Telegraph Avenue Read Along : "A Bird of Wide Experience" & "Return to Forever"



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bookseller or Indiebound.org .


When I was growing up, my tenth grade English teacher, Ms. Nitkin, explained to us students of American Literature that what distinguishes a novel from a novella or a short story is that a novelist creates an entire world, one we feel we're entering each time we crack the cover.  Few novelists take the time to do that these days, it seems, opting instead for character- and plot- driven narratives that may grip us with their pacing, their trajectory, or their psychological insights, but don't actually create fully faceted worlds with richly specific atmospheres for us to inhabit.  Chabon does in Telegraph Avenue, and in my book that's an achievement to celebrate. 

This week, I found myself staring down my (typical) multiple reads, hopping over Transcendentalist New England (the Pulitzer-winning Alcott bio, Eden's Outcasts), contemporary NM/LA/Midwest/reality TV (the newer and thus far slight Gruen novel Ape House), and 1980's Bangladesh (Tahmima Anam's The Good Muslim), landing squarely in Brokeland territory every time.  For a reader who found the first 100+ pages more than a tad annoying in many respects, that's a triumph of the author's craft and the collective pull of this read-along community over my own capriciously critical proclivities. 

To the specifics:

• I took one look at the form of "A Bird of Wide Experience" and thought, "Please.  No.  Not another and even more obvious flexing of Chabon's Style muscles."  But I took a deep breath, dug in, and found that section to be a fluid read despite the mannered choice of writing it in a single sentence.  Jury's still out on whether, as a part of the whole in which no other segment is crafted in this way, it works.  (I do get that, as a set piece, the shape's meant to in some way support the bird's eye view, on multiple levels.  I just need to reread it after I've finished the novel to see whether I think it succeeds as an integrated chapter.)  In any case, I was sad to see Fifty-Eight go, and it did call to mind a relatively recent climb up the stairs on Telegraph Hill in SF (not to be confused with our title street in Oakland), as the famous parrots flitted about, screeching, overhead.  And there were flocks of wild parrots in Palo Alto/Redwood City too, now that I come to think about it.  They were all green and smallish, so despite the mild climate, I don't know how a big African Grey like Fifty-Eight would fare in the urban landscape... I guess we'll find out.
•  I learned a word which could have been applied to my circumstances nearly every day of my life, and I'm grateful to Mr. Chabon for it:  trepverter.  It means "thinking of a clever comeback or witty remark when it is too late."  Aviva recognizes that, because she's a cautious communicator, she often catches herself in moments of trepverter.  As a teacher, for me each day is filled with opportunities to offer just the right observation, ask just the right question, or pipe up with a bon mot or a humorous but non-harming remark to lighten the journey.  I do a decent job of it, if I do say so myself, but every day I drive home thinking of how I could have done better.  And who among us hasn't "trepverter-ed", probably within the past week?  Note to self:  trepverter would be a sparky idea around which to build some writing exercises too, both of the autobiographical and the fictional sort.  Might even be worthy of a poem: How would that concept influence both form and content? 
• Too many laugh-out-loud moments to count.  I especially admire comedy that works on multiple levels, and here character-driven comedy is supported by linguistic comedy within situations that offer both humor and pathos.  Well played, Mr. Chabon.
• I appreciate the way that Chabon continues to build nuances into the motif of apology in this section.  Most of the main characters have plenty of cause to both offer and receive apologies, and an American novel with race as foundational element pretty well must address the issues of apologies and reparations. Chabon highlights the complexities of the act of apology without - IMHO - waxing too didactic or taking sides in any heavy-handed way, and his treatment of this motif truly made me ponder.
• Lest anyone think I'm responding with unqualified raves for this novel, please know that I've saved all my critiques in a private file.  I do not think that Telegraph Avenue is a perfect piece of writing, especially style-wise.  However, I'd still recommend it.  (Is that too critical, yet sans support?  If you think so, let me know and I'll offer up some thoughts on the many moments when stylistic choices jarred me out of the narrative and/or out of the fictional world.)

I've bookmarked many additional passages in this section, so I could gabble on quite a bit longer, but I'd rather see what the rest of the the read-alongers have to say, and then jump right back into the world of Telegraph Avenue. 

