimely death at age 39, and his funeral was mobbed by thousands of fans, in the largest funeral attendance for an actor since Rudolph Valentino.

ginny

Good work, Ginny. I'd forgotten about Golden Boy. I think I had read somehere that the Clifford Odets play Golden Boy was written for him , as you say. I didn't know amything about the movie.


Charlie

I just saw the paperback of K and C today. I love it!! Better even than the hardback. I picked it up lovingly and slowly turned it over and laughed out loud right in B&N! It reminded me of the backs of those comic books. Oh my, I would take as much time reading all the teensy-weensy ads as I did the book itself. Cute idea for the pb!! I love it!!

Linda

I agree, Linda. I saw a poster of the PB about a month before it came out at a bookstore reading. It is a great cover.


Charlie

We talked before about how Chabon gives us foreknowledge about some events before they happen. I said it softens the blow and that he cared a lot about his characters AND the reader. He refuses to manipulate the emotions of the reader in ways that are all too common in many movies and in some lesser fiction. But does this make any sense? What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think he does this?

The latest example comes in IV-10:

“…the circulation figures for the Kavalier & Clay titles increased steadily until, by the abrupt termination of the partnership, they had nearly doubled…”

There is no further mention of this, but it is obvious that with the climactic ending of IV-14, the partnership is probably over.
Charlie

This is probably not what you're looking for, Charlie, but strictly from a plot-driven reader standpoint, a provocative teaser increases interest. News at 11.

Also, I remember a reading phase I went through when any pre-telling felt like a reminder that the what was less important than the how. It did shake me loose from relying on plot.

betty

Oh, that IS interesting, though, betty. The latter part, I mean. The shaking loose from a reliance on plot. A device to force the reader to pay attention to the WHAT? Or the WHY that was so important to Joe and Sammy? I Like it, indeed.

---

Tracy asks Sammy an interesting question: "What's your favorite place ever? In the whole city, I mean?" I'm not sure that this question can be asked about any other place other than New York City, but maybe I'm wrong. I'm sure it has to be asked though, about the place that one grew up in at least? At any rate, how would you answer that question? Where did you grow up? And what is your favorite place there ever - and why?

Sammy makes an interesting choice - the closed New York World's Fair. His reasons are clear and understandable:

"He had grown up in an era of great hopelessness, and to him and millions of his fellow city boys, the Fair and the world it foretold has possesses the force of a covenant, a promise of a better world to come, that he would alter attempt to redeem in the potato fields of Long Island." [more foretelling]

The visit elicits a very poignant response from Sammy: "…like childhood, the Fair was over, and he would never be able to visit again." Childhood over? Never be able to visit again...The innocence of childhood over with its golden promises? And yet, Sammy will try to reconstruct this promise "in the potato fields of Long Island."

Do we, in our adult lives, try to reconstruct a world that holds the promise of our youth?

What's your favorite place ever?

I suppose mine would be indelibly linked in my mind with summer. With summer at my Grandmothers in Georgia. With a specific day during a specific summer at a lakeside home of a friend of my Grandmothers in Georgia. At a large deep blue pool beside the lake at the home of a friend of my Grandmothers in Georgia. With a specific moment in time when I broke the still, leaf strewn water of the deep blue pool beside the lake at the home of a friend of my Grandmothers in Georgia. How can I say why this is? Why that specific moment stands out as a moment that I shall never forget? Was it the age? I was perhaps fourteen and perhaps in love with my sixteen year old cousin, and perhaps I thought that it would always be like that day forever. Perhaps it was the freedom I felt in being my-SELF IN the world. That my place was assured, or at least now firmly in my grasp. How can I say why this is? Perhaps it was the loss of that all-powerful innocence that was to come later that freezes that moment like a recurring dream in my memory. How can I say why this is?

What's you favorite place ever?
Charlie

Michael Chabon (pronounced Shay-bawn) was interviewed to day by Terry Gross on Fresh Air (the best interviewer around). Actually, since she congratulates him on just winning the Pulitzer, this must be a rerun. At any rate, give it a listen if you have the time. It runs about 39 minutes, and includes a reading by the author of an early section of the book. Chabon is really an enthusiastic and loquacious guy it would seem from the interview.

One of the more interesting parts was his response to Terry's question about Houdini as an inspiration and what he meant to Chabon. He says that as the theme of Escape emerged gradually in his writing, the idea of Houdini began to "press itself upon his imagination". In many ways, he says that Houdini is the unacknowledged forbear of the Superhero - he fits the definition: He has a secret identity (Erich Weiss), and he fought crime (by debunking false mediums almost like a superhero crusade). Houdini was also an important hero to American immigrants.

He spends a bit of time talking about the themes of transformation and the awareness of comics writers (or lack thereof) of utilizing this theme consciously. He tips his cap to Will Eisner (The Spirit) who "invented the graphic novel" as one of those who had a degree of self awareness.

He talks about the Golem parallels to superhero (Golem as "artificial man created out of clay or mud" and then brought to life). Ultimately he sees both The Golem and Houdini as antecedents of the super-hero - defenders of the weak and helpless. He talked about the debt of the genre to Jewish writers and of the assimilationist fantasy ("all superheroes are Jewish")

There is a bit of an awkward moment (highly unusual for Terry) when she asks about those who have assumed that Chabon was gay because of some of his themes. Chabon handles it well, though.

Interesting just to hear the writer talk about his themes and his work.

You can listen to it here if you'd like.


Charlie

Well, bless you, Charlie, for asking about our favorite place within the city we grew up and a favorite place ever. I knew I wouldn't have a favorite place in the city where I grew up, but intending to squeeze out a "maybe," I thought and thought. Within just a short time, I'd realized I do have some favorite places, plural even!! My grandmother's house was a safe haven for me...fear at home, safety and comfort at Grandmother's. Since we lived only blocks away from her in Killeen, Texas, a small military town next to a huge military base (largest geographically in the world), I loved, loved being at her house. A loving, wise, supportive, affectionate person she was, just like my mother. Staying overnight with her was beyond wonderful. Going "window shopping" with her was our favorite, private thing to do, just the two of us. It usually meant that she bought me something needed, new school shoes, new pajamas, etc. We were extraordinarily poor (Grandmother was not), so even the practical gifts were as exciting to me as impractical gifts today. Her purchase of a beautiful, grey wool, heavy coat with a pink velvet collar and pink velvet pocket flaps stands out as our best window shopping. I was 8 years old.

Another favorite childhood place was summer camp at Glen Rose, Texas. I went to camp each summer after 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades, I think. The children's camp, Glen Lake Camp, was built beside a river with girls' cabins on one side and boys' cabins on the other. It was a Methodist church camp, though not very churchy, and was the same camp my mother had attended when she was young. I learned about life in those girls' cabins. We were all too young to wear makeup, so we would gather around the one girl (there was always one) who was allowed to wear makeup and had brought a trunk full, lighted mirror and all. Camp was many things...swimming, hiking, square dancing, crafts, group singing after dark beside the river, falling in love each summer with the high school aged life guard. Each time I went to camp, I was the only camper who received mail on Monday, the first full day. My mother always mailed a letter to the camp before I left home, so I'd have a letter on Monday, as well as each day after that. Camp lasted a week, from Sunday afternoon until Saturday morning, when we would all hug and cry and go home. I can still smell the river after dark, that slight smell of sulpher; and the odd combination of smells in the girls' cabins....10 kinds of inexpensive cologne or bath powders mixed with musty cabin smell. I wouldn't mind staying there a week right now. Wonder who the life guard would be.

betty

I forgot to say how much I enjoyed reading of your favorite spot, Charlie. What a beautiful job describing that water...I can really see it. You wrote of an age of heightened senses and a beautiful place...a magical combination. Your style of repetition was soothing, was lulling me into being right there. Very nice.

Favorite place anywhere. Could there be any doubt? Cannon Beach, Oregon, in my cabin a half block from the ocean, in a dense stand of spruce, mountains in the distance. I miss it.

betty

Charlie, thank you for that interview and for your lyric moving favorite place ever. I find to my shock I can't answer that question? Why?

