The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – through pg. 301 Ryan

After reading Matt’s post and giving my comments some more consideration, perhaps my earlier assessment of Clay was a bit harsh.  But I’m not going to dwell on it as a lot has happened in the one hundred some-odd pages since my last post.

We see the introduction of several new characters of perceived importance: Carl Ebling, the fascist director of the Arayan-American League (AAL) and a closeted aficionado of the Escapist, and Rosa Saks, a bohemian artist who takes up with Kavalier as his exquisite love interest.

I suspect Kavalier’s break-in at the AAL and Ebling’s faux bombing of Empire Records is only the first in a series of tit-for-tat exchanges between these two men, a microcosm of the larger struggle at hand.  Something tells me that things will not end well between these two.  And I like the introduction of Rosa.  She seems to be quite a remarkable woman.  And more importantly, I like that Kavalier did not dismiss her advances out of hand due to feelings of guilt over his family’s predicament.  Every good story needs a romantic entanglement.

What I did not expect is Clay’s apparent homosexual tendencies, or so we are led to believe thus far.  A perfunctory “not that there is anything wrong with that” goes without saying; I just didn’t see it coming.  

Aside from this development, there is an ever-increasing number of more important story threads developing, including Kavalier’s efforts to secure his brother Thomas’ rescue from Prague, the new introduction of the luna moth-butterfly comic book character Judy Dark (based loosely on Rosa, incorporating another strand of the recurring rebirth motif I’ve come to welcome from Chabon), and the Kavalier-Ebling entanglement.  With about half the story left, I’m interested to see how these numerous plot lines will play out.

Finally, on a side note, what do you guys make of Chabon’s continued happenstance interactions between the boys and a variety of historical figures, of late Al Smith and Salvador Dali.  I’m not sure what to make of this – on one level it keeps me on my toes, but at the same time, it smacks of absurdity – Kavalier and Clay continually bumping into the elite of their day in a series of random encounters…a bit far-fetched. 

Ryan