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Jake

The Idle Book Club 3: Telegraph Avenue

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Where is the list of upcoming books? The Twitter feed still says Cloud Atlas, and the web page still says Telegraph Avenue. I want to try and manage

my reading load before December, and I love this podcast series.

(Haven't listened to latest episode yet, finishing the text as we speak)

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At the end of the current podcast, they announced that the next book is Evidence of Things Unseen. The following month will be The Great Gatsby.

Normally we have a discussion thread for this month's book by now. A sticky post or something to that effect with a listing of each book read would be nice to have, though.

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I've come to this thread the past 6 evenings to try and post something that wouldn't be a 3000 word brain dump about what bothers me in Telegraph Avenue.

6 times I failed, but finally, today, I think I've zoomed-in on the core issue that ramify to all others. So it's only 800 words or so. :sombrero:

I think Chambon shouldn't have made Telegraph Avenue a classic novel.

You see, I think the narrative and thematic content of the book land itself perfectly to a collection of Brokeland stories. The story of an undertaker settling an affair from his black panther youth, of a bi-ethnic midwife team facing racism issues, of a retired blues-man dealing with the wrong priority of his son-figure, that of the deluded ambition of 2 ex-Blaxploitation stars emerging from years of drugs, of a retired black NFL star facing opposition to his Vinyl chain, etc... The roots of the book, the undercurrents moving the characters would still be there and distinguishable, albeit peppered across, constructing a tableau by touches.1

But to gel these elements into a monolithic structure where all characters need to revolve around one or two plot points? Where all the threads need to finally gather? I don't think it could ever make sense or even bring anything to the table. In the book, Chambon fails: the dreamcatcher-like scaffolding that he built is at best artificial (everybody's end up at Master Jew's secret room, everybody's a cinephile ) and at worst laughably improbable (a Shonen Jump-reading Samoan bodyguard talking on a blimp about Hari Seldon, really?).

A further consequence of this forced aggregation is that it diminishes the readability and efficiency of Chambon's style2: for most of the book I had issues distinguishing the voices of certain pairs of characters - most notably Archy/Nat and Gwen/Aviva. Similarly, the point of view adopted seemed blurry at times: is the narrator describing what the characters think they are themselves feeling/thinking? Or does he describes what they actually feel? Or is he describing what he himself thinks they think and feel?

There again, having this ambiguity or discrepancy would definitely be a plus in separated short stories with their own narrative rules, but in a novel, it came off as indecisive and 'loose' writing.

As for the references, I ignored them with irritation3: they could be completely bullshit for all I care, I don't think it would change my experience of the story or understanding of the characters.4

STILL, like I said, most of the stories are great independently: most of them contain a sequence or an idea that shines through as "This is fucking worth it".

Some of them are even genius: this is the first time in a long time that I bookmark passages for further references.5

I am particularly in awe of Chambon's way of having his characters reminisce about habits they once witnessed but do not necessarily submit themselves to 6. I also love the imagery he can create with a rich but very clear vocabulary. I was also fascinated by Titus and Julie relationship, since it's the most obfuscated and alien one.

The only thing that bugged me in the content is that none the elder character isn't a legend of some kind (Luther, Chan,Mr Jones, Mrs Jew). I would have liked some counterpoint to their mythical stories or figure, characters more grounded in reality - maybe going to Archy's and Nat's mothers, who were never really given enough space.

Anyway, as a summary: this is a 400+-page book with 200+ pages of structural fat which are detrimental to its grace, its internal consistency and its impact; but there are quite a few excerpts I consider masterpieces.

Now, I can finally listen to the fucking 'cast! :woohoo:

Also I'm trying to make my post shorter; but when I fail - like here - I'm resorting to footnotes. Please tell me if it's useful or completely douchy.

1 The bird-view chapter - which was great but didn't need the obnoxious 'comma only' scheme to give the feeling of a plan-séquence - would be an exception to that, a nexus for the rest of the collection.

2 Take that part with a pinch of salt: this might be because I'm not a native speaker or because this is my first Chambon.

3 I will be checking Brokeland style if it does exist, but the way the other references were dispensed didn't entice me AT ALL to check them out - and I consider myself curious by nature.

4 However I'd be interested in the opinion of someone who could actually get most of these: did they complement or contrast the sequence they are part of?

5 Archy and Jones discussion from p128 to 137 - Jones' internal reaction to his discovery of Titus homosexuality is excellent. Scrap that, these 10 pages are a masterpiece.

Terraforming vs. Pantropy as applied to black immigrants. p - whatever, I lost the bookmark

Mr. Jones on the mask he wore. p - same here, post-it are unreliable.

6 'Useless' by James Joyce - segment about Nat's father p114 & 115

Nat recollection of his Stepmother rule over the Kitchen p185 - 187

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I just finished listening to the podcast and there was a brief point spent on talking about Titus' sexuality that I'm surprised hasn't been discussed more. I think there is a reoccurring theme of sexual fluidity that seems to surround Titus and Archy both. They share a combination of traits both masculine and feminine (traditionally speaking, anyway).

