IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Cover to Detective Comics #27, which contained the first appearance of Batman. (Image links to a good site on the history of superhero comics.)

:: I’m a day late with this week’s Image, primarily because I wanted to tie the image with my thoughts on the remarkable novel I finally finished reading yesterday. The book is Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

What a book this is. It is the tale of two cousins, Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, who team up to create a number of notable comic book characters, their most famous creation being “The Escapist”, a costumed superhero who is sort-of the ultimate Houdini. Chabon tells how these two men come up with the idea of doing comics in the first place, how they create their initial works, and how their creation becomes more famous than they ever thought possible. A mere plot description of the novel makes it sound like a “rags-to-riches” story involving comics, but it is far, far more than that. Chabon isn’t content to merely give us a few years in the lives of two comics men; instead, he gives a meditation on the entire Golden Age history of comics itself, complete with owners who cheerfully (and sometimes not so cheerfully) pocket all of the financial rewards from the artists’ efforts; the lawsuits begun by DC Comics in an effort to keep anything remotely resembling its cash cow, Superman, off the market; and the McCarthy-era turn against comics which was brought about almost single-handedly by Dr. Frederick Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent, which in turn led to the creation of the Comics Code Authority (and, to some, the setting back of comics as an artistic medium in the United States). Many novelists could get an entire work out of just that material, but in many ways the historical background of comics is just that: background for his work, which concentrates instead on character. And it is in its characters that The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay takes flight.

Put simply, it is a very long time since I read a book whose characters were as real as the ones presented here. Chabon gets us to rejoice at every victory, wince at every defeat, and acknowledge every stop on the voyage of self-discovery that Sammy and Joe take. Both of these men are full, three-dimensional characters who lead full, three-dimensional lives. And what lives they are. Joe, for instance, isn’t just Sammy’s cousin. He is a Jew from Prague who has managed to escape the oncoming Nazi threat, alone of his family. When he arrives in America at last and meets his cousin Sammy, he quickly falls under Sammy’s spell. Sammy is one of those rambunxious youngsters who always has some kind of “get rich quick” scheme cooking up, and who thinks nothing of talking benefactors into bankrolling his plans before he has even fully formulated his plan. This happens early on, when Sammy talks a businessman — Sheldon Anapol — into entering the comics business, with the promise that he and Joe have “the next Superman” ready to go. Of course, much of this is bravado and bluff, and after they convince Anapol to give them a chance they promptly start work on creating this superhero they have already claimed to have. Sammy is to do the writing, and Joe is to do the artwork.

However, both Sammy and Joe are torn in different directions. Sammy is a writer with brilliant talent, but he can never quite overcome his belief that comics are just junk, telling pictured stories for children; plus, Sammy is increasingly unsure of his own sexuality. As the book progresses, Sammy’s self-loathing becomes more and more apparent, as does the unnecessary nature of it all, because Chabon makes clear that he is a man of talent.

Joe is likewise torn in opposing directions: between the art of comics (for he regards comics as an art, a fully respectable medium for expression) and his desire to get his family out of Prague (his concern is particularly strong for his beloved little brother, Thomas). Joe also develops a strong hatred for the Germans, which plays out in some very unexpected ways at several points throughout the novel. And to top things off, there is a love-triangle of sorts between the two men and a woman named Rosa Saks, a wealthy New York socialite and herself a brilliant artist. Chabon resists any urge he must have felt to deal with the complex emotions of his novel in perfunctory, soap-operaish manner; instead, he shows us complex people behaving in complex ways, each trying to live as best they can in the face of a world on the brink of (and later engulfed by) war. The feeling of “There but for the grace of God go we” pervades this entire novel, but this feeling can only exist if we are given characters we can care about — otherwise, the whole exercise is fruitless.

