the adventures of kavalier and clay sparknotes

Anyone can suggest a book to read (you DON'T have to lead the discussions if you suggest a book - the mods will do that!). If you miss it, you’ll regret it.How do we pick books? About halfway through each month, we create a thread for suggestions for the next month's read. This is nothing less than the story of America, retold from a point of view you may never have dreamed of, and my advice is simply this.

In spite of its long history of great creators, the stigma of comic books as a third-class art form still exists today, and I have the feeling that a number of readers will reject this saga of its roots outright, never stopping to consider its wider horizons. And in the 1950s, Sammy himself eventually finds release from the constraints of a life he’s lived as a lie, self-imposed, in the aftermath of a Wertham-instigated Congressional hearing into the evil of comic books. To escape the humdrum life of a postwar suburban Levittown development, Sammy’s wife begins to write for her husband’s new line of romance comics. Historically accurate, this novel, like all good literature, is written on several levels, but escape, and sometimes deliverance, are essential themes to all of them.

When tragedy hits the hardest, Joe finds one way to escape, as part of an ever-evolving process of finding himself.

Disasters also occur - it is, after all, wartime. A new life beckons, and new loves are found. Their publisher makes millions, the young pair (typically) only thousands. And when he teams up with his cousin, Sammy Clay of Brooklyn, who dreams of escaping to sunnier climes (and a wealthier status in the world), together they concoct that grand icon of freedom, rivalled by only Superman himself, the hero of “Amazing Midget Radio Comics,” the ferocious scourge of Nazis everywhere: The Escapist. Back in the late 30s through the 50s, one thin dime could get you up to 52 pages of colored adventures, unrivalled in scope anywhere else on earth.Įscapist entertainment only? Perhaps, but in 1939 when Jewish teenager Joe Kavalier flees the Nazis of his native Czechoslovakia, he was not the only one who needed escape from the woes of the world. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and ClayĮverybody knows that jazz is America’s greatest contribution to the arts, or is it? Consider as a close contender: superhero comic books, the adventures of magically powered men and women doing great feats of valor and courage, usually costumed in outfits largely resembling long underwear, often with kid sidekicks.

The adventures of kavalier and clay sparknotes