I wonder why?

I am very gratified to see that grandmothers play a part in your and Betty's remembering, gives hope to those of us who hope to BE grandmothers someday but who might not be the closest at hand? Yes, gives hope.

Ed, you are a sharpie!! I think I'll withdraw what was an unfair remark ("impossibly vain") and judgment. I did not know the man personally, thus I have no inkling of how vain he was, XXXX. In addition, I did see the documentary and I was just all emotional over what a wonder we had been given in this unparalleled talent, oh I tied into it, I believed, and then I tried to watch Citizen Kane.

Let's rephrase: I did not care for the movie Citizen Kane, just say I lack the refined taste to appreciate it, and I love David Mamet even tho I can't spell his name, and no I haven't seen State and Main, have you, and is it good?

Did any of you see Waiting for Guffman last night? It's a combination of Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road (without the black bitter twists) and Waiting for Godot, very strange, very odd, anybody but me see it?

Charlie so right so right, well done, the house did not appear, sloppy reading and you can't do that with this book!

I really liked this thought from Ed:

Does it seem to you as though the sidekicks are equivalent to a Greek Chorus?

Greek chorus hah? So are we saying....what are we saying by this thought? The man of steel's motives are not self apparent and he needs a sidekick to help? Wonderful thought. WHY would a superhero who can save the world need ANYBODY to help him get the message across?

There were two lines in this section I really enjoyed, one was "The jacket was the color of the sky over Prague Castle on a clear winter night..." I've not seen Prague even in the winter but somehow I love that image, or the blackness it conjures for me. However, having just been in Munich during a monsoon and observing that the sun, no matter what the day had brought, came out promptly at 8 pm every night, no matter what, I pause over this. I have in mind a black navy sort of illuminated thing. I guess we'll all have to go to Prague and find out! That was on page 320.

There was another one which I marked but can't find about the toe curling contentment of a woman on a couch settling in for a good book, I really liked that image but don't know where it was.

Since magic as well plays a big part of the book, I wonder what it IS about magic that attracts mostly little boys? You don't find many little girls trying magic tricks, at least most of the great magicians are men, and it's all flummery, isn't it. Magic and superheroes, are these just reactions to a world the individual cannot control?

Charlie, I loved this thought: Do we, in our adult lives, try to reconstruct a world that holds the promise of our youth?

I think so, if we have the means and ability? I think that's where the fanatical desire for "traditions" in such things as a game of football or the attendant picnic or the attendant rituals of that game come from. It's a TRADITION the sports fan cries out (not a publicity/ money making latter day Colosseum) it's a TRADITION and we make new ones daily.

It's what we're trying to do here, perhaps?

ginny

Thanks, Betty, for your favorite places. Lovely memories, well remembered.

For me, that youthful innocence and new-found indestructibility - all things seemed possible. For Betty, the safe haven and comfort. Very different - different experiences. Your Oregon cabin sounds like a safe haven, also. This is interesting. To Sammy - the Future - a city of Hope. What happens when we revisit those places again (if it is possible)? You can revisit a place, but not the time that made it. When Sammy went back, all that was left were the symbols, but now a hollow shell. The symbols stood "like the totems of some discredited Millerite cult that briefly thrills and then bitterly disappoints its adherents with grand and terrible prophecies."[emphasis mine] As in You Can't Go Home Again, Sammy realizes "the Fair was over, and he would never be able to visit again."[emphasis mine] What he thought was granite, or possibly limestone was but plaster of paris! What had been the

"fountains, the pylons and sundials, the statues of George Washington and Freedom of Speech and Truth Showing the Way to Freedom had been peeled, stripped, prized apart, knocked down, bulldozed into piles, loaded onto trucks beds, dumped into barges, towed out past the mouth of the harbor, and sent to the bottom of the sea."

Wow. All this made Sammy sad, not because of the symbolism which I so mightily want to impose, but just because the feeling of the initial experience was (and is) irretrievable. Didn't you love that final scene (IV-11) of Sammy and Tracy laying flat and looking at the city of the future at eye level?

Sad, this loss of innocence, this loss of safe havens, but cast a cold eye on our memories, we must.

Ginny is gratified that our memories center around our grandmothers. Later (in IV-16), when Joe has shown up at Ethel's house after returning from the grave(end), he is showering when his grandmother "shuffled into the bathroom, lifted the skirt of her nightgown, and, apparently unaware of Joe's presence, lowered her pale blue behind onto the pot." Speaking Yiddish, she tells him he should have listened to her about the boat. She then leaves, turning off the light to leave him showering in the dark. Another scene that I found very affecting and poignant. There is the realization of a terrible loss here, but a hint of the necessity that life goes on in its inexorable fashion, leaving us here, either in light or darkness, as is our wont.

---

No, I didn't see for Waiting for Guffman, Ginny. And when are we going to do Richard Yates here??? Hmm?

Magic is illusion, Ginny? Much like the illusions of the City Of the Future? When you get up close to it, when you get INSIDE it, you see what tricks and sleights of hand make it all work and seem so real. I liked very much this thought of Ginny's: "Magic and superheroes, are these just reactions to a world the individual cannot control?" Are men more driven to try to control the events of the world? Are women, more likely to get on with the daily task of living, shuffling from this day to the next? Doing what needs to be done? Did the difference between my memory and betty's memory validate this point?


Charlie

I had the book from the library but was not able to start it until Friday. I am in Part III trying to catch up. This is the first book I have read recently that I felt I had to have a dictionary beside me. Chabon uses words so effectively! When I look a word up, it is the perfect word. Lots of adjectives and adverbs--so much description. And so much information! I am really glad I am reading this one. It's a good book.

And the links that Charlie has provided and the rest of you have added to are great. I am going to read fast so I can be with you as you complete the book. Marge

Marge- Welcome. We're very glad you are reading this book and are joining us.
Charlie

On the question of boys' fascination with magic tricks and what this might signify....I don't look for a mysterious analysis, but look into toy stores or into adults' purchasing habits. Adults might talk a good game of boys and girls being equal, but toys purchased tell another story. Boys learn spatial skills playing with toys that build things and girls learn nurturing skills singing 6 dolls (or stuffed puppies) to sleep, etc., etc. Stores still arrange toys into girl and boy aisles. This is just one source of behavior expectations for boys and girls. Another would be public role models...most magic performers were men (all?).

During the time period covered in the book, it wouldn't occur to most parents or girls that learning magic tricks would be appropriate girl play. There probably were girls who played with their brother's magic kits, but the idea of becoming a professional who toured and performed was much less likely to surface. (This is linked to those professions that were outside choices for young girls and women because "being on the road" touring was not appropriate behavior. Naturally, there were women who did this anyway, but their messages were often overshadowed by righteous questions of, "Why aren't you at home taking care of a husband and having children?")

I think it was in high school that I became fascinated with card tricks. I could do only a few, but it was so cool to watch the faces of those I'd stumped.

There was also a dime trick I learned from ???...incredibly simple to do, but people were fooled EVERY time. Left Elbow on table, chin in hand. With right hand, rub dime up and down on outside forearm from wrist to elbow. Pretend to be frustrated that it doesn't work. "Accidently" drop the dime on the table, and instead of picking it up with the right hand, pick it up with the left hand and keep it there as you rest your chin on the same hand (again). Now, pretending to have the dime in your right hand, rub it again up and down from wrist to elbow. Than, present empty open hand. The dime has disappeared!! A variation is to put the dime in your left ear just as you are in the process of putting chin in hand. The dime "reappears" in your ear after disappearing.

betty

Betty- GET THAT DIME OUT OF YOUR EAR!!

Uh, what did you say?

betty

Marge!! Welcome, my goodness you ARE a fast reader. I had plunged ahead, anxious not to be left behind and thought the heading said Part V thru Chapter 14 and there is no Chapter 14 in V so went on to VI and am tremendously enjoying the plot, this book just plunges you from one milieu to another and "adventure" is not half a description, many many things to discuss, quo vadis, our Charlie, after today?

