Escapism with a Capital 'E'

Comic books are chiefly about escaping from reality. The costumed super heroes and over-the-top villains allow the reader to get away from the drudgery and everyday problems of real life. Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay shows that comic book can offer the promise of escape not only to the readers, but also to those who create them.
The novel opens in New York City of the 1930's and focuses on the lives of two cousins: Sam Klayman, an all American teen and Joe Kavalier, a Jewish refugee who has just escaped from Prague. Sam needs to find a way out of his dead-end job with a novelties catalogue, and Joe needs to raise money so that he can pay for his family to escape to America. Gifted with great imagination and artistic talent, the two boys develop a comic book that centers around the Escapist, an escape artist who travels around the globe fighting for the oppressed.
The comic book turns out to be a runaway success, but it never quite manages to let the boys escape the problems they so desperately wish to leave behind. Sam watches the Escapist earn heaps of money, but watches it fill the pockets of his publishers, who continue to maintain ultimate control over the characters. Joe fills the pages of his comic books with beautifully drawn battles against the Nazis (and even adorns the first cover with the Escapist slugging Hitler), but succumbs to despair as he realizes that he is powerless to affect the tragedies that his family faces in Europe.
The novel follows the lives, the loves, the hopes, and the dreams of Sam and Joe as they grow up and grow disillusioned. Chabon gradually drags the boys down into personal low after personal low, leaving them at a nadir of depression before allowing them their eventual redemption. We, as readers share in their despair thanks to Chabon's masterful prose. We feel Sam's and Joe's personal tragedies as if they were our own.
Chabon uses history as an effective backdrop for his story. Factual events from World War II add a flavor of verisimilitude to the story, and historical figures ranging from Salvador Dali to Orson Wells to Stan Lee to Senator Estes Kefauver blend seamlessly with the fictional characters.
The prose is masterful and hold the reader's attention well from page to page. This is important considering that the book weighs in at over 600 pages, and some readers might give up if it were a lesser work. Also, there is a good deal of info that deals with the comic book industry. Rather than alienating non-comic book fans, the information is interesting enough to hold the attention of those who have never picked up a comic book, and varied enough that comic book aficionados will keep an eye out for all the details.
With all the genre that this book straddles, practically everyone can find something in it to hold their attention. I highly recommend that you read this book soon.