The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

[Joseph Tracy]

Tough call between those two books. I found The Yiddish Policeman's Union more provocative in the realm of ideas taking on some of the paradoxes of Judaism and indirectly prodding at the question of Israel and the issues that emerge establishing a country after close to 2000 years of absence. It also has some of Chabon's best comedy. But K&C has a majesty. It stays just on the edge of credibility while summoning some dark magic.  
I was not as impressed with Telegraph Ave though it is fun to revisit Berkeley where I spent a fair amount of time.
On Mar 17, 2013, at 7:31 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> Poor Chabon!It must be embarrassing. Enjoying the book anyway. Which do people here prefer: Kavalier and Clay or the Yiddish Policemen?
> 
> LK
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
>> Sent: Mar 17, 2013 6:14 PM
>> To: "kelber at mindspring.com" <kelber at mindspring.com>
>> Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Subject: Re: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
>> 
>> Well....lousy--read NO---proof reading of the Picador paper reprint. The first paperback reprint. Neither Michael nor his agent would have,,since they surely turned over the hardcover for scanning and reprint. The publisher would have read the hardcover...
>> 
>> And someone at Picador would have scanned the hardcover then. Busy, overworked, careless and maybe just a techie not even a Junior editor. (I know they did not have enough people. I know) 
>> 
>> Optical character recognition scanning can be, could be, dicey. I think it " picked-up" 22. 2 degrees for what  was --2.2 degrees....(minus 2.2 degrees)...and --8 (minus 8 degrees)...it or whoever did not know how to recognize a minus sign.......
>> 
>> I say that cause a LOOK INSIDE the current Kindle edition gives the first example now. ...( when you ask for the word Celsius...second use seemed to have been changed by this edition) 
>> 
>> Sent from my iPad
>> 
>> On Mar 17, 2013, at 4:31 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
>> 
>>> Finally started reading this, and I'm enjoying it so far, but I was really thrown on p. 51 by the temperature of the freezing river water: 22.2 Celsius. It was hard to see how this could be a typo. I thought at first that maybe it was some sort of cute bit of magical realism, along some sort of "and why the sea is boiling hot" riff. But then a couple of pages later, he actually spells it out: Twenty-two degrees Celsius. Then later, 8 Celsius is considered too cold to be out with gloves and a hat.
>>> I'm reading the Picador 2001 edition, so he ought to have had time to catch the error. I'm just really surprised that any writer could make such an obvious error, and that it wasn't immediately caught and corrected by his editors. Or maybe there's some weird po-mo payoff later in thbook? Mr. Kohut, any theories? 
>>> 
>>> Laura