I don't know why I bother to ask that one as I have to read on now, and see what happens.

Betty, I find to my shock that magic tricks make me anxious? I have always stared at magicians trying to "see" how they did that. Just reading your description made me anxious to be sure I could "do" it (I can't) and not to miss the mark. Funny, hah?

Great points, Marge!

Andrea, where are you?

TBA?????

Ollie ollie oxen freeeeee.

ginny

Ginny- If you, or anyone else gets a chance, go see a Penn & Teller show. These guys are funny and break all the rules of magic (much to the chagrin of the establishment). Barring that, catch them on television sometime.

I was thinking about through Part V this week and Part VI (finish) next week.

Charlie

What's the punchline to that old joke, Betty? I can't hear you, I've got a dime (or bananna) in my ear!!

hahahahaha, yeah, I did think of that punchline, Charlie, but only long after the edit window was closed. What did you say? I can't hear you, I've got a dime in my ear. I'm the very best with funny comebacks, two hours later. Or any comebacks, really. In the moment, I'm anxious and defensive. Hours later (alone), I'm cool, witty, brilliant.

Oh, my goodness. We just had the best rolling, booming thunder. I haven't seen rain for 45 days, I think it is. Rain was part of that image you quoted, Ginny......she was curled up reading a book while it rained outside. Nothing better.

My favorite place. Don't know...I have too many of them.

Sometimes my favorite place is wherever I happen to be at the moment.

Superhero sidekicks: I suspect they keep the superhero grounded in reality,since, as I recall,the sidekicks are much less than superhero (for the most part) Maybe the sidekick is the Golem who watches over or keeps the superhero grounded?

Chabon believes that comics are a legitimate art form. Any comment on that outlook?

Ed- I wouldn't argue what that contention, Ed. At least so far as graphic novels are concerned. If there's one thing I've learned from reading this novel, it's that I've gained appreciation for the form itself and the talented artists who pioneered the field.


Charlie

Charlie said, "I've gained appreciation for the form itself and the talented artists who pioneered the field."

Yes, and I agree it can be an art form, especially as he described what they were doing and how they were doing it. I felt inside the creative process with this.

I can't think of a favorite place either. Somewhere around water - like the gulf of Mexico, on a beach, hearing the waves break on the shore. I love Florida - almost anywhere - even the thought of being in a Seminole chickee in the middle of the Everglades sounds good sometimes (...and an itty bitty book lite). Glorious Solitude!

It's encouraging for the sake of good literature in the future to see that there is such talent arising out of these younger generations!! Chabon is growing well. I will undoubtedly read whatever he comes up with next!

Linda

Well, Linda, I live in florida and you are welcome to visit me. Solitude by the water.  It's shark season around here so I just float with my book in the pool.

Ed:  Comics- an art form???    I would have to agree.  Art, in any form is but a creative process .  Comics are designed  with great imagination, inventiveness and mastery , assembled for our enjoyment.  That is an application of art.
 

To me the sinking of The Ark of Miriam marks the climactic turning point of the novel. The end of his dream of completing the escape of his brother from Prague. Consequently it marks the turning point for Rosa, also. The remaining part of IV outlines the turning point for Sammy. The concluding sentence of IV-14 is certainly chilling. The U-Boat commander is asked in testimony if his actions would have been different had he known the occupants of the vessel were primarily children: "They were children…We were wolves."

If you have a chance, read the link provided regarding the plight of the SS St. Louis. There are eerie real life parallels. In Joe's attempted suicide by drowning, there are parallels to Thomas' death and their near death by drowning in the Moldau back in Prague.

We should talk about how Joe and Sammy (and Rosa) handled these life changing events in their lives. Let's discuss roughly through Part V, this week, shall we? Then we can conclude with the final Part (VI) next week.


Charlie

Great plan Chas.

I was asked awhile ago why I chose to read this book and it was because it was hightly recommended to me by another book group. I have really enjoyed it. One more post about Chapter 15 in Part 4. Somehow the raid by police/FBI didn't seem to ring true. They couldn't just invade the house by one phone call. They would have needed a warrant. Even though there are elements of magical realism in this book, I don't consider this part to qualify.

Risa

Risa, you think perhaps the author overplayed his hand a bit on the police raid? I do think he was after parallels here to Joe's loss of 'innocence.' It doesn't escape out notice that while Joe's brother and the entire vessel of children are killed by the Nazis and lost at sea, Sammy and his new friends "go down" themselves "in a sea of tan shirts." [411] What do others think here?

Turning points. For Joe and Sammy.

"…he would always remember the feeling of doom in his heart, a sense that he had turned some irrevocable corner and would shortly come face-to-face with a dark and certain fate."

Only his mother's fortuitous phone call saves him.

We know that Sammy has decided that he doesn't "want to be like this….that he would rather not love at all than be punished for loving."[420] But is it surprising that with the end of Part IV it seems that Sammy will ask Rosa to marry him???


Charlie

Do you make anything of the fact that Joe, who got his start in the business with Radio Comics, is now a Radioman in Dogtown (Dogpatch?)? Has Joe become a comic book character himself? Exiled to a frozen land with no sun like Superman? Joe, disillusioned, has "escaped" from everything, and in a freak accident barely escapes with his life. Nearly asphyxiated he has a vision of his old teacher, Kornblum.

Kornblum knelt, rolled Joe over onto his back, and gazed down at him, his expression critical and amused.

"Escapistry," he said, with his usual scorn.

Why would Kornblum be reappearing here? As his teacher, Kornblum had many things to say about the art of Escape. Does any of it apply here? What is Kornblum telling Joe. And us?


Charlie

Is Kornblum saying, "It's time to look forward," (not what one is escaping from, but what one is escaping to). I'm not sure that makes any sense, after thinking about it. Escape isn't the best way of dealing with difficulties. I wish Kornblum had said, "Escape isn't the answer; it never was."

My previous answer is shortsighted. In Joe's case, escape, real escape, was necessary to save his life. And Kornblum's advice, in that context, is wise. There are too many variations of escape here...absolutely necessary, probably necessary, then the physical begins to blend with the mental/emotional. At a crucial point on some scale, physical escape changes to gradations of mental escape and on THAT end of the scale, there would be a point that healthy changes to unhealthy. Oh, nevermind.

Oh yeah, Charlie, we do need to do Richard Yates, definitely, and there's a new compilation of his short stories out on him as well.

Boys and magic tricks, boys and dinoasaurs, girls and horses, all ways to control or try to control the big scary world around them.

What does "Ark of Miriam" mean, is there any signifigance to the title of the ship?

Part V? Radioman?

OK here we are flung into another milieu again, we've got Josef fighting the Germans, in an outpost in Antarctica, we've got the heart rending stuff with the Radio ham radio waves broadcasts of news from Josef's homeland and his own grandfather's voice coming over the air.

My Father in Law used to love ham radio, he'd sit on a farm in South Georgia and talk to people all over the world, it was strange. Having just spent a week in Vallemaggia Switzerland with nothing but a radio which picked up on occasion the odd English broadcast and other than that strange old tunes and German voices, I know exactly how it feels to long for news but of course not at this intensity or purpose.

There is a lot of authenticity here: the list of things explorers to the Poles need to carry for instance, again, having just come from Greenwich and the Naval museums there, the polar expeditions were meticulously documented, just like what we are seeing here: the book is a little education in itself. If you've ever known anybody stationed where the sun stays in for long periods, you know the "madness" thing, also?

So this is well written, but it chronicles failure? Sammy's failures in life, Josef's failures? So if either of these guys are golems, what can we say?

This little chapter is about...what?

