Wow...definitely Literature, with the big L. Gorgeously written, lyrical sentences that went on forever, pulling, but so laid back....excess of big words, a couple of made up words, and a bajillion references to people, places, events and things that I stopped caring, but hey, I really didn't need to know them to get the story and the meaning. I made friends with the dictionary even more than when reading Rafael Sabatini, and with the references, I handled it the way anyone does when dropped in an immersive experience in a place you've never been to, in a time far before your time-- I let it go over my head and kept going! 
 In a way, it had a similar feel to Empire Falls, which makes sense since they are both very much modern literature and both won Pulitzers. But whereas Empire Falls dithered for so long without a point with no character growth or much interesting characters to begin with (hard when the characters are supposed to be the bottom rung of loser), Cavalier and Clay had people reaching for multiple things, trying and succeeding and failing all at the same time, while swimming in the fascinating context of comics and war. When the plot wandered off somewhere, I could latch onto the comics history, and when that got too much, the plot usually came back. But Literature being Literature, I had to take a break from it for awhile before finishing it.