LeVar Burton Reads a Michael Chabon Story, “The Hofzinser Club”
LeVar Burton Reads
Sir Patrick Stewart teased fans last weekend that we might just get to see more of the Next Generation crew in Star Trek: Picard than has previously been announced. To an audience at Destination Star Trek on Saturday, he said, “Will we meet the rest of the crew? I think so. I think there’s every possibility we will.” But if you can’t wait to find out if and when Stewart’s teasing might come to pass, then you can at least pass the time with the next best thing: LeVar Burton reading series showrunner Michael Chabon’s words, on his podcast.
On this week’s episode of LeVar Burton Reads, Burton takes on the short story, “The Hofzinser Club”. “The Hofzinser Club” was originally published in The New Yorker in July of 1999, and you can still read it online. The short story later became part of Chabon’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. According to Amazon, in Kavalier and Clay, “A young escape artist and budding magician named Joe Kavalier arrives on the doorstep of his cousin, Sammy Clay. While the long shadow of Hitler falls across Europe, America is happily in thrall to the Golden Age of comic books, and in a distant corner of Brooklyn, Sammy is looking for a way to cash in on the craze. He finds the ideal partner in the aloof, artistically gifted Joe, and together they embark on an adventure that takes them deep into the heart of Manhattan, and the heart of old-fashioned American ambition. [...] Climbing from the streets of Brooklyn to the top of the Empire State Building, Joe and Sammy carve out lives, and careers, as vivid as cyan and magenta ink.”
“The Hofzinser Club” tells just one piece of the story, of a young Josef Kavalier, living in Prague in the 1930s. Josef, a budding escape artist, is obsessed with attracting the attention of Prague’s exclusive club for magicians, The Hofsinzer Club.
You can listen to LeVar Burton read the story on the season five finale of his podcast, LeVar Burton Reads.