Here we apparently run out of seals and for the greater good kill the dog and make a wing cover and fly out to kill the German guy and we can see the tragedy of that moment:

Nothing that had ever happened to him, not the shooting of Oyster, or the piteous muttering expiration of John Wesley Shannenhouse, or the death of his father, or the internment of his mother and grandfather, not even the drowning of his beloved brother, had ever borken his heart quite as terribly as the realization, when he was halfway to the rimed zinc hatch of the German station, that he was hauling a corpse behind him.

This is a very powerful thing, this realization that the goal or revenge or war itself is futile? See here how the goal's having failed is more heartbreaking than any of the other awful events in his life? What does this mean?

Radioman has failed and broken his own heart here.

ginny

Betty- Maybe BK with the mixed look of amusement and scorn is saying all of the things you said. Sometimes, through the sheer necessity of survival – escape is necessary. But at the same time Joe has put himself in a position of peril by escaping from something and not respecting the “to” to which he has escaped.

Miriam is a biblical name, I’m sure. Someone want to take a stab at it’s significance (if any) here?

Thanks for pointing out that scene where Joe hears his grandfather’s voice on the radio from the “model” city. Chabon sure does come up with a number of scenes like this that are very powerful images, doesn’t he?

I recently saw the Shackelton Omni theater exhibit in Boston, and as I recall there were just such lists in that exhibit, as Joe reiterates in Part V.

Ginny, I like you reading of Part V very much. Thanks for putting it down for us here.

Charlie

Ginny asks: "What does "Ark of Miriam" mean, is there any significance to the title of the ship?"

Miriam was Moses sister and she watched after their mother placed him in a basket (could be considered a sort of Ark) and then asked Pharaoh's daughter who found him if she needed someone to care for him, then got her mother. So in this instance, the child was saved. In the Ark of Miriam, the opposite is true, all the children perished.

Charlie, I agree with you take on the arrest - how did I miss that? Risa

Risa, of course. Moses in the bulrushes! Set adrift on the sea so to speak - and as you say, in one case saved, in the other lost.

---

Part V builds up (or boils down) to Joe's single-minded mission: "the desire for revenge, for a final expiation of guilt and responsibility" [447]. The war has come down to this. A personal thing. One on one. "Go kill Jerry."

I am shocked when they kill the dog, Oyster. Joe seems shocked out of his long sunless nightmare, also. He realizes that "it was not the betrayed love of Oyster, but of someone far dearer and more lost to him, that haunted him now and prevented him from making peace with the possibility of his own death." This is Rosa, of course. And yet after reading all of her letters in sequence (never having read them before) he decides "that in the unlikely event his plan went awry and he should find himself somehow still living at war's end, he would never have anything to do with any of them, but in particular with this sober and fortunate American boy." His son. How to explain this decision?


Charlie

The Ark of Miriam. An ark was for safety. Miriam's was for her son so the Ark of Miriam was for the safety of children. I love it!

All of this escapism and I see Joe underground for a terribly extended period of time with no other friend than a dog. And yet, he joined the service to fight Germans. He was shipped in an entirely different direction. Made his determination look like an escape. And maybe it was. All that determination came to naught for him and by killing the scientist made him feel worse and hate himself for killing a person.

That was a turning point, too. All the violence of the comics that was supposed to help stamp out the insanity in Europe and then he became a part of all of that and almost had to kill a German. Then, when he had, he fell apart. The dream was over and it had become a nightmare.

Yes, Joe's brother was a huge turning point in the book.

Linda

Linda-
What did you think about this killing of the German? The reduction of war to the futile misunderstandings between two would be enemies was, I thought, a brilliant twist by the author.


Charlie

One more thing on the arrest, Risa and Charlie...couldn't resist comparing the negligent screwup of rights and procedures with the absence of rights and procedures in Joe's family's world.

Risa, thank you for that, now I wonder why call it the Ark of Miriam when it was sunk? The images there clash, I wonder if there is a reason for that? He could have called it anything, I wonder if there is some message there underlying everything?

Charlie, I, too, was shocked at the killing of Oyster and I braced self for somebody to say well my goodness, you're upset over a DOG when all these other people have died? Typical American of the 2001s, but wait?

The dog, it appears, was sacrificed for a goal? The "goal" was not just, or was it? The goal was payback, intimidation (We're coming to get you) and fear. The goal was not pure, as the golem's works are supposed to be?

And the goal turned rotten, just like the skins.

The fact that they even considered using one of the men as wing covering shows how far they had gone off the edge, and why did the seals source dry up right that minute? What's wrong with cloth? Is there some symbolism in using skin here? To fly?

I guess Josef felt the death of the German more than any of the other things because he himself caused it and he realized it was a mistake. He did not cause the other things that happened, in fact, worked himself half to death to stop them but he did cause that wrong and the wrongs that led up to it? And thus he is drowning in that guilt?

On the son, why he would not want to be a part of his life, he left Rosa and he abandoned them, just like he was forcefully abandoned by his own parents, yet later he shows up and reveals himself, ambivalence.

A complicated character, driven by grief and now by guilt, I have a feeling that Josef is not going to rise above all this but have not finished the book.

Sammy on the other hand, is like a lot of creative people, he's got the ideas, but he is not capable himself of making them work: you see it all the time, he needs others skilled to help him realize the ideas. Without Joe he's just another idea flinger, the world is full of them. Nothing is more burdensome, so they say, than the weight of the expectations of others?

ginny

I can't fathom a message for the naming of Thomas' vessel, but I do appreciate the irony implied.

---

Ginny- You are on roll with Part V. I just LOVE your reading here! I think you are exactly correct. I didn't tune in to this: "The goal was not pure, as the golem's works are supposed to be?" Right.

So, Ginny, you feel that Joe's decision to have nothing to do ever, with his son Thomas is more guilt?


Charlie

Joe's guilt, yes!... about decision to never see his son, as I think Ginny is saying. I can't get straight, though, if this is punishment of self, don't deserve happiness of a son....or misplaced love, as in protecting son from such a zero of a person, Joe himself. These are wrenching scenes.

betty

It’s not hard to see Joe’s guilt, but nailing all the causes of it certainly is the complicated part. But whoever said the human psyche was easy, I guess??

Charlie

I thought Joe hid because he knew Sammy had taken his place as a father and didn't want to interfere. On page 536 there is another reason, but we a re not that far and I don't want to spoil anything for anyone.

For awhile I thought he maybe had inhaled too much carbon monoxide in Antarctica and his head wasn't on straight yet.

Linda

Ha-ha, Linda. You're right there. For WHATEVER reason, his head wasn't on straight!

Well, Chabon does it again at the end of Part V. I really like how he uses events/icons in the novel to give breadth and historical perspective to the story. To show the passage of time through a prism from the here and now into the future. Here, in the historical denouement to Joe's time on the ice we learn that Joe's final days on the ice were spent in a hut from an early German expedition to Antarctica. The hut itself was a destination for adventurous tourists in the 60's and 70's. There, among other things, these "intrepid tourists" would find an "enigmatic drawing": Thomas' gift to Joe.

Remember, this same drawing had ended Part I as a sort of coda to Joe's escape thru Siberia to freedom. Does it perform the same function here, do you think? Or because, he leaves it behind this time, does it mark an ending of sorts? Does it mark a reconciliation with the fact of Thomas' death at last? Is this a truce in his personal war against injustice? What meaning would you attach to the picture [described again on pg 468]? Acceptance of what fate has to offer? Are all escapes possible except one?

Charlie

When I read that part I couldn't connect with the picture at all. I had forgotten about it earlier. As I look back it could have meant many things, I suppose. What comes to mind at the moment he may be burying tommy there feeling he has killed both the German scientist and his brother.

So he hid also due to depression. (???)

He is also shaken up from the war, the sights and smells of death. Even the dog who was his only support was killed so the airplane could fly. (Hmm, the airplane "wore" the skins of the dogs, seals, etc., like The Escapist wore the blue skin-tight outfit.)

