i made an essay
Finished Kavalier & Clay and driven to write porn / lay out my large feelings on the matter. See below for my intense cousin-shipping commentaries. Links to the supplemental short stories? Or good fan fiction based on this book??? ??? ??? where is it. Why are Gentlemen of the Road requests all over Yuletide while Chabon's more obvious nude dudes getting busy book goes overlooked. Thank you tlc010 you have captured a realistic portrait of my daily pose
In my more innocent, less fujoshi days, I have argued that Chabon should not be called a Gay Author just because he is sexually attractive and has dated boys in college, and that his art as I perceive it has been about NON-homoerotic buddy-pair versions of the surrogate family dynamic. As of this week my virtuous opinion has nose dived.
Though I loved this book and was sad to see it end, in retrospect I am not 100% satisfied with the way the story wraps up. The last chapter is neat enough, but the fact that Sam leaves his friends to their happiness and disappears to recapture some lost gay dream of cruising actors in LA is just depressing. He has played his part as Gay Martyr #1239123 and feels satisfied with just that and the promise of platonic business-romance. Chabon beats around this bush several times, the way Sam is (and knows he is) the sidekick in the Kavalier & Clay duo, and how one might relate Sam's being the eternal power-bottom to his ultimately very literal struggle against the homoeroticism of fictional men in matching spandex. In a book that metas so much about Batman and Robin, about the publishing industry, about the way every epic betrays the dreams of its author, about exile, about the necessary falsification of myth, there is surprisingly little meta about Sam.
Joe, for his part, is all there on the page. He is, summarily, sexy and incandescent and seems suspiciously like Michael Chabon's Ideal Nice Jewish Boy (not sure this wasn't intentional), and every little facet of his heroic madness is more or less explored. We are first told, then learn to figure out, why Joe creates whatever crazy scenario represents his next stage of grief. There are more than five, come to think, and my favorite has to be his dogged goal to get beaten to a pulp by the largely confused Germans of New York.
But we are never told or taught what pushes Sam into his own, quieter but no less intense scenarios, or how he deals with them after -- for instance, the rape of the Gay Vacation House. We know that the ignominy and terror of it triggers in Sam a very contemporary return to the closet, whereupon he and Tracy "Takedown" Bacon leave off with an epically heartbreaking No Homo handshake, but then....? What. Sam eventually hooks up with another gay cop TO BUY JOE'S FREEDOM? Jesus. This is writing aware enough to explore what the characters can not see or admit, the Freudian depths of man-children fed on the modern pulp of the Ancient Greek arete, these very suggestive visual mythologies, so I am not sure why so much of Sam, who is this book's biggest gold mine of psychoses, is left on the cutting room floor. The ultimate sum of this character gives the impression of having prodded a sore narrative tooth and let it be. So Sam and Joe end up split by the bulk of America, Sam's eponymous Clay replaced by Rosa. Why do I always need to read fan fiction to get my closure guys
Notably, at the close of the aforementioned Gentlemen of the Road, the best bro gentlemen leave their gals behind to embark on their next adventure, as always, together. But much as I dig this variety of road-trip ending, I would not have been too dissatisfied to see Zuleikman stay with his princess, and Amram with whatever lady of the night caught his attention. GoTR never gave me the same sense of longing, because the buddies herein are pretty clearly delineated as family. They support each-other emotionally, but their physicality is not electric so much as it is easy and incidental. You do not get, like, these symbolic scenes of Joe feeling the warmth of Sam's compliment in his diaphragm and legs, and working out how to come over and hug his bff without being weird. The entire chapter, their closing chapter, where Sam insists on reading Joe's private novel and sends Joe into a little fit of self-conscious nerves, was so like. So intensely intimate. There is crying on shoulders. I am sure it could just be the happy reunion of old friends, but it is pretty evident that, however you read them, Joe is the love of Sam's life. Sam is always there for the shoulder-crying, the deep respect of Joe's tragedy, the fast-talk that rockets them to stardom. He acts as a second-rate Joe-placeholder in all the things his friend abandons, then qualmlessly hands over his entire life, as if that was the plan all along (it was). I would have loved to get a better sense of Sam's feelings w/r/t subordinating himself to his partner's lifelong quest to wallow in misery and regularly attempt suicide. But Sam forgives Joe's selfishness in the instant he puts the cigarette between Joe's lips, whereas Rosa gets some wonderful detail of working toward forgiveness, against herself, by slow and uneasy stages.
