Micheal Chabon. Oh how you confound me. After reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Adventures of Cavalier and Clay, and The Final Solution, I thought you might become one of my favorite authors. Your flowery, lavish, 19th-century language, angered yet intrigued me.
But then I read Gentlemen of the Road. I get that you’re delving into different genres (with The Yiddish Policemen’s Union it was speculative fiction), and here you’re doing it wholeheartedly, and clearly with a great deal of joy. I enjoyed the book quite a bit – a swashbuckling adventure, filled with sword fights, double crosses, and a good deal of humor. My only problem is the afterward, which reads like a good old fashioned smack in the face. I’m going to quote you directly here:
“And if you still think there’s something funny in the idea of Jews with swords, look at yourself, right now: sitting in your seat on a jet airplane, let’s say, in your un-earthly orange polyester and neoprene shoes, listening to digital music, crawling across the sky from Charlotte to Las Vegas, and hoping to lose yourself – your home, your certainties, the borders and barriers of your life – by means of a bundle of wood pulp, sewn and glued and stained with blobs of pigment and resin. People with Books. What, in 2007, could be more incongruous than that. It makes me want to laugh.”
The only thing I can think here is that Mr. Chabon is somehow embarrassed to be writing a genre novel. It’s something he discusses in detail in his book of essays (in regards to science fiction in general), and it constantly seems as if he's defending himself.
Why he feels the need, after two Pulitzers, astounds me. The paragraph I cited, which ends Gentlemen, is akin to a server at McDonald’s calling you a fat ass after you order a Big Mac.
I feel a little used.
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