Linda

I have been reading fast and furiously to catch up with you all--and then went sailing past where we are supposed to be. Now I need time to think about what I have read. I was reading along thinking it was an interesting novel and admiring the good writing--but suddenly in Part IV it became the "amazing adventures." So many turning points there! I was astounded at one escape--the decision for Sammy and Rosa to marry--"an impossible solution for the insoluble problems" they each found themselves facing.

But then, when I got to Part V, I could not believe Joe's escape into the armed services had taken him to Antartica of all places. I also had seen the IMAX movie of Shackleton's Adventures just a few weeks ago -- having seen that movie makes it hard to believe Joe could hike 10 miles with a fractured ankle and a bullet wound to Augustaburg.... He could not bear to be near the man he had shot and killed. He chanced upon the hut just as his strength was failing him. As I read, all of Part V about survival in Antarctica seemed to me like some superhero thing -- including flying a plane! But Shackleton survived with all of his men and that was a true story about determination and endurance. And, to tell the truth, I cannot think of anywhere else the author could have sent him during the war that would have worked so well with this plot. Being on a battlefield, on a battleship, or flying a bomber would not have worked at all.

Have you talked about that quotation on the page before the Contents "We have this history of impossible solutions for insoluble problems" which he attributes to Will Eisner (first person mentioned at the end in the Author's Notes)? It certainly puts the book in a nutshell!

Hey, hey Marge!

No, you're exactly right, I think. And a good point - the choice of Antarctica works on many levels for the plot/character development. The isolation, and the descent into….what? madness? ….the climactic face-down with the German in an almost absurdist manner, and the crawling on through the other side to begin his redemption.

I, too, saw the Imax presentation just this summer, so I though about that connection to, Marge.

We did briefly bring that opening quote up awhile back, Marge. I think it's always a good idea upon completion of a book to go back and look at the frontpiece quotes - because, as you say, you can many times see that they have summed up the book in a nutshell. Might that quote also sum up the pride we take (rightly or wrongly) in our American "uniqueness"?


Charlie

Now it's fourteen years later and Sammy is loving in Chabon's version of Levittown. His life is "all habit" [474] He's "thrown in the towel on his old caterpillar dreams." [481]

And Joe?: "He had returned to New York years before, with the intention of finding a way to reconnect, if possible, with the only family that remained to him in the world. Instead he had become immured, by fear and its majordomo habit…"[536]

Rosa? Well "Rosa was just beginning to understand the true horror of her destiny, the arrant purposelessness of her life…" [546]

Then there's the specter of Congressional hearings hanging over them, Dr. Wertham's treatise and book burnings.

Obviously, the author is attempting to draw a picture of the 50's and the post war era, which I think he does fairly well. Joe and Sammy and Rosa have all come to a crossroads. They're all being set up for some major changes in their lives.


Charlie

I think this section at the end of the book contains some of the finest writing IN the book, my copy is so outlined it's bled thru the pages, but before I get to those parts I really loved (one of which is in your post, Charlie, "fear and its majordomo habit" (Don't you just LOVE that??? Fear and its majordomo habit!) I really can't pass over Levittown or the incarnation Chabon has called it in this last section.

Do you all remember Levittown? Gosh I'll never forget them. The returning servicemen. The model houses, each one slightly different, each one amazingly affordable? Levitt lived near us in our town and the first one I heard of (I guess it was really the second one to be built, after the one in NY) was in Pennsylvania, not too far up the pike from us.

The stories I remember. There were only a few choices in models to buy? They tried to stagger the houses so they were not all alike? That is "The Whatever" model right next door to another "Whatever" model? But in practice, many families preferred the same ones and so they tried to distinguish them with different trim or paint? But at night it was a series of the same house? Some of them had trees in the yard, but that cost extra, a lot of them did not.

The stories, the occasional party animal who had too much to drink, who, coming home late at night, staggered into the wrong house, and more. I remember how it looked new, it was so bare and so many of the same house, it was easy to get lost.

But the best part is the coda. Years later I was taking my sons on a sort of you can't go home again tour of S. Philly and Bensalem Township, PA and Moorestown NJ, where I grew up, when I was seized with a desire to see Levittown again. So off we went, and I regaled them with the stories of these houses all the same, etc., etc?

Guess what? When we turned into the first street nothing was the same? The homeowners had added on and creatively done miracles with the houses. The little spindly trees in the front yard had become a forest, the neighborhood looked like any other neighborhood anywhere else in the world, no house looked as it did all those years ago. Levittown, like me, had grown up. Finally after riding in silence for a long time one of the kids said, this is nice, where's what you were telling us about? ahahhaahah Lost in history, that's where it was, and without exception each house in Levittown looked better than the three I had grown up in. hahahaahahha

Couldn't let the Levittown reference pass without that bit of personal trivia, do any of the rest of you have any experience with them?

ginny

Charlie, I can't get your Levittown site up, but look look loook at this one, Levittown archival photos, layouts and models

If you let this load you will SEE if you scroll on down, the houses laid out next to each other one by one, I'm going to print this out for the kids as they did not believe me, this is a wonderful site.

Now don't you see what this meant for Sammy?

ginny

Great story on Levittown, Ginny and thanks for providing an updated link. The old one seems to have "passed."


Charlie

When Sammy realizes that 'Tom Mayflower' will need an Escapist uniform to follow through on his plan to jump off of the Empire State Building, Sammy goes to his office to find the one he has saved. [486] Sure enough it is missing. This scene reminded me of Joe rummaging through his father's piled up boxes looking for appropriate clothing for The Golem.

---

I thought it was a nice touch that detective Lieber asks Sammy questions that we as readers may very well have been asking ourselves at this point in the novel:

• "Okay, so here's what I don't understand. Why would he want to 'escape,'…?



• He's just got out of the navy. He's been in some godforsaken place or other…Why wouldn't he want to come home?"

Sammy answered that Joe must have felt that he "didn't really have a home to come home to." Later, of course, we find that is was just that fear (and its majordomo habit) put him in a position of paralysis. As Tommy so aptly describes it, Joe (Secretman) "was trapped in his Chamber of Secrets." Tommy just wants to help Joe "find his way home."

Paralleling Joe's Chamber of Secrets are Sammy's own secrets, built to protect his life like the "walls of a prison, an airless, lightless keep from which there was no hope of escape." [620] Secrets, as his old mentor George Deasey tells him, are like a "heavy kind of chain." He suggests that the Committe may just have handed Sammy the Golden Key that he needs to escape his self-imposed imprisonment. (Joe's old mentor shows up in the last part once again also, to offer him words of wisdom.)

Ginny asks if any of you remember Levittown. But Levittown is only the architecture of the 50's, the sketch of a period that Chabon is trying to draw here. Sameness, homogenization - habit yielding repression. Do you remember that from the 50's?


Charlie

Heard on The Sopranos tonight (Season 1, Episode 3):

"My son was right. Yeah? You're mud. Godless-- I created a living golem. What the **** is a golem? It's a monster, frankenstein!"

Charlie

I just finished reading this last section and I'm in love. With this level of writing. Chabon is fearless. Think how many things needed to be resolved...would Joe jump, would he live, would Tommy find out for sure who his father was (or did he know 100 percent), who would tell him, was Joe slightly crazy, was Rosa and Sammy's marriage stronger than Rosa and Joe's past love, does marriage have to have a physical passion to be a marriage, will Joe finally buy Empire Comics for Sammy, will THAT make Sammy happy? And on and on......

I love that Chabon, though he seems to be helping us tie up thoughts on ESCAPE, leaves us to our own thoughts on marriage. Somewhere during this last section, I turned to my notebook and wrote "NEITHER is better, both can be called a marriage." I assume that most people think as I do, that passion (physical chemistry or attraction) must be present at the beginning of a long-term relationship and, of course, will fade in intensity over time. THAT plus a general compatibility and somewhat similar backgrounds (studies name similar backgrounds as number one predictability of longevity) will all add up to a good shot at a sound marriage. But, but, but, my over-50 thinking has wondered often enough if those who are lucky enough to be great friends (compatability?) have the best chance of happiness. Remember, this "love" stuff is still fairly new in an historical context. Rosa and Sammy had something, didn't they? Did they have a marriage? I think so.

