by Michael Chabon
My criteria for judging a book are quite unsophisticated. To me, a good book (or film) is one that doesn't make me yawn. Chabon's book didn't make me yawn. Yet… it often reminded my of Dorothy Parker's dictum "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."
I found it very uneven.
It's the story of a Czechoslovakian refugee to America during Hitler's reign. In his new land he gets entangled with several characters and becomes a celebrated creative force in the world of comics during their popular height and waning times. There is a clever linkage between story and historical events.
It read to me fluently until hero Joe is suddenly in Antarctica. From then on, I found the story falling apart into unbelievable bits. In one of them, Joe's longing for revenge builds up to a pathological level. It made me anxious to know its solution. For that, the pilot's appendix bursts and Joe makes a crooked landing.
So does the book.
Chabon is good in sketching a character with a few strokes - just like in comics. But subtle development is not his forte. Rosa is described first as a very independent emotionally and intellectually strong person. I didn't believe her transformation into a demure housewife. And Sammy becomes a mosaic of many pieces which don't quite fit.
Joe's description of his homesickness and longing for his relatives in Europe slips into kitsch. The scene at the wharf where he imagines his father appearing with the ship from Rotterdam made me cringe. But right on the next page Chabon shows his fine inventiveness: "The elegant black and white ship, all 24 170 tons of it, loomed like a mountain in a dinner jacket.'" The book is full of such delights - and awful stuff like: "All at once the shark of dread that never deserted its patrol of Joe's innards rose to the surface." Another one: "The expanding gas of silence between them only excited his shame and lust the more…"
Chabon shows an irritating crave for erudition. What is the: "hallmark of the aetataureate delusion."?
Or: "governmental tergiversations"?
Or: "this twilit hynogogic state"?
Or: "lucubrations of 500 aging boys"?
The book won the Pulitzer Prize. To me it was full of delights and antidelights. Pressed, I would side with Dorothy Parker.
Reviewed by Klaus Jaritz
I found it very uneven.
It's the story of a Czechoslovakian refugee to America during Hitler's reign. In his new land he gets entangled with several characters and becomes a celebrated creative force in the world of comics during their popular height and waning times. There is a clever linkage between story and historical events.
It read to me fluently until hero Joe is suddenly in Antarctica. From then on, I found the story falling apart into unbelievable bits. In one of them, Joe's longing for revenge builds up to a pathological level. It made me anxious to know its solution. For that, the pilot's appendix bursts and Joe makes a crooked landing.
So does the book.
Chabon is good in sketching a character with a few strokes - just like in comics. But subtle development is not his forte. Rosa is described first as a very independent emotionally and intellectually strong person. I didn't believe her transformation into a demure housewife. And Sammy becomes a mosaic of many pieces which don't quite fit.
Joe's description of his homesickness and longing for his relatives in Europe slips into kitsch. The scene at the wharf where he imagines his father appearing with the ship from Rotterdam made me cringe. But right on the next page Chabon shows his fine inventiveness: "The elegant black and white ship, all 24 170 tons of it, loomed like a mountain in a dinner jacket.'" The book is full of such delights - and awful stuff like: "All at once the shark of dread that never deserted its patrol of Joe's innards rose to the surface." Another one: "The expanding gas of silence between them only excited his shame and lust the more…"
Chabon shows an irritating crave for erudition. What is the: "hallmark of the aetataureate delusion."?
Or: "governmental tergiversations"?
Or: "this twilit hynogogic state"?
Or: "lucubrations of 500 aging boys"?
The book won the Pulitzer Prize. To me it was full of delights and antidelights. Pressed, I would side with Dorothy Parker.
Reviewed by Klaus Jaritz
1 comment:
Right Klaus; those terms remind me of trying to read the American columnist George Will. I love the "twilit hypnogogic state", though. It rolls off the tongue and, as a term from my old racket, it describes my usual state of consciousness -- a semi detached-from-reality "pinch me to see if I'm awake" condition usually occuring just before falling asleep.
Ken
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