MFB, as we careen down the home stretch,
L

p.s. Please, y'all, whether you've stopped by this read-along for the first time today or whether you've been following from the beginning (Post 1,  Post 2, Post 3), do check out the varied, trenchant, and often funny responses from the other read-along participants, whose posts are linked at host As The Crowe Flies and Reads.  And buy the book.  Despite my concerns, I know that it will linger in my memory for a long time, and suspect you'll find it worthy as well.

p.s.s. Telegraph Avenue Film School continued with The Band Wagon.  Um.  Seemed like a decidedly second rate Singin' In The Rain to me. I can't tell how this would be a Tarantino influence, but perhaps one of you out there has more than just a passing knowledge of his films and you could fill us all in...  Here was the one fun moment in an otherwise dull film:


Yup.  That's the best there was.  Consider yourselves spared.

Next up?  The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly with Clint Eastwood. 

Thoreau Couplet : Poem In Your Post

My life has been the poem I would have writ

But I could not both live and utter it.

And so, I go.  Perhaps you'll memorize this worthwhile couplet, then take it along with you as you seize this summer day.

MFB, Transcendentally,

L

p.s.  I've been trolling the poems of Thoreau, Emerson, Robert Browning, and Louisa May Alcott while reading Eden's Outcasts, the Pulitzer-winning biography of LMA and her father, Bronson.  Much to ponder therein, and I'll share in an upcoming review.

If you've a poem to share today, offer it up in the comments below or link to your blogpost.

What I Did : Blog Tour Review



Find it at indiebound or Amazon.


If you've read Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime or Matt Haig's The Dead Fathers' Club or Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and you found Christopher or Philip or Oskar fascinating, you'll likely find What I Did, with its six-year-old protagonist Billy, equally intriguing. This new novel by British-American Christopher Wakling promises a stellar read for fans of close first-person perspective and for those who enjoy inhabiting the mind of a singularly unusual child. 

Because voice is the primary element here, I'll offer a longish excerpt from the introduction. Here's how Billy begins:

This is the first bit and shall I tell you why?  Okay I will.  It is to make you read the rest.

Don't worry, it isn't a trailer.  Trailers are the first bits before films which are actually really adverts and Dad says adverts are where they try to get you to buy something probably don't want.  Then again Mum says maybe you do.  I often want it.

          You want this story.  It has already started...

When you're watching a trailer it won't even be before the right film!  That's great, I love that it looks fantastic, let's watch that.  No, we can't.  It's not here.  That is called frustrating.

Dad says they put all the best bits of a film in the trailer to reduce you to watching it, and that quite often the rest of the film isn't up to much, but he is wrong.  They don't put the best bits in there, not always.  There's no bit where Luke actually blows up the Death Star in the trailer for Star Wars but they do have light savers which are magnificent.

Sadly there are no light savers in this story.  It is all real.  It is about a terrible thing which happens to me.  But watch out because the thing you think is the terrible thing isn't really it.  Other things come later and they're worse.  I'm not going to tell you what they are yet because now isn't the time.  That is called suspension.

I also have to warn you that nobody is bad or good here, or rather everyone is a bit bad and a bit good and the bad and good moluscules get mixed up against each other and produce terrible chemical reactions.

Did you know cheetahs cannot retract their claws?

Here is the real beginning.

His website's christopherwakling.com.

As you can see, the humor of this novel emerges from Billy's at once precocious and impulsive character and his free-associating voice.  Plus, Billy's an enormous fan of David Attenborough's nature videos, and his naively humorous yet often trenchant comparisons of human behavior to that of predators and prey add a dimension that enriches his internal monologue.  This novel is chock-full of hilarious malapropisms and aural/oral linguistic confusions as well, so those of us who embrace both the complexity and the absurdity of the English language will find laugh-out-loud passages on nearly every page.  (I learned that misheard and thus misunderstood words or expressions may also be called "oronyms" thanks to Isabel Costello, who also offers a thoughtful response to What I Did.)  If you're looking for more hilarious samples of Billy's worldview, complete with "Billy"-drawn illustrations, hop over to Wakling's website and "Billy's Blog".

But don't think that this book is just one gag after another: far from it.  In fact, it's also a harrowing tale of partial understandings, of multiple truths, of missed opportunities, and of unfortunate choices when they count the most. 