Chabon writes a great 11 year old, doesn't he? Part child, part baby, part emerging adult. All imagination. There's a great scene of Tommy on the last seat of the train...shoes off, eye patch on, head in a comic book, mouth bulging with several packages of...was it bubble gum?....in his own world. And I loved the secret space he created in the middle of 102 boxes in the garage. (I wanted two rooms in there, though, with a zigzag hall between. And maybe a system of knocks, so you wouldn't have to speak between rooms, in case enemies were in the area.)

Here's another double-meaning I thought was wonderful. Joe was thinking he was lucky to make it through the "ice age." Frozen residence and frozen emotions. This kind of writing is terrific...and so satisfying to read!!

--------------------------------------

The TENSION of Part VI!!! I kept noticing that I was sitting forward, holding my breath at times. When Joe jumped...oh, listen, I did NOT want him to die and when he raised his head to say, "I'm ok," I laughed SO hard!! So, I suppose the tension was foundation for the humor. Comic relief??

This level of writing is spoiling me.

betty

Not everything was resolved or answered...which I like. So, Joe bought Empire Comics for Sammy and Sammy leaves??? Remember, Joe's offer was accepted!!

And, was Rosa having an affair? On page 519, "Her cheeks were rouged, her eyelids lined with black paint like a Caniff girl's." This is when she and Tommy ran into each other on the train. So, both Sammy and Rosa are having sexual affairs! hahahahaha I guess I should add to my list...compatible sexual orientation. Or not? Does this mean they did NOT have a marriage? Not so easy to answer.

betty

Nice post, betty. Thank you. Doesn't Chabon do an amazing job though of tying up and pulling together all the [seams] of the plot? It's all really very complicated, but he makes it seem not so, and makes it look (and feel) easy. Like all masters do.

Hmmm. What do others think? Did Rosa and Sammy have a marriage? Good question, Betty. I'm thinking that Sammy was just a stand-in for Joe, a body-double of sorts, a surrogate husband (and father). He was marking time, waiting to be set free. In the end, "he had no choice but to set himself free." [631]Sure it was comfortable for both of them, and he gave Rosa a lot, it would seem. But it was habit, wasn't it? Sammy pulls off a supreme feat of mis-direction in the end - or as Joe sees it "the clever feat of substitution." [636] His was a never more than theoretical marriage, like the never more than theoretical family, whose address was printed on the Bloomtown calling card he left behind, consigned to Joe.

---

Odd, I had just such a secret hideaway as Tommy tunneled out of Joe's crates. A pal and I stashed our comics in an old rusted out overturned dumpster that we dug a tunnel into. We'd collect bottles for deposit returns from the field and use the money to buy comics. We'd burrow in there and read fofr hours. As a kid, this was my first home. Unfortunately, we used some of the money to buy matches, with which we burned the field down and lost our little hut, our fort as we called it....and all the comics.


Charlie
[EDIT: cross posted with your previous message, Betty]

I think Sammy & Rosa had an ok marriage but it was more one of convenience for both of them - Sammy had a cover for his activities every so often (now I can't find that passage but I thought I read something about his lunches with men). On page 580, Sammy says "I married her because I didn't want to, well, to be a fairy." Sammy was also a good person, a sort of Golem in that he protected his wife and Joe's son. Near the end of the book, the Golem arrives as a pile of dirt. He is no longer needed as both Joe, Sammy, Rosa and Thomas have finally found the life that was right for them. I thought the book was very well written and I really enjoyed reading it. Somewhat off subject, the other night I watched on Showtime, Snow in August which also had a Golem created by a little boy who needed some defense from a hoodlum. This Golem also performed other acts of kindness. As the credits were showing the director/producer were talking about the difficulty of picturing a Golem and decided to create one who resembled the eleven year old child's favorite comic Book, Capt. Marvel. It will be interesting to see if they ever do a film based on this book, how they will depict the Golem if they include him in the script. Risa

More thoughts on Part VI. Fear and habit were factors in everyone's actions, is that what Chabon is saying? Joe, Sammy and Rosa? Or just Joe? Or primarily Joe? Then, the case is strongly made for the safety of comic book reading...it does not turn teenagers into "hoodlums." The conservative accusation of "escapism" was groundless. This form of temporary escape may even be benefitial, writes the author. At any rate, it is not harmful.

Then, is Chabon characterizing some of Joe's escapes....as fear and habit? Not escaspe? What about Rosa's escape into Romance story creations? That's clearly escape, but I don't see that it springs from fear, habit maybe. I'm confused here. At one end of "escape," it's harmless, says the author. At the other end, the adult end?, it's harmful? Just trying to understand what the author believes.

--------------------------------------------------

I almost hate to bring this up because I've enjoyed this book thoroughly. There were moments around the issue of Joe being Tommy's father that I thought were too tidy. Sammy may not have been the greatest father, but Tommy's transition from one dad to the next had NO complications!! Not one. Not one?? Even as crazy as Tommy was about Joe, I would have thought that Tommy would still have some misgivings about LOSING Sammy. And SAMMY could, just like that, leave his son? His son of 11 years? I don't get it. Or, is this comic book land, where everything is wrapped up by the last page and there are no loose strings? I remember the bedroom scene when Sammy felt close to his sleeping son and guilty because that's usually when he felt the closeness, but leaving in the middle of the night without talking to his son is another thing. Doesn't seem realistic to me.

betty

Edit...We were posting at the same time, Risa. Nice comments on Sammy being Golem. Now it is Joe's turn to be a Golem (sacrifice) for Sammy.....but Sammy took off just after Joe bought Empire (or made the offer that was accepted). So, THERE's a loose end!

Risa- I'm glad you brought up the Golem showing up as a pile of dirt. I like your take on it. By the way, Ed had mentioned earlier that this show was going to be on, and recommended the story by Pete Hamill from which it was adapted. I was interested in the "soul" part and of the now extreme weight of the box and ashes.

He reached in and took a handful of the pearly silt, pondering it, sifting it through his fingers, wondering at what point the soul of the Golem had reentered its body, or if possibly there could be more than one lost soul embodied in all that dust, weighing it down so heavily.

I believe that the souls of Joe's family are weighing down the box and that they have come to Joe to find their final resting place at last.

---

Betty- It seems to me that escape manifests itself to a great extent, in adults, as habit. Isn't escape just a coping mechanism for children, as well as adults. Harmless for children, but ultimately a form of stagnation in adults? As children we learn to face reality by escaping from it. As adults we learn to live lies by escaping reality

Re Tommy's father: I did have a bit of trouble with Sammy leaving Tommy so easily. And in the middle of the night, as you did. Is Sammy still escaping? This time to L.A.? But remember…Joe and Rosa tell Tommy that Joe is his "real" father, and explains all of the details of his life in between. After all that explanation, Joe seems to think "we are okay." Rosa asks Tommy if he is…

"I guess so," the boy said, "Only."
"Only what?"
"Only what about Dad?"

I think it important that he calls Sammy Dad in this way.


Charlie

I agree with your whole first paragraph, Charlie, on escape as an adult habit. I was trying to discern what Chabon thought...that never was clear to me. Children can escape, but adults must not?

Betty

I agree with Betty about the ending. I was really disappointed. It was so sudden, blunt and seemingly final. It took me a day or two to work it out in my mind that Sammy would one day come back and they all would be working and creating together again...

An aside: A memorable scene is when Tommy sees the magician in the back room with the "saddened eyes." Very touching.

Linda

The resolution for Joe (and Rosa) is satisfying. I agree that the resolution for Sammy is less so - and in fact, unresolved. But could it be any other way? He's off to L.A. to take up at the point where he put his life on hold. He is much less "evolved" in this sense, than Joe is. Joe is redeemed by his art and by his love and by his desire for forgiveness. For Sammy, the journey is really just beginning.

