Sign in to follow this  
Jake

The Idle Book Club 3: Telegraph Avenue

Recommended Posts

Those early conversations in Brokeland would have worked really well on TV.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Those early conversations in Brokeland would have worked really well on TV.

Yeah, once I found that out, the "You're Fucked" conversation really stood out as being written for the screen. (Chabon also did some screenwriting for John Carter, so maybe that's bleeding over too?)

The really frustrating thing about the book—as I round the corner into the final quarter—is how pointless and meaningless most of the pop-culture references and metaphors are. They're fun to read out loud, but inert on the page and make no sense if you stop for a few seconds to think about them. Not to mention that the language is way too invariant between the characters: deservedly more for Julie & Titus, but inexplicably also layered onto Archy and Gwen's sections.

The book as a whole feels a lot more performative than written, with Chabon more interested in stringing together delicious sounds than in composing coherent thoughts. I really really wish I'd read other Chabon before this to have a good baseline, but it strikes me as the occasional late-career malady of selling well enough to ignore your editor.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The book as a whole feels a lot more performative than written, with Chabon more interested in stringing together delicious sounds than in composing coherent thoughts. I really really wish I'd read other Chabon before this to have a good baseline, but it strikes me as the occasional late-career malady of selling well enough to ignore your editor.

Based on a lot of the reviews that I read of Telegraph Avenue, this seems to be the majority opinion on the book. I've only read Kavalier and Clay, and I'm having a hard time accepting that the same author wrote both those books.

One review I read brought up a really interesting point, that Telegraph Avenue is basically a novelized version of a Tarantino movie. The direct references to his movies, the focus on blaxploitation kung-fu movies, and the heavy reliance (or maybe over reliance?) on pop culture references, all make the comparison to Tarantino's films seem appropriate. Anyone else picking up on this as they read the book?

I'd put the book down for a few days after the infamous Obama scene, but I think I'll try finishing it. Gwen and Julie are interesting enough characters that I want to see how their stories end, and I obviously I want to be able to follow the discussion in the bookcast. Still, I'm disappointed in how this book is turning out, especially since I know that Chabon is capable of writing a truly amazing story.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

One review I read brought up a really interesting point, that Telegraph Avenue is basically a novelized version of a Tarantino movie. The direct references to his movies, the focus on blaxploitation kung-fu movies, and the heavy reliance (or maybe over reliance?) on pop culture references, all make the comparison to Tarantino's films seem appropriate. Anyone else picking up on this as they read the book?

I think he was pretty overt in his homages to Tarantino, but the book doesn't ever seem to get near the level of "holy shit, everything is getting fucked up" the way Tarantino's films do.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
The really frustrating thing about the book—as I round the corner into the final quarter—is how pointless and meaningless most of the pop-culture references and metaphors are. They're fun to read out loud, but inert on the page and make no sense if you stop for a few seconds to think about them.

This is really bothering me, mainly because it so often seems completely at odds with the interior voice of the character with whom it's paired. Early on, the novel compares something Gwen is doing with what seemed to be a bit of obscure Star Trek trivia, which made no sense to me. If it were being invoked in a Julie scene, I would have been more accepting of it, but it just seemed really poorly-pitched to me, because nothing Gwen ever says or does (at least 400 pages in, where I am) suggests she has any interest in Star Trek or sci-fi. And that kind of thing keeps happening. Also, that scene in

the zeppelin, where ever character present is simultaneously revealed to have an exhaustive knowledge of sci-fi literature,

while not entirely implausible, strained credulity a bit for me and made me think Chabon really just wanted an excuse to bring that material in. (There's a lot of extreme coincidence going on in the plotting throughout, which wears on me.)

One review I read brought up a really interesting point, that Telegraph Avenue is basically a novelized version of a Tarantino movie. The direct references to his movies, the focus on blaxploitation kung-fu movies, and the heavy reliance (or maybe over reliance?) on pop culture references, all make the comparison to Tarantino's films seem appropriate. Anyone else picking up on this as they read the book?

I can imagine making this argument but it doesn't work for me, whether intended by Chabon or not. There's nothing structurally wacky going on, nothing hyper-stylized, and the conflicts (neither internalized or externalized) strike me much as very Tarantino-like.