Chabon’s language is also accomplished. It took me a long time to read this book, not just because it is long (636 pages in trade-paperback format) but because it is such an amazingly rich novel that there are entire passages that demand to be re-read immediately. Joe’s lessons in magic and escape, learned in Prague from a kindly magician named Bernard Kornblum, are wonderful. They come early in the book, and we wonder why we are being told these things, but everything becomes clear later on as Joe’s magician-training not only forms the basis of The Escapist but also much later becomes a means by which a family is reunited. Painstaking attention to structure is evident throughout the book, as are some wonderful sentences. For example:

:: Regarding the fate of Kornblum, Joe’s boyhood magic teacher in Prague: “Kornblum[‘s] encyclopedic knowledge of the railroads of this part of Europe was in a few short years to receive a dreadful appendix….”

:: Regarding the work habits of Sammy and Joe: “In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”

:: On people’s ability to appraise their times: “One of the sturdiest precepts of the study of human delusion is that every golden age is either past or in the offing.”

:: On a particularly unfortunate aspect of the Empire State Building: “A great feat of engineering is an object of perpetual interest to people bent on self-destruction. Since its completion, the Empire State Building, a gigantic shard of the Hoosier State torn from the mild limestone bosom of the Midwest and upended, on the site of the old Waldorf-Astoria, in the midst of the heaviest traffic in the world, had been a magnet for dislocated souls hoping to ensure the finality of their impact, or to mock the bold productions of human vanity.”

Imagine a 636-page book filled with sentences like that, and you have a book that is not to be read quickly like a Clancy or Grisham page-turner. You have a book of literary amazement. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is absolutely deserving of its Pulitzer Prize. It’s the kind of book that leads one to take pity on the next item on the “To read” pile.

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I’ve added a new link to “Other Journeys”: AngieMcKaig.com. The subtitle of this one is “Technofodder for the Masses”, which is an accurate label: she provides a lot of news items on all things tech. (Plus, she apparently is from Toronto, which is one of my favorite places on the planet — next to Buffalo, of course.)

Also via her site, this fascinating article on the recording industry and its increasingly maddening attempts to maintain its relevance and dominance over artists. I don’t entirely agree with the article, but it’s the best making-of-the-case for free downloads I’ve ever read, plus a convincing argument that the industry is more interested in its own well-being than pretty much any concern for the artists.

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I’ve been perusing my archives a bit lately, and I’ve come to an interesting observation (interesting to me, at least, given my aims in producing this journal in the first place):

I don’t write enough about music.

I’m not entirely sure why this is the case. I’ve always had fairly strong opinions about music; in fact, I even started college as a music major before I switched after two years to Philosophy (thus heeding the siren call of money and fame, not realizing then that this siren call was coming from Ancient Greece). That single decision is probably why I’ve moved toward writing as my creative outlet as opposed to music, which I was pretty good at. I posted regularly for several years to the rec.music.movies newsgroup, mainly to indulge my long love of the most unfairly neglected area of music: film scores. I left off the Usenet posting, though, at roughly the same time that I began Byzantium’s Shores, because I pretty much ran out of things to say about film music after a while. I’ve become more interested in storytelling in general and writing in particular, and while my love of music has not diminished in the slightest — my CD collection refuses to stop growing — I’ve had far less to say about it. But now that may be changing.

Another problem with my lack of music-related musings is that since I left college (and, before that, turned away from the serious study of music) my vocabulary on musical matters has diminished. I’ve forgotten things I knew then; chord structures I could at one time identify by ear are now mysterious to me again. My musical muscles, as it were, have atrophied. Thus, I’ve decided to expend some effort into regaining some of that. I am planning to read up on music again, starting with Harold Schonberg’s wonderful books (most notably The Lives of the Great Composers) and then proceeding to A History of Western Music by Grout and Palisca. (This latter work struck me as impossibly dry and boring when I read it ten years ago in a Music History class; but then, so did Charles Dickens, and I’m rather enjoying Great Expectations right now. All things in their time, I suppose.) Another constant companion will probably be David Dubal’s remarkable new book, The Essential Canon of Classical Music. This amazing book is nothing less than a fairly comprehensive listening guide to the awesome edifice of classical music.