The scene (VI-16) in which Joe resolves all of this is his mind is one of the finest in the novel. It's Joe's trip back to New York, a "return to the earliest chapters of his life", complete with a visit to Houdini's grave and a final visittation from Kornblum. Here's what I do. I've done this a half dozen times. Really. I read the first five pages of this section and click on the links for Part VI where there are the two Rosemary Clooney songs that Joe plays on the car radio as he drives. Read and listen to them. It blows me away every time.

Approaching the Williamsburg Bridge - not really certain how he had managed to find himself there - he experienced an extraordinary moment of buoyancy of grace…Hope had been his enemy…for so long now that it was a moment before he was willing to concede that he had let it back into his heart.

---

There is a wonderful defense of comics as "an easy escape from reality" on pg 575. And the escape into comics was therapeutic for Joe. His healing process had been begun by his work ("Joe came to feel that the work - telling this story - was helping to heal him.") It's the healing power of art. But this can only take him so far.

Joe's ability to heal himself had long since been exhausted. He needed Rosa - her love, her body, but above all, her forgiveness - to complete the work that his pencils had begun.

On page 579 Chabon references Hawthorne's Wakefield. Wakefield is the other front-piece quote ("Wonderful Escape!"). In a 1958 Superman edition ("The Boy Who Hoaxed Superman"), Jimmy Olsen quits his job at the Daily Planet, disguises himself, and gets his old job back under his new persona. This plot recalls the plot of Wakefield. But it also parallels the close of Chabon's novel. Joe has lived for years in disguise in New York, but in the end, he 'gets his old job back.' Switches places with Sammy. "Wonderful Escape!"
Charlie

Beautifully written, Charlie. Earlier today, I tried twice to write out a first paragraph with "It's Sammy's turn now" as a beginning, but I bogged down both times. The first time, I had difficulty seeing it as a parallel escape to Joe's, simply because Joe left behind an adult and Sammy left behind a child. This uncomfortable part doesn't ruin the end of the book for me at all, though it does, hahahaha, mess up every paragraph I begin!! In my thinking, one measly sentence somewhere would have cleared this up for me.....like a sealed envelope with Tommy's name on it slipped under his door...something, anything.

I was in awe, though, with the tenderness and, let's face it, the psychological accuracy Chabon used in Joe's extended healing. Every step of it just blew me away. Especially the therapeutic use of literally telling his/their Jewish story in picture form!! Wow. In a smaller way, Rosa has been doing some of the same "work" through her Romance stories, grieving through her characters.

This book is about love, of course, in so many different ways. Somewhere at the end, when Sammy and Rosa are reassuring Joe that he's been a missing fixture in their lives, Sammy says, simply, "We love you." I loved the strength and truth of that statement. HOWEVER, however, help me out, anybody, somebody. Why did Sammy perform sexual favors for that police captain so that Joe would be released from jail? I didn't question it when I read it, just saw it as part of the sacrifice, one more on top of all the rest, from Sammy for his beloved cousin Joe. But, I'm questioning it now. So, do I not understand the pre-AIDS, less than healthy, gay sex as currency.....which isn't any different than heterosexual sex as currency (more myth than truth, by the way), or is power the word I'm looking for?

Does this sound really dense, my asking why this method was used to get Joe released? Why would waiting a few days to go through regular channels not be the thing to do? I don't understand the need for expediency. Were Jews being mistreated in New York jails at the time? Was Joe's life in danger? Maybe I don't understand this part. What am I missing?

betty

I assume it hasn’t escaped everyone’s notice that there is a stranded ship of refugees on the high seas. Sound familiar? [Back later to talk about Betty’s posts]

I had some questions about the end of the book? Through all the dazzling, truly dazzling writing, some of the plot elements puzzled me and I've read your posts carefully for the answers and don't see them, so I hope you can help me out here.

First off we asked, WHO is the Golem, Sammy or Joe? It's clear at the conclusion that Joe thinks HE is the Golem, he draws the Golem, and the explanation of why golems are created is beautifully expressed? Joe puts on the suit, Joe is prepared to sacrifice himself (again) for those he loves, it's Joe, Betty was right.

But Sammy, to me, is the Escapist. Strange bit of dialogue there where somebody tells Sammy it was Estes Kefaufer who gave him the Golden Key, in a way? Why do I have a problem with this? Why did we need Kefaufer's nudge?

Why is the golem only ashes of golem? What made it fall apart? Why did it come to him, how did it find him? I knew the very minute (and that was great suspense) the guy unloaded the box what it was, how did the sender, who WAS the sender? find him?

What does it mean it's fallen apart?

Because it's not needed? Seems to me it's needed as badly as it ever was?

What have I missed here?

Charlie, you , too? Me too. There must have been a lot of hoarding of newspapers and comic books in the "old days," and I remember a whole wooden shed full of them, and making what we called "forts," too. We also made them out of the leaves of sugar maple trees, to fight the boys with, I will never forget the sight of those leaves all colors (no roof to this fort, obviously).

I did not think the Congressional Hearings revealed anything to the public in Sammy's case and I thought he aquitted himself well, not sure why the spectators of the tv (the barman) seemed to think so?

Lots more loose ends for me, I'll post some more tomorrow, look forward to being straightened out. Something changed at the end of the book and I need to go look and see if I can see what?

ginny

I was struck, as Betty was, with the care and insight that Chabon handled Joe's long journey to understanding (his "extended healing" as Betty calls it). Again, and I've said this before - all this indicates the author's love for his characters and respect for the readers. Well done.

Betty also talked about the "strength and truth" of Sammy's saying to Joe, simply: "We love you." But what I liked most of all about this part [pg 558-9] was Rosa's reaction to this. It seemed universal.

And that would be it for them Rosa thought. Twelve years of nothing, a curt declaration, a shrug of apology, and those two would be as good as new. Rosa snorted a jet of smoke through her nostrils and shook her head…

Loved that. It's easier for men to 'forgive'. And that's not necessarily a good thing, but I think it's a valid generalization.

Now to Betty's other concern. A legitimate one, which I probably glossed over in my reading: Sammy's trade of sexual favors for Joe's release. Did it really happen? I didn't admit to myself that this is actually what happened. Is it clear that it did? I took the 'other' explanation - that Rosa's father used his influence to get him out. Perhaps I just preferred to think it was innuendo and conjecture and dismissed it? Can anyone else help Betty (and I) out here?

---

Ginny. I'm not sure if I can straighten you out. Or even if you NEED straightening out!! I don't know if either Sammy or Joe IS the Golem as such. I didn't read that into it. Although, they each acted as Golem to each other in many ways.

Ginny, don't you think that the Golden Key handed to Sammy by the Committee hearings was the relief, the opportunity at least, to escape from his secret life? The necessity of lying has, perhaps, been eliminated? He's out? "Sammy could not even begin to imagine what it would feel like to live through a day that was not fueled or deformed by a lie." It's at this moment that he entertains the possibility of re-beginning his abandoned life. Moving to LA.

Souls at rest, Ginny. That's my reading of the ashes of the Golem (and the weight of the souls of his family). How it got where it did, who knows? Do you think this question needs answering? Does it leave you with a loose end? Not me. Not really. I don't demand answers to every question, I suppose. Different ways of reading, I guess. But no, I don't think it's needed any longer. Not at this stage of their lives. It's now time for them (Joe, Sammy) to take control of their own lives and do the work themselves.


Charlie

Yes, I, too, see both Joe and Sammy being Golem-like (Sammy sacrificing for Joe, as a Golem would, then at the end, Joe feeling compelled to be a Golem (not the Golem) for Sammy....to "hand him," I think the book said, something that would bring real happiness.

I think it's cool that we don't quite know how the box of dirt (clay) found Joe. BUT, I did note it's unformed state, which suggested, to me, a beginning, not an ending. Sammy's real beginning.