Ultimately though I really like these characters a lot. To me (again, not yet having finished the book) this is a novel about a pretty strong collection of characters, with strongly-drawn interpersonal relationships, who are set in a somewhat unconvincing overarching plot and overwritten prose. The characters are enough for me to like the book on balance so far. Not sure where I'll end up more specifically than that.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The really frustrating thing about the book—as I round the corner into the final quarter—is how pointless and meaningless most of the pop-culture references and metaphors are. They're fun to read out loud, but inert on the page and make no sense if you stop for a few seconds to think about them. Not to mention that the language is way too invariant between the characters: deservedly more for Julie & Titus, but inexplicably also layered onto Archy and Gwen's sections.

I agree. And I think that even if I cared about these particular pop cultures, I would feel the same way. In Kavalier and Clay and Wonder Boys both, there is a lot of pop culture weaved into the books, but in those cases Chabon mines those artifacts for archetypal and cultural meanings. It's been so long since I read those books, but in my mind the wild Lovecraftian stories of the pulp writer in Wonder Boys expressed potential subconscious anxieties. The superhero stories (especially that amazing Golem stuff) resonated so powerfully with the aspirations in particular of boys from the that class and statra, but also the aspirations of mid-century American culture. And it was so good!

In Telegraph Avenue, I feel like the cultures explored are used for nothing more than window dressing. It's name dropping, and beside an occasional delicious turn of phrase (of which there are many) or fleeting situational metaphor, they add no power to the book.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Now that you mention it, the references seem clumsy to me as well. Going back to the SF-knowledge scene, Archy suddenly reminisces about his early life as a "nerd". Nothing about Archy suggests this to me, with his past experience seemingly primarily in music, and given his extensive cheating he seems to have a way with women.

Archy typifies this sort of thing even more with the early references to Meditations. Apparently he carries a copy with him all the time. I interpreted this as kind of a "Chekov's Meditations" and expected it to come out at a critical moment of character development, but after the first 100 pages or so Archy stops caring about the book or even patterning his actions on Stoic philosophy.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Now that you mention it, the references seem clumsy to me as well. Going back to the SF-knowledge scene, Archy suddenly reminisces about his early life as a "nerd". Nothing about Archy suggests this to me, with his past experience seemingly primarily in music, and given his extensive cheating he seems to have a way with women.

Come on man, give nerds some credit, not all of them are helpless with women.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Come on man, give nerds some credit, not all of them are helpless with women.

True. I guess he just didn't tonally scream "nerd" to me. I am a nerd and don't have much of a way with women :(.

Addendum: Currently have a girlfriend of 2 years, way with women would now be a liability.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

True. I guess he just didn't tonally scream "nerd" to me. I am a nerd and don't have much of a way with women :(.

Just talk to them about Idle Thumbs, works like a charm.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just talk to them about Idle Thumbs, works like a charm.

Hey baby, wizard horsebag droppin' them hot scoops wait why are you leaving no please come back.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey baby, wizard horsebag droppin' them hot scoops wait why are you leaving no please come back.

That would be a less unsettling outcome than her being like, "You video game baby, color your hair with boost, like Old Man Clancy's HAW."

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Finished the book tonight. At a certain point later in the novel, Chabon seems to realize that he has no clue how to end this and suddenly elevates one of the sub-plots to drive events forward to a wacky climax, most of the effects of which are negated in the epilogue. Even worse, the epilogue is a jump ahead and he clumsily shoves exposition describing the interim into dialogue, as if he were writing for a bad movie.

Even after finishing the book, I still don't really feel an emotional connection to any of the characters, which is unusual for me when reading a novel. None of them seemed particularly real or cogent, and while the pop-culture references we talked about earlier really hurt by making them feel like author-mouthpieces, the other character stuff also didn't click. I still have no clue why Archy found it so hard to make good decisions, and it seems like Chabon hand-waved each of the characters into making bad choices by saying ~they were mad~ or ~they were drunk~ or ~they were inscrutable~ (in Titus' case). No idea of their inner life outside of their interests and other facebook profile page pieces. He's a great writer but a terrible author, at least for this book.

As far as Tarantino goes, it seems like Chabon is falling into the worries some had about Tarantino before he excelled in Inglorious Basterds—fear that the substance of his films was merely reference, and that there wasn't anything else there (kind of like A Certain Other Indie Filmmaker From 1994 Familiar With Comic Books). As Chris points out though, Tarantino has plenty of other authorial trademarks that often get ignored like non-linear storytelling and punctuating violence. Chabon may be aping Tarantino, but doing a really shitty job at it.