And that’s where the real key lies: in listening to music. While I’ve always had fairly broad tastes, I find that nevertheless a certain extension of the horizons is called for. I have never been particularly fond of the music predating the Classical period, nor have I been able to digest much of what has come after the end of Romanticism and the “death” of tonality. My musical tastes within classical music tend to begin with Mozart (whose every note is miraculous) and end with Mahler (also astounding), and peaking in the middle with Berlioz (whose music speaks so directly to me that the effect sometimes terrifies). While I do enjoy some Bach, and while I do love Handel’s Messiah — who doesn’t? — I can’t boast much familiarity with anything else in the Baroque era or the even earlier musical epochs. Likewise, while 20th century masters like Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Hanson and Copland are near and dear to my heart, the entire edifice of atonal music — serialism and the like — has never figured at all in my musical calculus. It is time that I placed more demands upon my ear, and I hope and intend to be writing more about the results.

Some people claim that music is the highest of all the arts. I cannot agree with that — is Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony a greater work, a priori, than The Last Supper or Hamlet, Prince of Denmark? Hell, is the Eroica greater than Stairway to Heaven? I’m not after rankings and hierarchies. What I’m after is art. Had I made different choices some years ago, my art would be music. Instead, it is writing. So be it — but surely one can inform and enliven the other. That’s what art is supposed to do, after all.

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The amazing Robert Ballard has found another sunken vessel. This time, he has located John F. Kennedy’s famous WWII ship, the PT-109.

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Major League Baseball decided to pay tribute to one of its greatest stars ever, Ted Williams, by naming the All Star Game MVP Award after him. This was an excellent way to honor the “Splendid Splinter”, who died last week. Of course, if the Powers That Be in baseball had their crystal balls functioning properly, they would have avoided doing this for another year — because then they would have known in advance that there would be no MVP awarded at this year’s All Star Game, because the game would go to 11 innings, the two managers would run out of players, and commissioner Bud Selig would be “forced” to call the game a tie.

Amazing. Just amazing. How MLB can still be alive after its long history of bad decision making, which crystallized last night on the field, is one of the great mysteries of the Universe, right up there with black holes and the duck-billed platypus. The decisions that led to the most ridiculous conclusion of a baseball game in memory were many: both managers selected too many position players and not enough pitchers; both managers cleaved to the rather recent notion that every player should be able to play (whether that means getting one at-bat, pitching to one hitter, or even just being a pinch-runner); despite the expansion of the Major Leagues, the All Star Rosters have not been increased; et cetera et cetera et cetera. The excuses trotted out by Bud Selig and others (“We didn’t want to risk injuries to our players”, “We ran out of players”, “Last call at the hotel bar was in twenty minutes”) are, in a word, lame. This was an idiotic thing to happen.

And if that weren’t enough reason to question the decision making abilities of the folks running the National Pasttime, just wait. The disastrous lessons of 1994 seem to have been duly noted and ignored by both management and labor, and a player’s strike is looming. Way to go, Major League Baseball. Way to go, Mr. Selig. Way to go, Player’s Union.

How many more weeks until the Bills open training camp?

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I love the Tour de France. The sheer level of endurance that these athletes display is utterly, utterly amazing.

Lance Armstrong slipped to fifth place overall today, which isn’t much of a concern. Armstrong’s strength is in the mountain stages; it is there where he will almost certainly make his move. The last three Tours — all won by Armstrong — played out precisely in this way.

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Part of the pre-game ceremony for the Major League Baseball All Star Game was baseball’s 30 greatest moments. They seem to have pretty much nailed them all, although I’d have included Kirby Puckett’s walk-off home run in Game Six of the 1991 World Series. (Of course, Jack Morris’s shutout in Game Seven of that same Series was a fine choice, too.) It’s too bad they couldn’t include some of the best moments from All Star Game history; then we might have been able to revisit that wonderful scene in 1993 (or was it 1994?) when Randy Johnson uncorked a fastball over John Kruk’s head. It was one of the funniest baseball moments ever.

