DVDVRSBE: The Kryptonite Kid by Joseph Torchia

[jaedmc]

The Kryptonite Kid by Joseph Torchia

Picked by Brian Fowler

Read and Reviewed by Cliff Hanger

 

“I believe in Superman the way some people believe in Jesus.”

--Novelist and former Superman writer Chris Robertson to the Austin American-Statesman

 

This book has been pretty difficult for me to write about. When I first got it, my reflexive response was disappointment that I had been assigned a superhero story, even one where the Last Son of Krypton is explicitly fictional even within the story. I read more than enough of those, after all. The fact that the book was thirty years out of print, had never been issued digitally and had no Wikipedia page made me feel apprehensive as well as a tad let down, as did the Amazon reviews describing how much the novel had meant to reviewers when they were kids. All I could find out was that it was an epistolary detailing a little boy's letters to Superman, and that the author's scant other works were more focused on the gay experience. My library, of course, couldn't provide a copy, so I found myself tethered to a DRM-riddled scan from openlibrary.org. I had never truly considered the difference between spending hours combing the web on my desktop PC and trying to read a long-form novel until I did the latter. It ended up taking over a month to get around to, but when I did I was glad I had.

 

The setting and concept are simple: in the summer and fall of 1959, seven-year-old Jerry and his best friend Robert write letters to Superman. They start off as simple fan letters, but as time goes on and the boys' lives become more difficult, the Man of Steel becomes a stand-in for absent or abusive fathers as well as for God. As the story proceeds through its five chapters, called “dimensions,” Jerry becomes obsessed with gaining super powers, starts finding “kryptonite” all over his hometown, and starts to fixate on Mr. Mxyzptlk as well as Superman himself. He starts to recount dreams he can't possibly have had, which are clearly a much older man dreaming about his past both recent and childhood, and in the last two dimensions his fantasy fixations become self-destructive. By this point, Superman has become so explicitly Jerry's God that Jerry finds himself brutally punished for writing a poem about the Son of Jor-El's superiority to the Son of Jehovah. There are no dates given; we know Jerry and Robert are seven because they're preparing for their First Communion, we know they're writing roughly every day (sometimes more or less often) from references to events getting closer or further away, and we know that the story starts in June of 1959 because George Reeves's death is an important early event. Jerry's faith is briefly shaken, but then he rationalizes that of course the Superman on TV is just an actor. The real hero is so busy that he doesn't have time to answer fan mail in spite of super speed and “super branes;” actually shooting a half hour of television every week would be an absurd imposition. But even as time passes and he never gets a reply, Jerry simply doubles down and continues spending his allowance on stamps so that he can ask Superman what a queer is and why he gets in trouble for merely asking, inquire as to whether Purgatory and the Phantom Zone are the same (and if so can you please let me out when I go there, please Superman) or donate a catechism to keep the Man of Steel out of Hell.

 

I found the epistolary format very frustrating, since it forces upon the story a host of grammatical and spelling errors that make me wince. At the same time, there is literally no other way in which this story can work. I also struggled with some of the flash-forwards and dreams; it was obvious when Jerry was dreaming as a boy or dreaming as a man, but it still made for awkward reading. I'm also not entirely certain how far in the future certain bits are meant to be. In spite of those issues, I'm generally very glad I sucked it up and read the book. The best way I can describe the tone is to say that it alternates between bittersweet and pitch black, with most of the humor drawn from the very grown-up events transpiring around Jerry and his childlike misunderstanding of them. The story's predominant theme is obviously that of hero worship; Torchia explores both the ways that Jerry's faith in Superman gives him strength to deal with a home life which was normal by the standards of the day but easily recognizable as abusive to modern eyes, and a harsh Catholic school which seems almost cartoonishly brutal even by the standards of the 1950s. The teacher, Sister Mary Justin, not only employs corporal punishment but also a cruel and vicious level of sarcasm, bullying and religious terror. One of my favorite moments in the story comes when Robert, after weeks of looking, finally finds Metropolis on the map. The hated Sister is briefly flummoxed, before starting a familiar dress down of the boys and makes the mistake of telling them that even if they visit Metropolis, they will never see Superman. Robert, without missing a beat, announces that he doubts the Sister has ever seen God or Heaven, and thus she has no right to insist they're real while Superman isn't.

 

The really amazing thing about this story is just how stupid the adults are. They clearly see that Jerry has a problem, but instead of attempting to gently redirect his interest toward the real world, they continually double down on name-calling, physical discipline and scare/humiliation tactics. The only adult who treats Jerry with any kindness or respect is cut out of his life by force in a “what would the neighbors think?” maneuver. One can argue that a reader's omniscience provides them with a form of hindsight not available to the characters, but it just feels false that nobody recognizes these tactics are failing and thinks to approach the situation differently.

 

In spite of those problems, I really enjoyed The Kryptonite Kid and would recommend it heartily to anyone willing to walk a mile in a sad little boy's shoes. Many thanks to whoever selected it.  I really enjoyed the SBE project and I would be thrilled to engage in another, provided that I could make sure any book chosen for me was available in a format that suits my digital capabilities better.

[odessasteps]

Good thing you didnt get my book.

If i had known fowler was going to pick this, i nay have chosen something else.

[odessasteps]

(Double post)

As for the book i question, i think i read it years ago (but could be wrong) and thought it was okay not great.

I wonder if there's a parallel to be drawn between this book and Jonathan lethem's The Fortress of Solitude.