Escaping

Michael Chabon’s, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
and Clay. This book won the Pulitzer, which is not necessarily 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.  

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. Why do non-fictional people (like you, Dear Reader) want to Escape? 

I received a letter once 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 thinking 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?