And not surprisingly, the Pirates — losers of 100 games last season and embarking on what will be a long rebuilding process after their last GM, Cam Bonifay, decimated the farm system — only have one All Star representative (and they probably wouldn’t even have him, if not for the rule that requires that the All Star rosters reflect at least one player from each team). This year it is closer Mike Williams, who the Pirates signed to a large contract last offseason for some unknown reason. Teams which lose 100 games typically have far more pressing needs than a top-flight closer.

Ah, well. Go National League!

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Let the waiting for 2005 begin: over at TFN, an article has been posted on what will happen in Star Wars Episode III. What I’m most interested in is seeing how Yoda gets away from the forces of evil; surely the Emperor and Darth Vader would never allow him to live if they had any idea that he was not dead. (And notice, in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Vader says things to Luke like “Obi Wan has taught you well”, never once mentioning Yoda. Hmmmmm.)

I am also interested in seeing if my theory about the parallels between the fall of the Jedi and the true story of the Knights Templar holds true.

It’s also less than six months until The Two Towers. Try as I might, though, I simply cannot get excited about Star Trek Nemesis.

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One of the more pleasant side effects of having children is that once the child reaches the age of, oh, two or so, one suddenly becomes much more well-versed on the subject of animated movies. One gains the ability to quote entire passages from Dumbo, Aladdin, Snow White, et cetera. Of course, it helps if one actually likes animation to begin with. Fortunately, I have always loved animation….although some of the films don’t bear up upon many, many, many viewings as well as others (I think I can safely live to the age of 71 before I feel the need to watch The Rescuers again).

Anyhow, in recent weeks we have made liberal use of our Blockbuster card to catch up on some animated films we haven’t seen yet, and we actually saw a new one at the theater.

:: Shrek. Yes, somehow we failed to see this movie when it was out last year. It’s every bit as delightful as the reviews and box office receipts implied. It’s a warm and funny film, with a lot of heart but also with a hearty helping of satire and humor. The tone is most similar to the classic film The Princess Bride, in that it constantly walks a fine line between telling its own story and parodying others. The story, about an ogre who claims to crave solitude but really desires love and acceptance, is a wonderful little fable. What makes the film so endearing is its heart and its humor. In one scene, the villain — Lord Farquaad — attempts to extract information, through torture, from a helpless Gingerbread Man, using methods such as prolonged submersion in milk. Later on, the Lord is trying to get information from a Magic Mirror. The Mirror tries to hem and haw, until Farquaad gestures to one of his guards — who holds up a hand mirror and smashes it with a gaunleted fist. The Magic Mirror quickly falls in line after that. The film is full of these kinds of jokes, some of which are quite dark indeed — witness the bird that explodes when the lovely Princess Fiona’s voice attains a too-high note. The film’s music score is a combination of pop tunes and ordinary orchestral underscore, all of which somehow works. Shrek is a pleasure.

:: Atlantis: The Lost Empire. This is Disney’s foray into a new type of animated film, where the emphasis is on story and action as opposed to song and dance. It’s an intelligent move for Disney to make, as its musical films in recent years have felt a bit thin. It’s almost as if Disney’s best writers have been working on the PIXAR films (Toy Story, Monsters Inc., A Bug’s Life). Atlantis‘s story is really nothing new, in itself; in fact, the film could almost be a reworking of Stargate. A nerdy archaeologist has eschewed traditional studies for unpopular esoterica, and he claims to have discovered the key to finding the lost city of Atlantis. Of course, this gets him nearly fired from his museum job, but a mysterious and rich benefactor personally finances his expedition, which he undertakes along with a crack team of other experts. There is the crusty military man, the eccentric dirt expert, the French demolitions man, and so on. They embark on their journey, eventually arriving at Atlantis after a number of adventures — and a number still to go, as certain persons on the mission are revealed to have other agendas at work. None of this is particularly surprising, but it is still highly entertaining because of the freshness of the animation — a lot of which is based on techniques developed in Japanese anime — and the wittiness of the script. (One notable line comes from the submarine’s public address announcer: “Tonight’s meal will be baked beans, musical performance to follow.”) The film’s climactic action sequence is something to behold: it is a battle between Atlanteans (and some of the good guys) in flying-airships that are shaped like fish (one character says, “Do you have anything sporty, like a tuna?”) and the bad guys in miniature biplanes, centering on a hot-air balloon that is attempting to depart through the crater of an extinct volcano. The animation during this sequence is nothing short of amazing — never is the action anything but crystal clear. If Atlantis: The Lost Empire breaks no new ground in terms of story, it is still an enormously entertaining film and may point the way for traditional animation in the future.

