- Aimee Levitt
- Michael Chabon signs books at the Harold Washington Library.
Michael Chabon came to the Harold Washington Library Thursday night to discuss The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, this year’s One Book, One Chicago. It was an unusually liberating experience for him, he told his interlocutor, Angel Ysaguirre, the new director of the Illinois Humanities Council (who, endearingly, appears to have an aversion to socks), because for once, he got to discuss the book’s ending instead of worrying about spoilers.
Which raises the question: Why would someone as successful and, apparently, happy as Michael Chabon want out of his own life? (During the evening, he made several references to his four children and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, also a writer, whose judgment he trusts implicitly.) That question went, for the most part, unanswered, but Chabon did say that one of the reasons he wanted to write about New York in the 1940s was because of his father’s stories about growing up in Brooklyn; even back then, Brooklynites could not shut up about their borough.
“But that’s only 50 percent of the idea,” Chabon continued. “The other 50 percent is, the Golem gets out of control. The thing that will save you ends up threatening you. That’s the part Superman leaves out. But that’s the part that’s interesting.” It’s implied in Kavalier & Clay that Joe and Sammy will explore that aspect of superheroism in their post-Escapist comic books for adults, but real-life comics writers and artists have done it as well, notably Alan Moore in Watchmen.
