The Escapist

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life

File that opening under: Inexplicable.  I never liked the artist or the album and I never saw the movie.  Yet, when I sat down to write about the book soon to be mentioned, I opened Spotify, wondered what I should put on while I typed, and that was the first album that popped into mind.  Makes no sense.

And oddly, while I was typing that last paragraph, I realized there is a connection.  When I finished the last book I had assigned for Spring semester (Bad Paper, by Halpern (maybe I’ll get around to reviewing it here—but in case I don’t: The book is not worth your time)), I needed my first book of the summer.  The first book of the summer is invariably a short, fun read.  Wodehouse, Christie, something like that.  Yet, when I looked up at my bookshelves to pick out that first book of the summer, I suddenly found myself holding a 641 page Pulitzer Prize winning novel by an author I had never read.  Not the usual Start Of Summer fare.  I have no idea why I decided to read it then.  Kind of like the album to which I am currently listening, and which is, all in all, not shaping up to be an album I will enjoy.  I have never listened to this album before.  I have heard the hits off it many (many, many, many) times (endless radio play when it came out.  (Endless.)).  But, after a lousy opening song and second song, song 3, “The Beautiful Ones,” is truly awful.  I can’t decide if I am looking forward to this song ending and hearing the next one or not.  What if it is worse?  [Your Humble Narrator is taking a perverse pleasure in the fact that you, Dear Reader, are hoping that sooner or later the album to which this refers will be mentioned because it wasn’t worth your time to Google the lyrics at the outset of this blog post to find out what album it is.]  [Your Humble Narrator is also not unaware that the book mentioned above has also not yet been named.]  [Your Humble Narrator is additionally not unaware that there is no Actual Reader who is providing the perverse pleasure to which the previous two parenthetical asides refer.]

The book:  Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

As mentioned before, this book won the Pulitzer.  This is not normally a recommendation.  But, in this case, the award is fully merited.  I really enjoyed reading this book.  In the realm of modern fiction, it’s a star.  (Part of me is wondering how Mallory never recommend this book to me.  It is exactly the type of book she would a) read and b) instantly recommend to me.)

It is a slice of life novel: New York in the ‘30s and ‘40s.  (1930s and 1940s, that is.  When will saying the ‘30s not instantly be assumed to mean the Great Depression?  In 2030? Or earlier?  2029?  2026?)  Two cousins.  One a Jewish refugee; one a New York native.  They become comic book writers.  The time period is, as comic book aficionados know, the Golden Age of Comics.  Superman, Batman and the Escapist are all created.  Haven’t heard of the Escapist?  He is fictional—created by Kavalier and Clay.  [Your Humble Narrator is not unaware of the irony of calling the Escapist a fictional comic book hero to distinguish him from Superman and Batman.]  [In a marketing stunt which was as inevitable as it was undoubtedly a disaster, there are now actual comic books starring the Escapist.  I would be shocked if said comic books were not Beyond Awful.]

If you love comic books and high literature, then you should instantly put The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay on your reading list.  It is that good.  If you don’t like comic books, but do like literature, then this book is still highly recommended.  It is a great story, and the comic book elements do not get in the way.  After all, in any slice of life novel, the protagonists have to have some job.  You may not care at all about Dentistry, but you don't avoid McTeague because it is about a Dentist, do you?  If you don’t like comic books or literature…hmmm, why are you reading this blog?

Escape is, not surprisingly given the title of the fictional comic book hero, the overarching theme of the book.  The characters in this book are constantly seeking to escape.  They want to escape from their pasts and their presents and their futures.  They want to escape from their own identities and their surroundings.  Why?

It’s not the desire of the characters in the book to escape that intrigues me.  That is all pretty explainable from the novel itself.  (I pity the poor souls who will have to read and write papers on this book for a college English class.)  Why do non-fictional people (like you, Dear Reader) want to Escape? 

I received a letter yesterday from a good friend of mine, noting among other things “The adults I know are never fulfilled.”  And, it occurs to me now that I am writing about this book that her observation and this book have a lot in common.  People are not fulfilled, they sense that there must be something better, and they want to Escape into that better thing.  But, nobody quite knows what that better thing is.  How do you escape when it is not clear to what you are escaping?

At this point, I would dearly like to provide the obvious religious answer that fulfillment is found in Christ.  But, I am haunted by that sentence: “The adults I know are never fulfilled”—well, that applies to most Christians I know too.    That is, of course a bit of a dodge—theologically I know that fulfillment is only found in Christ, that short of Divine Fulfillment, we are all left eternally desiring something more.  So, there is a religious answer.  But, does the theological answer mean that fulfillment is possible or not?  If we are inherently aliens here, if we are strangers in a strange land, then is it wrong to be fulfilled?  If our souls are longing for the City of God, is it a sin to feel fulfilled in the City of Man?

But, that religious answer merely begs the question.  Why do people so desperately want to escape?  How have we been hardwired to lack a sense of fulfillment?  Why is being perfectly content so remarkably rare?  Why is it rare even among those whose religious convictions assure them that they have the capability of feeling fulfilled within themselves?  And, the even more pressing question, the question this novel raises but to which it fails to provide even a remotely satisfying answer: can we escape that deeply felt sense of not really belonging where we are, that there is some better place we should be inhabiting?  Can we escape not ourselves and our surroundings, but the feeling itself that we need to escape?  Short of finding fulfillment, is escape even possible?

I do know this: now that I am done writing this blog post, I am going to stop listening to Purple Rain by Prince.  And I will be shocked if I ever play it again.  I guess that is an Escape.

(For those of you who want to feel a similar liberation, you should rent this movie and then I suspect you will be very glad when you stop watching it.)  (I would have linked to the song, but apparently Price doesn't like his music available on the internet.  Seriously--search for Prince videos on YouTube.  Pretty funny.)