(no subject)
Mar. 21st, 2015 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI've been reading a bunch lately! It is good, I'd kind of slipped out of the habit the last few months. I owe another progress report on Moby Dick, as I've finally read another ten baffling chapters or so.
I also finished Chabon's Telegraph Avenue, about which I'm not sure what to say. It is a sprawling 550 pages about early 21st century Berkeley as an almost tectonic intersection between black and white culture. And yet it is weirdly claustrophobic, with a focus on a small set of characters whose revolving, almost sitcommy, interactions with each other start to strain disbelief as the narratives develops. It's almost as if the two central families of the novel are trapped on a boat together, hunting something massive they're not entirely sure they want to find. I mean, it's almost like Chabon is rewriting Moby Dick for the 21st century.
Telegraph Avenue is extremely Moby Dick-shaped, to a degree I found kind of surprising. When I hit the last 50 pages and all of a sudden massive amounts of plot started happening, it caught me off guard even though that's exactly what Melville does, too. Because it's a terrible idea to do it, and there's no earthly reason why it works for Melville, so why would anyone try to copy it? And the plot involves all sorts of 'whales'- wigga lawyer and record collector Mike Oberstein insists on being called Moby, pregnant Gwen refers to herself as a whale, but most hilariously of all, billionaire African-American businessman G-Bad flies around California on the Dogpile blimp, an all-black lighter-than-air vehicle that serves as a focal point for some of the book's most ridiculous scenes. Yep. In addition to white whales, Telegraph Avenue has black whales.
I wanted Telegraph Avenue to be bigger than it was, to say more, but I nonetheless enjoyed it for what it did say. Abigail Nussbaum's critique is that Chabon seems to exhibit a fetishistic appreciation for black culture, which I don't think is entirely wrong, but which I do think is blind to the ways the novel's black characters exhibit a similar fetishistic regard for white culture. Wakanda and the Black Panther, after all, major figures in the novel and sources of inspiration for Luther and Archy and Titus, were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Chabon is very, very clever in the way he constructs the mirrors between black and white in the novel, the ways in which America's struggle with race relations is a two way fight. And the ways in which the mirror fails, too: The book begins with Archy and Gwen and Nat and Aviva linked together as two couples two ways, but defies literary expectation by ending in the divorce not of Archy and Gwen, but of Archy and Nat, and Gwen and Aviva... some burdens of the struggle for equality simply cannot be borne equally by both blacks and whites.
Chabon counterbalances the Moby Dick homage with Ulysses homage, particularly in the innermost chapter, the so-called 'Parrot-Sentence', in which Chabon attempts and fails to copy Joyce's Penelope chapter by tracing out an escaped parrot's aerial tour of Berkeley in a single twelve-page-long sentence. In general, the novel's prose works a lot better everywhere else besides this passage, which accomplishes the task of being a single sentence in the most straight-forward, workmanlike way possible. But I do think that other elements of the Ulysses homage benefit the story: Whereas Moby Dick sprawls around the world on the seven seas, Telegraph Avenue and Ulysses anchor themselves in a very specific urban setting. Brokeland, on the Oakland/Berkely border and sketched out with extreme poetry by Chabon, hops and dances with life, full of vivid characters and iconic locations, even as those locations have the constant sense of being impermanent.
And I've managed to wank about influences for so long while barely saying anything about the book, because, yeah, I have no idea what to say about the book. Nat and Archy and Gwen and Titus and Archy and Julie and Luther and Cochise are all amazing characters. Julie is my favorite character, because there is more than a little Julie in me. There is so much of Julie in me, to be honest. But it was one of those novels where I just want to keep spending time with the characters because they're amazing people and Chabon made me fall in love with all of them.
I also finished Chabon's Telegraph Avenue, about which I'm not sure what to say. It is a sprawling 550 pages about early 21st century Berkeley as an almost tectonic intersection between black and white culture. And yet it is weirdly claustrophobic, with a focus on a small set of characters whose revolving, almost sitcommy, interactions with each other start to strain disbelief as the narratives develops. It's almost as if the two central families of the novel are trapped on a boat together, hunting something massive they're not entirely sure they want to find. I mean, it's almost like Chabon is rewriting Moby Dick for the 21st century.
Telegraph Avenue is extremely Moby Dick-shaped, to a degree I found kind of surprising. When I hit the last 50 pages and all of a sudden massive amounts of plot started happening, it caught me off guard even though that's exactly what Melville does, too. Because it's a terrible idea to do it, and there's no earthly reason why it works for Melville, so why would anyone try to copy it? And the plot involves all sorts of 'whales'- wigga lawyer and record collector Mike Oberstein insists on being called Moby, pregnant Gwen refers to herself as a whale, but most hilariously of all, billionaire African-American businessman G-Bad flies around California on the Dogpile blimp, an all-black lighter-than-air vehicle that serves as a focal point for some of the book's most ridiculous scenes. Yep. In addition to white whales, Telegraph Avenue has black whales.
I wanted Telegraph Avenue to be bigger than it was, to say more, but I nonetheless enjoyed it for what it did say. Abigail Nussbaum's critique is that Chabon seems to exhibit a fetishistic appreciation for black culture, which I don't think is entirely wrong, but which I do think is blind to the ways the novel's black characters exhibit a similar fetishistic regard for white culture. Wakanda and the Black Panther, after all, major figures in the novel and sources of inspiration for Luther and Archy and Titus, were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Chabon is very, very clever in the way he constructs the mirrors between black and white in the novel, the ways in which America's struggle with race relations is a two way fight. And the ways in which the mirror fails, too: The book begins with Archy and Gwen and Nat and Aviva linked together as two couples two ways, but defies literary expectation by ending in the divorce not of Archy and Gwen, but of Archy and Nat, and Gwen and Aviva... some burdens of the struggle for equality simply cannot be borne equally by both blacks and whites.
Chabon counterbalances the Moby Dick homage with Ulysses homage, particularly in the innermost chapter, the so-called 'Parrot-Sentence', in which Chabon attempts and fails to copy Joyce's Penelope chapter by tracing out an escaped parrot's aerial tour of Berkeley in a single twelve-page-long sentence. In general, the novel's prose works a lot better everywhere else besides this passage, which accomplishes the task of being a single sentence in the most straight-forward, workmanlike way possible. But I do think that other elements of the Ulysses homage benefit the story: Whereas Moby Dick sprawls around the world on the seven seas, Telegraph Avenue and Ulysses anchor themselves in a very specific urban setting. Brokeland, on the Oakland/Berkely border and sketched out with extreme poetry by Chabon, hops and dances with life, full of vivid characters and iconic locations, even as those locations have the constant sense of being impermanent.
And I've managed to wank about influences for so long while barely saying anything about the book, because, yeah, I have no idea what to say about the book. Nat and Archy and Gwen and Titus and Archy and Julie and Luther and Cochise are all amazing characters. Julie is my favorite character, because there is more than a little Julie in me. There is so much of Julie in me, to be honest. But it was one of those novels where I just want to keep spending time with the characters because they're amazing people and Chabon made me fall in love with all of them.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-03-22 02:35 am (UTC)AmericaBerkeley aren't simply a matter of black and white--where are the Asian and Latin@ people, among others? Berkeley is one of the few truly integrated cities in America, which is really the beginning of its problems rather than any kind of end, but it is a definite fact. Oakland's demographics are different, but still not monolithic.I suppose my question is answered by your comments about the claustrophobia. Thank you very much for this write up; you definitely see things that I wouldn't have.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-03-22 02:41 am (UTC)