I thought Archy's night spent with Kai was meant to be a parallel to Titus' sexual relationship with Julie.

It goes deeper than that, though. Both of them seem to be preoccupied with their personal appearances and fashion in a manner that is often associated with female characters. Both were raised by single mothers. And a lot of Archy's struggles seem to be with learning how to grow into the more masculine roles of a traditional nuclear family (more crudely stated, "learn to be a man").

That theme added a layer of complexity to both of their characters that I did enjoy. Chabon seemed to let them have those moments and struggles without leading the characters to come to any definitive conclusions about them, which I felt was very appropriate.

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In some ways the book felt like a kind of B movie (perhaps something Luther Stallings would star in)...

Lots of really cool and interesting stuff on a micro level - some nice character interactions, great sections of dialogue, generally cool scenes. But, on a macro level, it just fails to come together. It's almost like someone with a bunch of stuff filmed and no budget to finish off something that can be brought together as a whole.

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I have to admit, I'm kind of surprised that there are people who don't know what canticle for leibowitz is.

Yeah, it pained me just a little bit to hear it spoken of dismissively.

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Yeah, it pained me just a little bit to hear it spoken of dismissively.

I didn't get that they were being dismissive of the book, but instead that all the characters would have all read it despite the book being a pretty esoteric reference.

(And to be quite frank, for all I enjoyed it A Canticle of Leibowitz IS a really esoteric book. Famous as a sci-fi book only in some circles, and tied heavily to Catholicism and faith. It would be like if they happened to be all conversant with what happened in the later Dune books.)

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I didn't get that they were being dismissive of the book, but instead that all the characters would have all read it despite the book being a pretty esoteric reference.

(And to be quite frank, for all I enjoyed it A Canticle of Leibowitz IS a really esoteric book. Famous as a sci-fi book only in some circles, and tied heavily to Catholicism and faith. It would be like if they happened to be all conversant with what happened in the later Dune books.)

I read it in high school English. I think it's way more mainstream than you're giving it credit for.

Edit: And for whatever it's worth, I don't think they were being dismissive. I'm just surprised that they hadn't heard of it.

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I had (maybe) heard of the book before but it didn't ring a clear bell when reading Telegraph (other than I knew it was a real book and found it unnatural but not off-putting that all the characters had read it).

Also, apparently you would be surprised by the vast amount of stuff I don't know about.

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I have to admit, I'm kind of surprised that there are people who don't know what canticle for leibowitz is.

I'm surprised that there are people who are surprised that not everyone know what A Canticle for Leibowitz is. I can admit that I have not heard of, or at least paid attention to, the novel before.

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Yeah, it pained me just a little bit to hear it spoken of dismissively.

I'm not sure what you mean by that. As I said on the podcast, it strained credulity for me that all three of those characters in that situation would be familiar with the work. I didn't say I thought the work was poor; I haven't read it.

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I'm not sure what you mean by that. As I said on the podcast, it strained credulity for me that all three of those characters in that situation would be familiar with the work. I didn't say I thought the work was poor; I haven't read it.

I'm sure I just misinterpreted. The way it was phrased on the podcast, it sounded to me like, "I'm supposed to believe that three people were familiar with this book I hadn't even heard of until now." Those were probably two separate thoughts.

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I'm sure I just misinterpreted. The way it was phrased on the podcast, it sounded to me like, "I'm supposed to believe that three people were familiar with this book I hadn't even heard of until now." Those were probably two separate thoughts.

Well, that's definitely part of it. It's definitely not a household name by any means. And even allowing for multiple people being aware of a book, having all three of them having READ it and being clearly quite familiar with it, with no prior context to explain why that would be the case, just rang false to me. The idea of three guys being up in a zeppelin and one saying, "Of course we all know A Canticle for Liebowitz," and everyone saying "Oh yeah of course," apropos of basically nothing, was just silly. That kind of thing rarely happens even with works that are much more part of the zeitgeist, except (usually) in situations where you're self-selecting your friends based on mutual interest and taste--and in this case, if Archie and Gibson Goode and Gibson Goode's bodyguard have anything in common, it's vintage vinyl, but as I recall, they didn't even personally overlap all that much on that Venn diagram.

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I actually loved the absurdity of that particular scene. The bodyguard namedropping Asimov characters (hinting at past in-depth discussions with Goode) struck me as too gleefully ridiculous not to be self-aware.

I do, however, harbour a very deep belief that anything is funnier if it takes place an airship. (My current labour of love is an ensemble audio sitcom set on board a blimp.) I want to believe Chabon was chuckling at the implausibility of it all as he typed.

This personal exception aside, I thought you were spot-on about the more casual, less extreme examples, such as Gwen's interest in Star Trek. Not implausible, not necessarily uncharacteristic; just a bit forced. A reference for its own sake.

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Is there a reason for the podcast theme to appear at 41:38?

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay seems to be the most widely loved.

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay seems to be the most widely loved.

Agreed although Yiddish Policeman's Union or Wonderboys is a faster read.

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