i made an essay

[motorbike]

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

Comments

i am also super inarticulate

[agnes_perdita]

Yeah, the ending's really interesting because it should feel partly like Joe's triumphant return but instead focuses on the action that culminates Sam's sacrifices for Joe as if Chabon wants...what? To remind the reader of how Sam's partnered/shadowed Joe throughout the whole book? To try and give Sam a sense of resurrection? Because "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"? (Yes, motorbike, you are totez quotable now)

Because yeah, if the third option's the case then it kind of feels like the entire book up to that point contains the build-up of effort and joy in a man's life that he now needs to walk away from and try to find something similarly meaningful elsewhere. It doesn't negate the events of the book but it feel like those wonderful things you've read in the pages up until that point are being shaken off? The way you need to do sometimes in life, I guess. And that's hard to deal with...emotionally as well as narratively because it feels abrupt and the realisation of its necessity really lies in the moment of that action rather than some pivotal point earlier on in the story where you can realise it and sit in the comfort of expecting Sam's leaving for the next 40 or so pages and wait for the characters to figure out what you've already predicted.

[motorbike]

Sam wants more than anything to be a hero like the Escapist, basically, and he never gets a real chance because he is to scared of being happy in a counter-Judeo-Christian way, and because his bff is too busy being Escapist enough for the both of them. Joe forgets to mind REAL LIFE where his girlfriend is pregnant and the future of Empire Comics hinges on his talent. I recall that Sam does consider leaving Rosa and his shitty stale grown-up office drone job at least once, but curbs the urge because he is no longer seventeen and understands, better than does Joe actually, what it means to have a duty to one's family.

When Joe asks, Why did you do all this? Sam just says, Well, I was not brave enough to be a fairy. Which I take only as hearsay, because Sam has to answer somehow, with at least a portion of his truth. The more important question is why he didn't leave once the going got tough.