Jewish Literary Review

Posted on March 5, 2008 by Steve Pollak

Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem in The New Yorker

Michael Chabon wrote an essay for the March 10 edition of The New Yorker. In it, he talks about superhero costumes and the power they have to shape young people’s ideas of themselves. As Chabon explains in the essay, he once transformed himself into a superhero named “Aztec” by fastening a terry-cloth beach towel around his neck.

He begins the piece with a scene from Hebrew school:

When I was a boy, I had a religious-school teacher named Mr. Spector, whose job was to confront us with the peril we presented to ourselves. Jewish Ethics was the name of the class. We must have been eight or nine.

Mr. Spector used a workbook to guide the discussion; every Sunday, we began by reading a kind of modern parable or cautionary tale, and then contended with a series of imponderable questions. One day, for example, we discussed the temptations of shoplifting; another class was devoted to all the harm to oneself and to others that could be caused by the telling of lies. Mr. Spector was a gently acerbic young man with a black beard and black Roentgen-ray eyes. He seemed to take our moral failings for granted and, perhaps as a result, favored lively argument over reproach or condemnation. I enjoyed our discussions, while remaining perfectly aloof at my core from the issues they raised. I was, at the time, an awful liar, and quite a few times had stolen chewing gum and baseball cards from the neighborhood Wawa. None of that seemed to have anything to do with Mr. Spector or the cases we studied in Jewish Ethics. All nine-year-olds are sophists and hypocrites; I found it no more difficult than any other kid to withhold my own conduct from consideration in passing measured judgment on the human race.

The one time I felt my soul to be in danger was the Sunday Mr. Spector raised the ethical problem of escapism, particularly as it was experienced in the form of comic books. That day, we started off with a fine story about a boy who loved Superman so much that he tied a red towel around his neck, climbed up to the roof of his house, and, with a cry of “Up, up, and away,” leaped to his death. There was known to have been such a boy, Mr. Spector informed us—at least one verifiable boy, so enraptured and so betrayed by the false dream of Superman that it killed him.

From there, Chabon takes us on a ride through the cultural history of comic book heroes and their costumes, eventually tying in the story of his own “transformation” into Aztec.

Jonathan Lethem was featured on The New Yorker’s Web site but don’t look for him in the print edition. He did a podcast for the magazine, reading James Thurber’s short story “The Wood Duck” and discussing Thurber with The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman. You can find “The Wood Duck” in “The Thurber Collection,” a mixture of essays, stories and sketches originally published in 1945. Jonathan Lethem’s latest novel is “You Don’t Love Me Yet.”

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2 Responses to Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem in The New Yorker

1. Reb Yudel says:

   March 6, 2008 at 1:38 pm

   The piece clarified the difference between Shalom Auslander and Michael Chabon. Auslander’s father gave him a violent and religious upbringing; Chabon’s gave him comic books. I wonder what will become of my kids, who get comic books after Shabbos dinner?

   Reply
2. Steve Pollak says:

   March 6, 2008 at 3:20 pm

   i guess it depends on the comic books. do they read superman or sponge bob?

   -steve

   Reply