This was Michael Chabon’s first published novel but I had oddly never read this before. Chabon wrote this when he was about the same age as the protagonist and his group of summer friends. His youth shows but it is an asset in that it informs the characters in a very different way than if he’d written as a more mature person trying to create a younger feel. I actually backdoored into this particular book having first seen the movie version a couple years ago. […]
The Not So Amazing Adventures of Zelikman & Amram
I just left a comment on another CBR raving about Michael Chabon. And it’s true — I love the man’s writing. But this book was just really not very good. I started out liking it, because the language is enchanting. But I realized quickly that it was a lot of fancy words describing something I just could not enjoy. ““[A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result – and have been since at least […]
To run a shtinker, you have to see the broken heart inside the deadest pan.
My first Chabon! OOOOOOF. WOW. Holy crap, you guys, did you know that his prose is exceptional and that there’s no exposition, and that he creates an utterly believable alternate timeline and a narrative that ramps up until you’re flying down the other side of the rollercoaster with no brakes? Are they all like this? Is my brain going to melt? How have I missed out this my entire adult life? Full disclosure: it took me a really long time to gather momentum with “The […]
Musings on Manhood
Michael Chabon grew up in the 70s, a semi-practicing Jewish child of divorce, often picked on for being different in school. I’m about 20 years younger, lapsed Episcopalian, and while my parents don’t always seem to like each other very much, they raised my sister and I together behind a (mostly) united front. Like Chabon, I was (and am) wildly geeky, but I found “my people” at a young age and don’t have any real memories of being bullied or teased or anything like that. […]