5, 2002
26
T he A m azing A dventures
K avalier and C lay
by Michael Chabon. Picador U SA , 2000;
$15 softcover.
M arcel P roust
by Edmund White. Viking Penguin, 1999;
$19.95 hardcover.
of
ichael Chabon, author of The Wonder
Boys, took home a Pulitzer for his lat
est, which traces the lives, loves, fears
and dreams of two titular Jewish
cousins, immigrant Josef Kavalier and Brix)k-
lynite Sammy Clay, as they make it big creating
comic bcx>ks during the medium’s golden age
(roughly from the end of the Depression through
the end of World War 11).
Like Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections,
this novel is profound, epic and rich with true,
relevant, stirring themes. Its authors evident
love of language doesn’t prevent it from being
that rarity— literary, serious and an exciting,
funny page-turner.
Also, like
Franzen, Chabon
pulls off the con
siderable feat of
depicting a gay
lead character in a
tender yet wholly
realistic light. His
treatment of
Sammy’s homosexu
ality is exemplary in
that the (straight)
author is clearly well
informed and enlight
ened on the subject
while avoiding defining
this endearing and high
ly original character by
his orientation.
Kavalier and Clay is
now available in a
portable, beach- and air-
plane-friendly trade paper
back edition.
— Christopher
M cQuain
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illation,
Didion
pushes
P lay I t as I t L ays
pill
by Joan Didion. Noonday
popping, booze-
Press reprint edition,
guzzling, bed-hopping, anything-
1990; $13 softcover.
goes Hollywood ennui to the point of
brutally gorgeous existential clarity.
ritics tend to rag
Play It as It Lays relates the down
on this fine,
ward spiral of an actress named Maria,
addictive 1970
her estranged husband, her lovers and
novel, seemingly because
her only real friend, a married bisexual
it’s an “unliterary" story
called BZ who, despite his expertly jaded
by a “literary" writer. It’s
front, is less capable than the protago
A Pulitzer Prize winner and
basically Valley of the
nist of handling the wearying emotional
adorable to boot: Michael
Dolls, except instead of
endurance test that is their weightless,
going for exploitative tit- Chabon should have been gay pointlessly privileged showbiz existence.
Casual
Elegance
For Dess
Listener
Negotiator
Educator
Homeowner
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jasmine@bndgetownrealty com
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unfC arrange
your delivery
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Hi
BZ and
Maria are
like Ingmar
Bergman’s Southern Cal ver
sion of Will and Grace; they’re kindred spirits
and central characters because they’re the only
ones who’ve had to learn what “nothing” means.
The author’s style is so perfectly anti-psycho-
logical— thoroughly and willfully uncluttered by
distracting analyses— that by the time you’ve
made it to the defiant release of tension on the
last page, you may actually crave a value judg
ment. Didion doesn’t patronize her characters
or us with that, but she does offer us Maria’s
choice, and she’s arranged it beautifully, so that
it feels like a fairy-tale ending for fatalists.
-C M
Miss.
J a s m i n e R u th d o tter
Associate Broker
illi
arcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things
Past, the gargantuan novel published
between 1917 and 1927, was widely
considered throughout the second half of the
past century as the greatest novel of its time.
Form-shattering and avant-garde, it neverthe
less retains the ageless qualities of beauty and
meaning that endear a work of art to the public.
Indeed, Proust has been so constantly and
reverentially discussed that, though few have
actually read all of Remembrance’s seven vol
umes (comprising upward of 4,000 pages), the
term “Proustian" is widely used to refer to his
overarching theme of involuntary recall— the
concept that the slightest stimulation of the
senses can trigger the most
deeply buried
memories.
Marcel
Proust, a
diminutive
biography by
Edmund White,
is dwarfed by
comparison to
Proust’s signature
work. However,
the celebrated gay
writer makes the
most of every word,
smoothly and evenly
covering the novel
ist’s short, eventful
life in a manner both
succinct and thor
ough. White approach
es Proust with the skill
of an experienced sur
geon— making the
smallest, most precise
incisions for minimal
excess and maximum
impact.
Revealed are Proust’s
decidedly bourgeois child
hood; an adolescence spent
attending France’s most exclusive schools; the
discovery and development of his literary gifts;
his wasted young adult days as an intermittent
writer and full-time playboy with a sycophantic,
social-climbing streak; his constantly denied but
freely practiced homosexuality; and, finally, the
grueling and thankless task of writing his master
piece. White also makes brief, tantalizing men
tions of Proust’s meetings with other famous gay
culture heroes—Oscar Wilde and Jean Cocteau.
Proust’s poor health and ambivalence
Don Duncan
ow ner
M
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