Post 7

As I climb deeper into my second book, Wonder Boys, I notice similar patterns in Chabon's style of characters. In Kavalier & Clay, Chabon uses the theme of comic books to help certain characters escape from reality into a different world. When the their comic-ego is no longer present, the character is forced to come to terms with themselves. In Wonder Boys, Chabon presents themes of identity, including a drag-queen as a main character, to suggest a similar theme. I will see if this theme of identity is present in both books as I continue to read. One scene in particular stuck out to me in terms of changing your identity. It's from when the drag queen, Miss Sloviak, is changing her appearance back into a man:

"With a succession of cotton balls she wiped the makeup from her face and stripped her nails of their pale pink armor. She reached up into her dress for the waistband of her panty hose and dragged them down along her smooth legs to her feet. The she extracted a pair of pressed Levi's for the suitcase, unfolded them, and, with some difficulty, slid them up under the skirt of her black dress, which she then tugged up over her head and off. Her brassiere was black Lycra, padded, with a pearled ribbon at the junction of the cups and a near pair of small protuberances meant to simulate erect female nipples; the chest beneath it was small but muscular, and free from hair. She put on a striped pull-over, white socks emblazoned with a polo pony, and a pair of white Stan Smiths." (pg. 91)

Since my last post, I have gotten a clearer picture of the narrator, a man named Grady Tripp. He is a struggling Jewish writer, living in Pittsburgh, PA. He is best friends with his bizarre editor Terry Crabtree. Also, he is having an affair with one of his colleague's wifes, who is now pregnant with his child.