If Kavalier and Clay is a superhero story (it is), then Joe is the most literal super-protagonist, down to his dramatic origins and the angst that drives him. Sam, ever enraptured by personifications of male prowess -- relevant historical figures, his father, Tracy -- gets funny feelings about this right off the bat, to the obvious unease of his friends, who catch the expression he wears when he looks at his cousin. Chabon writes that off as the desire to be, not possess, though the sexual current running throughout Sam's male relationships is just as present here as it is in Sam's initial impression of Tracy, who is another version of Joe's Escapist, and arguably a less faithful one. Never mind that Sam, forever in gay denial even as he is having incredibly enjoyable sex with his boyfriend, privately cites the same argument of being vs. possessing before Tracy seduces him. Never mind that Sam, who is not a terribly physical guy, is gently touching Joe at every opportunity. Come on. If they are family (they are), they are a married couple. Unfortunately Joe is also, in the most survivor's-guilt, self-flagellating of ways, the love of Joe's life, so one can imagine how that pans out.
I still have to digest the ending to understand whether or not it is meant to be triumphant. By the combined power of Joe's artistry and the legal committee -- a decidedly more halogen-lit version of the League of the Golden Key, if I understood correctly -- Sam is given his own key to do... what. He feels like killing himself, actually, in the face of his freedom. Absconding to Los Angeles means another crack at all he has so far failed to do with his love-life, yes, in an exotic Utopia not unlike the green World's Fair miniature where Tracy deflowered him, but I would have to read the supplemental materials (if any deal with this) to see his flight into exile as anything but. Ideally, in an even more alternate-reality 1952, where suburbanites are accepting of such things, I would have loved to see Joe, Rosa, and Sam stick more or less together to parent their collective son and make comic books. Frankly I doubt the likelihood of Rosa and Joe, neither of whom is terribly grown-up or responsible, capably going it alone; I kind of got that they were looking forward to having Sam around to keep them in line. But I also got that, if he ever wants to be his own hero, Sam needs a quest that has little to do with Joe. Which is why he crosses his name off the card on the kitchen table. Which is why I am crying more or less forever.
In my more innocent, less fujoshi days, I have argued that Chabon should not be called a Gay Author just because he is sexually attractive and has dated boys in college, and that his art as I perceive it has been about NON-homoerotic buddy-pair versions of the surrogate family dynamic. As of this week my virtuous opinion has nose dived.
Though I loved this book and was sad to see it end, in retrospect I am not 100% satisfied with the way the story wraps up. The last chapter is neat enough, but the fact that Sam leaves his friends to their happiness and disappears to recapture some lost gay dream of cruising actors in LA is just depressing. He has played his part as Gay Martyr #1239123 and feels satisfied with just that and the promise of platonic business-romance. Chabon beats around this bush several times, the way Sam is (and knows he is) the sidekick in the Kavalier & Clay duo, and how one might relate Sam's being the eternal power-bottom to his ultimately very literal struggle against the homoeroticism of fictional men in matching spandex. In a book that metas so much about Batman and Robin, about the publishing industry, about the way every epic betrays the dreams of its author, about exile, about the necessary falsification of myth, there is surprisingly little meta about Sam.
Joe, for his part, is all there on the page. He is, summarily, sexy and incandescent and seems suspiciously like Michael Chabon's Ideal Nice Jewish Boy (not sure this wasn't intentional), and every little facet of his heroic madness is more or less explored. We are first told, then learn to figure out, why Joe creates whatever crazy scenario represents his next stage of grief. There are more than five, come to think, and my favorite has to be his dogged goal to get beaten to a pulp by the largely confused Germans of New York.