Other fun facts from the Chabon reading I went to earlier:

  • Chabon's original impetus for writing this (I guess on the TV pilot level) was because he was surprised at the happy reaction to OJ Simpson's not guilty verdict in the black community, and felt like he had gotten out of touch with that community. Yep, what you're feeling was my reaction too. I should mention that this surprised him because...
  • He grew up in Columbia, Maryland, a utopian planned community that planned to eliminate segregation on all levels by offering housing for all classes to members of all races, anchored by interfaith centers. His family moved him there when he was young, and he has really fond memories of his time there.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Okay I put this book down and I don't see myself picking it up again. I like Chabons other stuff. Yiddish Policemans Union is good, and Kavalier & Clay is fantastic, but man ... I really didn't like this book at all. I don't mean that I had some sort of negative reaction to it or anything in it, I just mean it failed to capture my interest on any level. Reading it, I would just get bored and my mind would wander, losing the thread and having to re-read paragraphs. The characters are well-realised, in that they seem like real people, but they just aren't interesting to me. I don't have any context for the pop-culture references, so those are all falling flat. I'm not getting anything out of this book at all. I'll still listen to the cast, maybe it will convince me to go back it it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

As an exceptionally white Australian, my imagination would have curled up and whimpered at the idea of giving these characters real voices. Happily, this is one case where the audio book offers a clear - perhaps even unfair - advantage.

Clarke Peters (The Wire, Treme) gives a wonderfully passionate reading, transforming the discography credits from intrusions to the cool off-hand asides they were intended to be, and slathering phrases like "a dream of cream" with buttery smoothness. I'm not sure if this brings out the natural "authenticity" of the text, or just artificially covers up the lack thereof. Either way, it made this a much more comfortable experience on a lot of levels.

Having gone through a few fleeting-but-intense soul, funk and blaxploitation soundtrack benders, I admit to a tiny, pretentious buzz of thrill on recognising an occasional track title. It can be pretty alienating, yes, but it's a fitting 1:1 summation of how it must feel to live outside Archy and Nat's tiny, vinyl-insulated world.

This book is an absolute pleasure from sentence to sentence. I agree with practically every criticism in this thread on some level, but there's a lot I'm willing to forgive in exchange for that next sweet fix of simile. It's an unambitious story ambitiously told, and I'm entirely fine with that. Again, the audio book narration does a lot of the heavy lifting here, so perhaps this is cheating. I'd still love to get a physical copy, if only for the pleasure of picking it off the shelf once a year and reliving one of those rich sentences at random.

Judging by a lot of your comments, it seems I might feel otherwise if I'd read previous Chabon novels more fulfilling on a broader scale. My Amazon cart is well on its way to amending this, and I can't wait. Anything that makes this experience a retroactive disappointment should be pretty spectacular.

On that note, I'd like to thank the Idle Book Club for all the extracurricular reading it's inspired. I expected to fall behind, so it's been a surprise to find each month's book leading to the purchase (and, even less likely, completion) of 1-2 others. Even the off-hand reference to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy led to the far-too-late discovery of John le Carre. You've really got something special going here.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Finished the book last night as well. Towards the end I was just speeding through to finish, and wasn't really concerned with how the plot threads were going to tie up or what was going to happen with the characters. There was one particular point where I wanted to just put the book down and never look at it again (ok, two points, the first was the Obama scene). It's when Aviva is talking to Nat and Archy about the record store, and she has a line about how men like them will always create empires, love vinyl, etc, and that she--because she's a woman is the implication--will never understand them. That's just terrible.

The two female main characters gave me the most problems in the book. Aviva was definitely the weakest character; she seemed like a weird stand in for Chabon's own wife. I actually liked Gwen, until the end when she apologizes to the man who threatened to sue her. The scene is written like it's supposed to be a big character moment, but the whole time Archy is in the background, acting smug at the sight of Gwen being taken down a notch His weird superiority only draws attention to the fact that between the two, it's really Archy who deserves to be shamed and humbled, but everything works out pretty OK for him.

I'm glad that in this week's podcast, Jake briefly mentions his own dissatisfaction with the book; I'd been feeling guilty about panning a book that's a bookcast selection, but not anymore. Really excited to hear everyone's thoughts on this one.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

so, I was going to join the book club with this, but i've heard a lot of talk about how its kinda mediocre. The Obama bit mentioned in the thread didn't help convince me. So I'm going to give it a pass, and join the book club afterwards. Otoh, the book club did convince me that I really ought to read Cloud Atlas, which I now have on my kindle and also that the movie is probably bad, which, having seen just the trailer, seems a reasonable assertion. Because the trailer was hella long and boring and not compelling at all, as well as not being representative of the themes discussed on the cast.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
It's when Aviva is talking to Nat and Archy about the record store, and she has a line about how men like them will always create empires, love vinyl, etc, and that she--because she's a woman is the implication--will never understand them. That's just terrible.

