Most serious comic book fans — that’s not a contradiction in terms — have read “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” by Michael Chabon, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel.
More recently, Chabon has a book of essays that I have not yet read, called “Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son.” Terry Gross interviewed Chabon about the book a few months ago.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2010/JAN/FreshAirMichaelChabon.mp3]Most serious music fans know the name of critic Ben Fong-Torres, who was portrayed in the movie “Almost Famous.” Yesterday, he commented on something Chabon said in one of his essays.
He [Chabon] recalled a visit to a doctor’s office when he was 4, in downtown Phoenix. His mother promised a restaurant lunch afterward as a reward. He heard “Downtown” over the radio in the office. “Things will be great,” Petula Clark sang, and Chabon has never forgotten. “When I hear Petula Clark on the radio now,” he wrote, “I feel this wave of something old and powerful flowing through my chest and my belly, a bodily remembering of that crucial early-childhood compound of anxiety and the promise of a treat.”