:: Mulan. This is the oldest of the films that we’ve recently seen. It is also the most uneven of them. The film tells the tale of a Chinese girl who, desperate to bring honor to her family, disguises herself as a man so she can go off to war against the Huns. While this is different subject matter for Disney, it is clear that a need was felt to “Westernize” certain aspects of the tale. This being the case, the film doesn’t really create the sense of time and place that the best of the Disney films evoke. Mulan simply isn’t Asian enough; despite a few very nicely done sequences, this film still feels like a Western take on China rather than China itself. The songs aren’t bad at all, but they are very un-Oriental in their tone (especially the horrible pop-tune that closes out the film’s end credits); the film’s music score, by Jerry Goldsmith, is very good but still doesn’t push the Asian envelope enough. The film’s voices are well-selected, with many of prominent Asian actors — George Takei, Pat Morita, Soon Teck-Oh (one of my favorite character actors and a frequent Magnum, PI alumnus) and Ming-Na in the title role — but somehow the film still feels like the Epcot version of China rather than the real thing. The villains are nothing more than robotic killing machines. Mulan is an enjoyable film, but it can’t compare with a film like Princess Mononoke (yes, I know that Mononoke is set in Japan and not China, but the point stands).

:: Finally, we saw Lilo and Stitch last week. What an entertaining film this was. At first glance, one expects a Disney-fied version of ET: The Extra-Terrestrial. A diminutive alien is stranded on Earth, where he meets a young person from a broken family and then both proceed to learn valuable lessons about family and love. The similarities end there, though, because the alien — Stitch — is actually a genetic creation by an alien scientist who is literally programmed to do nothing but destroy. (In one scene, he creates a miniature model of San Francisco so he can trample, Godzilla-like, through the city.) The girl — Lilo — is rough around the edges; she gets into fights and purposely sabotages her sister’s attempts to convince the social worker (a huge, black man named Cobra Bubbles and voiced by Ving Rhames) that she is an adequate guardian. The film is animated in wonderful style, making prominent use of pastel shades and watercolors for a look that is quite different from the usual Disney boldness. The music blends traditional Hawaiian song with, believe it or not, Elvis Presley (who apparently is quite revered in Hawaii). The film employs some wonderful humor: when the aliens simply decide to vaporize Earth to rid themselves of their escaped weapon, a life scientist pops up and explains that Earth is the sole habitat of that precariously-endangered species, the mosquito. Lilo and Stitch is a terrific film.

I am starting to wonder if some kind of Golden Age of animation might not be in the offing, between the continued excellence of traditional animation (recently renewed by the adoption of anime techniques), the increased appreciation of anime in general, and the continued evolution of computer-generated animation. There is still life in Disney….but it’s not all Disney. And that’s all to the good.

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A thousand cheers for the organizers of this years Taste of Buffalo, which was held downtown this past weekend. The festival was great fun, as always, and for some reason the food seemed even better this year. Maybe it was the fact that, unlike last year, it didn’t rain.

It is still a bit depressing to walk through the festival, along with upwards of 200,000 other people, and note the large number of empty storefronts and closed businesses. Downtown Buffalo has a long way to go.

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