Charlie asked last week or so, if the prison of secrets sounded familiar to anyone. Sammy had lived within his prison of secrets for a long while. The congressional hearing, which did "out" him, forced him out of that prison. The outing was subtle, but at that time, everything was very black and white....you were either in or out, no middle ground, no benefit of the doubt, and could not possibly undo a subtle accusation. (Oh, by the way, sir, have you ever been a member of the communist party?....Ah, so you DID attend one meeting 35 years ago at age 18.)

Help from Rosa's father was the cover story, but Joe was the one that understood and kept asking Sammy what was really done to get him released.

betty

One of the best moments for me as a reader, and a place where I laughed out loud with surprise that a character could say something so VERY unexpected, was when Rosa and Sammy went to bed that first night after Joe's arrival. Rosa finally said something like, "Well, what do you think?" Sammy said, "I like it." Maybe he was experiencing a rescue by Joe, a rescue from his fear and habits. Somewhat ironic, I think, that Joe worked so hard to rescue his brother and family and eventually rescued Sammy, instead.

betty

Admitting to my delinquency during this discussion, I must say how much your observations helped me to further understand these characters. They were so authentic. I loved this story. Charlie made me take pause when he said: "all this indicates the author's love for his characters and respect for the readers. Well done." I hadn't stopped and considered how important the understanding of these characters was, by the author himself. It's critical! He must lead us to our perceptions and our understanding of these people. The author is the beacon, so to speak, our guide that points us in the directions he wishes us to go. hmmm?? How did that young man become so bright? Honestly, wouldn't you have thought that would have occured to me before? The author has to persuade us to be responsive. Masterful! You've chosen a winner again, Charlie!

I'm sorry I'm so fragmented here, we have storms and I don't have time to explain self properly, I felt, however, that there was not sufficient out of the closetness in the questions of the Congressman or in his responses, which would then "free" Sammy and give him the Golden Key at that point and in this twist, to me, a weakness rears its head?

I understand what is meant, I think, I'm saying, for me, it did not work and should not have been necessary, it means that Sammy even now, even on his way to LA, is still escaping.

I can hear Bruce Springsteen saying right now, "Set you free, set you free."

ginny

Thanks, Betty and Alf. Great observations.

Ginny, your feeling that the author didn’t demonstrate to you the necessity for a particular scene, is of course, completely legitimate. Like I said, though, I like a bit of a more ‘loose fit’, I guess. Just different expectations.

I’ll try to get at my final thoughts (always a difficulty!!) by tomorrow. What are yours?

Charlie

I had just written this final message and AOL kicked me off because of supposed inactivity! So I lost it. But to summarize:

I am sorry I did not participate in the discussion as much as I would have liked. But thank you to those of you who picked this book. It was a terrific book to read. The research that went into the book added so much--all those real events and real places and the golem, etc.

The ending went back to that phrase "insoluble problems." Obviously Rosa, Joe, and Sammy all loved each other and Tommy. But there had to be some solution. So I think Sammy escaped to find himself and to be himself, but that they would all always be family to each other and that he would continue to be a dad to Tommy--I did not feel like he would disappear from their lives the way Joe did.

Have any of you read Wonder Boys? My daughter Marcia usually reads whatever I am reading (plus many more books) so she went and got Wonder Boys while I was finishing Kavalier and Clay. I had seen the movie. She found it to also be extremely well-written and very different.

I really enjoyed the links that Charlie and others of you provided. What a great experience once again to be in one of the online book discussions! Marge

Thanks, Marge-
Yes, those insoluble problems with their 'impossibe solutions'. Great point. Have not read Wonder Boys - I think the movie is out on video now. Let us know what you think of it. Don't be a stranger, now Marge. You may be interested in the Book Club Online selection for September: Corelli's Mandolin.


Charlie

This is a story of escape into and escape from. Of retreat into safe identities, into fantasy worlds, into self-deceptions. Into chains of our own making, behind masks forged to cope with what we believe fate has dealt us. The escape from can take many forms. But finally it's liberation and acceptance. And a renewed hope in others and the world around us.

---

Thanks to all of you for your valuable contributions. Each and every one of you, in ways no matter how small, prompted a re-examination of my own reading. I firmly believe that very good writers challenge us, ask us to read and ponder in our own ways. This is a very good writer. I am only able to see these other views through the eyes of others. I am only able to hear those other voices, see those other words with your prompting and help.

Thanks Betty Gregory Linda and Ginny. Thanks Hats, Risa and Ed Zivitz. Thanks Pat Westerdale, Alf, and Marge.

It was a real pleasure. I could be with you guys anytime.

And so, let me vamp off into the wings, whistling to Louis Armstrong's rendition of If I Could Be With You….

If I could be with you one hour tonight,
And free to do the things I might,
I want you to know
That you couldn't go...
..........
De da de DA DA DA,
de da da deee,
Dada a da de…….
Hmmmmmmmm,
Ummmmmmm…..


Charlie

I read Wonder Boys after K & C. It was a younger Chabon and I really liked K & C much better.

I had that feeling, too, Ginny, about Sammy's rape. I couldn't see how or why he would go back into what he didn't want before. Perplexing to us and to him, too, I fear.

Wonderful discussion. I am sorry I couldn't be here more often, but I sure enjoy your company when I'm here. I might add a few comments tomorrow still. Is that ok? See you at Corelli's Mandolin.

Linda

Great discussion, Charlie and everyone. And a great escape for me.

Heard this week on a "What's Hot" list for this coming year...."graphic novels," or as the announcer explained, "like long comic books." What's old is new again.

betty

Oh, I did want to say that there is one overriding lesson/thought I gained from this book (and our discussion) beyond the questions on escape we did cover. All my life I've heard of those pieces of families who escaped Europe just before or during WWII, not realizing each time I heard something that the story didn't end there. I mean, not REALIZING how long each of those stories might be. A person here, a pair of brothers there, an unanswered question of what exactly happened to the remainder of the family. This author has let me stop and consider how extended, complex, monstrous, each story probably is.

"Praise means so much when it comes from a lunatic."

- Sammy to Joe on page 539

I got quite a chuckle out of that.

Somewhere around there were some beautiful words about solitude to which I could relate having been an only child.

When I read this line: "You always used to make it seem okay to believe in all this baloney." I could "hear" it as a line on a stage. then I thought, "Hmm, could this be a stage play? A Musical??? The colors and sets would be interesting.

...a total aside - does anyone know where I could find the lyrics to "All the Things you Are?" (Remember Helen Forrest and Artie Shaw? It starts out something like "You are the promised kiss of Springtime...")

Linda

"Praise means so much when it comes from a lunatic."

- Sammy to Joe on page 539

I got quite a chuckle out of that.

Somewhere around there were some beautiful words about solitude to which I could relate having been an only child.

When I read this line: "You always used to make it seem okay to believe in all this baloney." I could "hear" it as a line on a stage. Then I thought, "Hmm, could this be a stage play? A Musical??? The colors and sets would be interesting.

...a total aside - does anyone know where I could find the lyrics to "All the Things you Are?" (Remember Helen Forrest and Artie Shaw? It starts out something like "You are the promised kiss of Springtime...")

Linda

Click here Linda for the lyrics and a midi to the Hammerstein-Kern classic.
Charlie

Thanks Charlie and everyone who contributed to discussion. I got a lot more out of Kavalier and Clay by reading your comments. Risa

This book must have done something to us. We are saying good-byes with a song in our hearts. (40's songs, too!) Thanks for the link to the lyrics and sound to All the Things You Are.

Thanks, Charlie! The preparation work you did is worth a fortune! The chat was pleasant and well informed and I feel sure that everyone felt included and comfortable. It was cozy and not intimidating and I think we learned a few more things about the book and where Chabon was going with it.

I will be sure to read his next book!

Linda

Charlie's the Man and he's done a fabulous job with this book and discussion, I got a lot more out of it from reading it with you all and Charlie's marvelous interactive links than I would have alone, it's been a great experience, I hate for it to stop because I STILL DON'T KNOW who sent the golem to JOE!

ginny

Thanks again, everyone. This discussion will be moved to the archives shortly.