But we are never told or taught what pushes Sam into his own, quieter but no less intense scenarios, or how he deals with them after -- for instance, the rape of the Gay Vacation House. We know that the ignominy and terror of it triggers in Sam a very contemporary return to the closet, whereupon he and Tracy "Takedown" Bacon leave off with an epically heartbreaking No Homo handshake, but then....? What. Sam eventually hooks up with another gay cop TO BUY JOE'S FREEDOM? Jesus. This is writing aware enough to explore what the characters can not see or admit, the Freudian depths of man-children fed on the modern pulp of the Ancient Greek arete, these very suggestive visual mythologies, so I am not sure why so much of Sam, who is this book's biggest gold mine of psychoses, is left on the cutting room floor. The ultimate sum of this character gives the impression of having prodded a sore narrative tooth and let it be. So Sam and Joe end up split by the bulk of America, Sam's eponymous Clay replaced by Rosa. Why do I always need to read fan fiction to get my closure guys
Notably, at the close of the aforementioned Gentlemen of the Road, the best bro gentlemen leave their gals behind to embark on their next adventure, as always, together. But much as I dig this variety of road-trip ending, I would not have been too dissatisfied to see Zuleikman stay with his princess, and Amram with whatever lady of the night caught his attention. GoTR never gave me the same sense of longing, because the buddies herein are pretty clearly delineated as family. They support each-other emotionally, but their physicality is not electric so much as it is easy and incidental. You do not get, like, these symbolic scenes of Joe feeling the warmth of Sam's compliment in his diaphragm and legs, and working out how to come over and hug his bff without being weird. The entire chapter, their closing chapter, where Sam insists on reading Joe's private novel and sends Joe into a little fit of self-conscious nerves, was so like. So intensely intimate. There is crying on shoulders. I am sure it could just be the happy reunion of old friends, but it is pretty evident that, however you read them, Joe is the love of Sam's life. Sam is always there for the shoulder-crying, the deep respect of Joe's tragedy, the fast-talk that rockets them to stardom. He acts as a second-rate Joe-placeholder in all the things his friend abandons, then qualmlessly hands over his entire life, as if that was the plan all along (it was). I would have loved to get a better sense of Sam's feelings w/r/t subordinating himself to his partner's lifelong quest to wallow in misery and regularly attempt suicide. But Sam forgives Joe's selfishness in the instant he puts the cigarette between Joe's lips, whereas Rosa gets some wonderful detail of working toward forgiveness, against herself, by slow and uneasy stages.
If Kavalier and Clay is a superhero story (it is), then Joe is the most literal super-protagonist, down to his dramatic origins and the angst that drives him. Sam, ever enraptured by personifications of male prowess -- relevant historical figures, his father, Tracy -- gets funny feelings about this right off the bat, to the obvious unease of his friends, who catch the expression he wears when he looks at his cousin. Chabon writes that off as the desire to be, not possess, though the sexual current running throughout Sam's male relationships is just as present here as it is in Sam's initial impression of Tracy, who is another version of Joe's Escapist, and arguably a less faithful one. Never mind that Sam, forever in gay denial even as he is having incredibly enjoyable sex with his boyfriend, privately cites the same argument of being vs. possessing before Tracy seduces him. Never mind that Sam, who is not a terribly physical guy, is gently touching Joe at every opportunity. Come on. If they are family (they are), they are a married couple. Unfortunately Joe is also, in the most survivor's-guilt, self-flagellating of ways, the love of Joe's life, so one can imagine how that pans out.
I still have to digest the ending to understand whether or not it is meant to be triumphant. By the combined power of Joe's artistry and the legal committee -- a decidedly more halogen-lit version of the League of the Golden Key, if I understood correctly -- Sam is given his own key to do... what. He feels like killing himself, actually, in the face of his freedom. Absconding to Los Angeles means another crack at all he has so far failed to do with his love-life, yes, in an exotic Utopia not unlike the green World's Fair miniature where Tracy deflowered him, but I would have to read the supplemental materials (if any deal with this) to see his flight into exile as anything but. Ideally, in an even more alternate-reality 1952, where suburbanites are accepting of such things, I would have loved to see Joe, Rosa, and Sam stick more or less together to parent their collective son and make comic books. Frankly I doubt the likelihood of Rosa and Joe, neither of whom is terribly grown-up or responsible, capably going it alone; I kind of got that they were looking forward to having Sam around to keep them in line. But I also got that, if he ever wants to be his own hero, Sam needs a quest that has little to do with Joe. Which is why he crosses his name off the card on the kitchen table. Which is why I am crying more or less forever.