If you’re a fan of high school, college, or NFL football, this book is a great read. If you’re interested in discussions of class economics or discourses on race, this book is a great read. Or if you just want to read a book that will make you laugh, challenge you, and sometimes make you questions of the motives of the protagonists, this book is a great read.
The only hesitation I have about the book is that I think it purports to be about Michael Oher, the high school and college phenom left tackle. In a lot of ways it is, but only to the extent that Lewis wanted to tell Oher’s story. On the other hand, however, what Lewis is really exploring in this book is why and how a rich, white couple (Sean and Leigh Ann Tuoy) from one of the most segregated cities in America (Memphis) would become invested in young black kid who is ironically simultaneously almost impossible to notice and impossible to ignore.
In some ways, I think Lewis is interested in the Tuoys’ investment in Michael as a person as is contrasted against the system’s (Briarcrest High School Athletics Dept, Ole Miss University, and every other major college football program in the country, and the NFL). Everybody seems to want something from him, and that thing is immediately apparent and almost assured. But the Tuoy’s were invested in him long before they realized just how good a player he was. In that sense, his incredible success seems to make their investment both charming and sincere.
Tough to admit (and Lewis doesn’t address this at all, really) that I wouldn’t have been interested in reading about the Tuoy’s charity or Oher’s luck had it not been for his incredible physical gifts. Maybe that’s the real lesson of the book.
I just finished reading The Watchmen. I wanted to read it before seeing the movie. Great graphic novel. Unfortunately, I read it just after finishing Chabon’s Kavalier and Clay. A bit of a let down. But considering when this book was written, what had come before in comic books, and its legacy, truly a must-read book. The heroes really don’t have any superpowers; they’re simply moved by the impulse to do good. That’s inspiring to some extent, but that inspiration is tempered by the fact that most of the novel takes place after our heroes have either retired or been cast off by a society that doesn’t want them any more. A more realistic vision of caped vigilantism, I think. More nuanced. And the heroes are very, very real. They love people they shouldn’t. They don’t get to be with the people they love. They are rejected by a world they’ve sacrificed so much for.
Rorschach is a poor-man’s Wolverine, I think. And he’s really appealing in that way. Willing to treat criminals like criminals to save those who deserve it. But Ozymandias and the Comedian really seem to be cautionary tales of what happens when a hero’s abilities can keep pace with or outstrip his intentions. Nothing to keep their humanity in check. Disastrous. Tragic. So, on some level, this is a comic about the importance of maintaining what’s human about ourselves.
(You’re better off skipping the movie, though. Not much more than a cinematic version of the comic.)
I can’t gush enough about Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I’ll admit that it’s been several years (at least five, I know) since I finished a book of fiction. The basic plot goes something like this, a young Jew (Joseph Kavalier) escapes Prague as the Nazi’s approach in the late 1930s. It’s quite a trip he must take to arrive on his Aunt’s doorstep in New York City where he meets his eventual life-long best friend, his cousin (Sam Clayman). And or course there’s a girl, an avant garde painter: Rosa Saks. The arc of the story follows these characters through their lives in the world of comic books.
Theme #1: Escape. From the Nazis. From Hell’s Kitchen. From secrets. From chronic bad luck. From death. From locks and chains and other performance contraptions. From love. From responsibility.
And who might possibly read this novel without bringing to it something from which we’ve at least fantasized escape? We are all escape artists from something. I escaped from the Red River Valley of North Dakota. From a working class class childhood in a small town on the Great Plains. From loves I didn’t want any more. From loves that didn’t want me anymore. From faith-crushing doubt. From depression. From pessimism. From jobs that would have atrophied my soul.
Themse #2: Love. Cultivated out of a chance passing. Huge love that isn’t quite big enough to overcome enormous tragedy. Forbidden love realized, but inevitably crushed. Love in marriage, but the wrong kind of love. Love of family, but not big enough to save that family. Love that can’t be endured. Wanting love to die by saying goodbye.
And we’ve all reckoned with love before. Not exactly a new theme in literature. But maybe the only one we really ever read about. No, no. There are others. Humor. Fear. Home. Okay, so love is just one of the biggies. And maybe this book is so important to me because I’m so messed up about love. About a father’s love in light of his suicide. About the sacrifices my mom made because of her love for my bother and sister and I. About the bad choices I’ve made when love is gone. About not being able to let love go. About not being able to let love stay.
Other themes: The importance of fathers to sons. The social role of fantasy. The complexity of friendship. The brutality of capitalist economics. The magic of magic. And all of these drawn together with lines and colors of escape and love.