Maybe it's because I'm male and/or ignorant, but I did not interpret that scene that way at all. I think throughout the book Aviva felt out of place among the obsessive music culture of her husband's cohort. I thought that line was more about establishing that subculture's exclusivity, or maybe a better word is mystery.

Definitely agree that Archy getting away with everything seems ludicrous. I don't understand why Gwen ends up back with him at the end, and they make it seem like the changes he makes to his life are oh-so-unfair to poor Archy.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Maybe it's because I'm male and/or ignorant, but I did not interpret that scene that way at all. I think throughout the book Aviva felt out of place among the obsessive music culture of her husband's cohort. I thought that line was more about establishing that subculture's exclusivity, or maybe a better word is mystery.

Definitely agree that Archy getting away with everything seems ludicrous. I don't understand why Gwen ends up back with him at the end, and they make it seem like the changes he makes to his life are oh-so-unfair to poor Archy.

I guess it rubbed me the wrong way because--and this is speaking entirely from my own personal experience--music subcultures tend to have a lot of weird gender issues, so a female character having a line about how her husband's love of vinyl is some big unknowable thing, seems a little tone deaf. Especially since the line comes out of now where, since I never got any indication that Aviva felt shut out from her husband's obsession.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
Definitely agree that Archy getting away with everything seems ludicrous. I don't understand why Gwen ends up back with him at the end, and they make it seem like the changes he makes to his life are oh-so-unfair to poor Archy.

Theme: Compromise.

'Getting away with' is such a weird punitive mindset. If you just mean you don't think Gwen and/or Titus should have forgiven him, well, that's more a critique of their characters than his. It seems like they're trying to make a family with whatever shitty second-hand components are available, though, so I don't know.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I'd been feeling guilty about panning a book that's a bookcast selection, but not anymore.

I don't think this should be a concern. None of us had read this book before this month, and none of us have read next month's either. It's not as though we're personally wrapped up in the works.

For what it's worth, I probably fall somewhere in between the general feeling of disappointment in this thread and a full-fledged enjoyment of the book. I thought it had a number of problems (some of which I raised earlier) but wasn't a total failure of a novel; I derived a lot of pleasure out of it, interspersed with the frustrations.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't think this should be a concern. None of us had read this book before this month, and none of us have read next month's either. It's not as though we're personally wrapped up in the works.

I guess I'm just letting my guilt get the better of me, happens all the time. Looking forward to next month's book though.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I am incredibly uncomfortable with my reaction to this book. As a preface, I am born, raised, and living in southern Ontario. I grew up in a small, homogenous caucasian town and now live in a city that is composed primarily of college students, with an ethnic distribution leaning heavily towards caucasian and oriental people. To sum it up, I have never really been exposed to black culture or even black people.

Reading this book, I'm disappointed with myself in many ways. The most forgivable slight is that I don't pick up on any of the cultural references. But more than that, I immediately picture most characters as caucasian upon introduction despite the novel taking place in a largely black community. I still picture Gwen as kind of a caucasianized african-american, having taken a chapter or two to realize her background. Half the time I feel like the voices I give the characters are over-the-top ethnically inspired.

Basically I feel like a horribly ignorant white person.

I'm just over 100 pages in, and was definitely feeling that for the first 30 or so pages. Weirdly, my brain flipped at some point and now I keep forgetting that Nat, Aviva, and Julie are white. I'm definitely getting a better feel for the characters now, but my own damn small-town Ontario brain (I grew up in Grafton before moving to Calgary, know it?) spent way more time than my conscious mind was comfortable with assuming everyone was white. In my late teen years, I really started loving Jazz, Funk, Soul, Hip Hop, and old exploitation movies (Coffy is probably in my personal top 5 films), so I get the references and understand a bunch of what's going on with that, but it did not provide much of a defence against the mental habits that I got from the town I grew up in being approximately 498 white people and two Koreans.

That said, I'm still quite enjoying the book. I've never read a Chabon before, so I'm not coming in with any particular baggage, and finding the prose to be a lot of fun to read. It becomes occasionally very apparent that this is a white guy writing though, so I'm kind of curious how successful even he thought he was at giving characters so far outside his demographic an authentic voice. Looking forward to the book cast, at least, though thanks to cramming for the end of my courses over the next couple of weeks, I'll probably not get to finish the book and listen until mid-month.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this