Dramatic irony fuels narrative tension here: we as readers understand far more than Billy does; his self-absorbed blunders and willfulness - worsening an already bad situation - make us cringe with concern.  And, clearly, the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree:  Billy's dad follows the same pattern as he reacts to an unfulfilling job situation and to Billy's constant drama.  The novel's major conflict - and one that aggravates tensions between Billy's Mum and Dad as well - is initiated when a nosy pedestrian reports Billy's dad to Social Services for (what most readers will see as regrettably yet understandably) spanking him after he ignores repeated warnings and runs out into a busy street.  And because Billy's one of the most accident prone/ADHD six-year-olds ever, his continued impulsive actions lead to a number of additional personal injuries, exacerbating misunderstandings with the "ChildSafe" social services team investigating the family.  How Mum, Dad, Grandma Lynne, and Billy respond to "Butterfly" and "Giraffe" from "ChildSafe" provides the central conflict in the narrative, with plenty of tense moments among Billy's family members emerging in response to this crisis.

The novel's most salient strength - Wakling's Billy - may also be its liability for some readers:  What I Did takes place over just a few days, and - to be honest - whatever tension could be developed between the inciting incident and the intense final forty pages is undermined by Billy's incessant digressions and by his realistic focus on the present moment coupled with his ignorance about his own plight.  Thus, the tension that mounts among the other characters related to the main plot is experienced obliquely.  Personally, I enjoyed the entire novel, but I did want to offer a heads-up to those who prefer more intensely single-plot-driven works.

On the whole though, I found much to appreciate here, and recommend this novel.  I would think that my IRL book group would find plenty of fodder for discussion in What I Did,  as it's mostly young moms for whom the central issues of raising a child would hit quite close to home.  I suspect that many book groups would enjoy it too, regardless of the life circumstances of their members.

Many thanks to TLC tours and to Mr. Wakling's publishers, HarperCollins, for offering me the opportunity to be part of this blog tour.  To enjoy others' responses to What I Did, simply follow the schedule for the rest of this tour.

MFB,
L

My action:  I'm going to review the developmental psychology of six-year-olds, because I've never raised one and often found myself wondering, "Are six-year-olds normally this willful?  This out-of-control?  Do they tend to pee their pants a lot? Is this kid some sort of autistic-savant?"  And then there's Billy's cousin Lizzy: she's three years old and not yet speaking at all.  Where is her silence on the spectrum of language acquisition?  Clearly, I need a review!

Telegraph Avenue Read-Along : "The Church of Vinyl" Edition



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Well huzzah and praise Buddha, Chabon's finally hitting his stride.  After a first chapter stuck in first gear, weighed down by a freightload of expository and stylistic baggage, "The Church of Vinyl" slams on the gas and takes off into a full-fledged, multi-faceted plot while deepening our understanding of independent record store owners Nat and Archy, as well as Archy's pregnant midwife wife, Gwen. We're even treated to a few pages inside the venerable dome of Mr. Randall "Cochise" Jones, the Hammond-genius jazzman who's both wise and eccentric in equal measures.  Now Chabon's focusing on just a few core characters rather than bopping around among a crowded cast as he did in the first section: Again, huzzah.  And his authorial stylings seem far less obtrusive than they were in "Dream of Cream": More matter with less self-conscious art.  Yay.

There is much to applaud in this chapter, so in the interest of time - and with the hope that those not participating in this read-along will purchase the novel when it debuts in September - here's a trio of passages that raised an appreciative smile:

• Of the oily yet powerful councilman Chan Flowers, funeral chapel owner, erstwhile best friend of Blackspoitation star Luther Stallings, and ominous presence in the Brokeland neighborhood:  "A smile opened, thin as a paper cut, at the bottom of Flowers's face."  (So much shown, so much characterization implied, so economically.)
• I just kept chuckling and shaking my head during Nat's first COCHISE neighborhood meeting. It seemed painfully realistic (given Nat's email list) that 90% of his crowd turned out to be white Berkeley-esque types, that he had to "bribe" Singletary to be there, and that he forgot to tell Archy about the meeting.  The "Juddhists" among the aging hippies in attendance codged a particularly broad smile too as I thought, "If such a New Agey hybrid religion exists, it would have to be born in Berkeley."  Then I looked it up.  It's real, sort of, and the term was supposedly coined in 2005 at Thich Nhat Hanh's "Peace Today" retreat at Stonehill College in Massachusetts.  Then I found this light-hearted thread with "Juddhist" sayings: Zen Juddhism.  It made me wonder if Chabon himself might have found this religious hybrid personally appealing.  Enjoy.
• And here's a lovely extended analogy that also feels organically right. It's Aviva Jaffe reflecting on the impeccable manners of teenage, Texas-bred houseguest, Titus Joyner:

She had to admit that she loved the "sirs" and "ma'ams" that aflowed from his lips so readily, drawled out like pats of butter smeared across a biscuit.  She remembered hiking in Yosemite with Nat and Julie a few summers back.  Climbing to the top of the Mist Trail up a preposterous stairway of stones proposed, cut, hauled, and fixed immovably into place, proof against time and earthquakes, under the auspices of the WPA.  She remembered feeling grateful to those long-dead men, the planners and the workers, for their foresight, their labor,  the heroic absurdity of that granite stair.  That was how she felt, whenever he would "ma'am" her, toward the dead grandmother of this boy.

What?  I'm Not The Only Reader In The Blogospheres?  To find out if other book bloggers shared my enthusiasm for the second chapter in Telegraph Avenue and to enjoy their trenchant, humorous, and thought-provoking commentary, just hop to the linky-list over at As The Crowe Flies (and Reads).  Last week's "conversations" provided a wonderfully welcome diversity of perspectives on this novel, and I trust that the same will be true today.

A Prediction and a Question for Read-Alongers:  Call me crazy, and I've been wrong once already, but I'm guessing that "A Bird of Wide Experience" is Fifty-Eight, and I was indeed wondering what would become of him.  Will Titus take him on?  Will Archy?

MFB in The Church of Vinyl,
L


Report from Film School:  We Netflixed the 1973 Coffy, Pam Grier's first film, from the list of Kill Bill influences in "Dream of Cream".  Well.  Now I have a new reference point for many action films today, and I can certainly see how it might be a Tarantino influence.  Not exactly deep or well-acted, but plenty of violence and sexiness and funky music.  In the "Coincidence? I think not." realm, when we finished watching Coffy, Cat Woman starring Halle Berry was just finishing on TV, and the parallels in both the action and the characters were too many to ignore.  Then on came Hustle and Flow.  I loved that film the first time around, but saw so much more cinematic history behind it after watching the '70's flick. So thanks to E. at As The Crowe Flies (and Reads) for hosting this read-along and to Michael Chabon for piquing my interest in Blacksploitation films, which in turn led to a fully fulfilling 'night at the movies'.  Next in the queue from the Kill Bill syllabus: Vincent Minelli's 1953 musical The Bandwagon.  I'm intrigued to see what that film might have contributed to Tarantino's choices.

TA Pilgrimage Update: I've been planning my Telegraph Avenue trip via Google Earth maps.  Even though I've visited the Berkeley end more than once, I had a completely inaccurate mental picture of what the Neldham's/Brokeland Records neighborhood looks like.  The bakery actually closed and was re-opened by its workers as Taste of Denmark.  You can bet that'll be stop number one!

Leaving Things Unfinished : Poem In Your Post

As the black wings close in on you,

their circling shadows blighting the sand,

and your limp legs buckle, far

from that shimmering oasis

on the horizon,

as you face the implacable,

hoping for one more lucky reprieve

which you feel in your quivering heart

will arrive a moment too late,

still,

even after the first white pill,

you will not surrender,

for back there somewhere,

safe from the hovering vultures,

is that sketchy

grand design, that revolution

on the drawing board—no,

all these years you've resisted

that sleek seducer, Completion—and now,

as the mask snugs over your face, you feel

your legs go young again, heading out

for the shimmering palm trees

they will never reach,

and you suck in great welcome gulps

of the endlessly possible.

                                      - Philip Appleman

A friend of mine had brain surgery this week.  It was postponed for four hours, and then took six hours to complete.  When she awoke, she encountered unexpected complications: paralysis of one arm, serious seepage at the site of the sutures.

She's been in ICU for days, cautioned not to move lest she worsen her state. 

Yesterday, after some smart maneuvers by her ICU professionals, she was able to move the fingers of her previously paralyzed hand, and the seepage slowed.  She's not entirely out of the woods, but she's on the path.

She's a writer and a musician.  I hope that when she's allowed to raise her head, she'll read this poem and it will speak to her experience.  I find it rather beautiful and offer it as a token toward the gods to conjure her continued recovery.

MFB,
L

p.s.  Thanks to Bill Moyers's website, where he recommended a number of poetry books.  I hopped to his interview with Appleman, and enjoyed the five poems read aloud during the original broadcast.  From there, I went to Appleman's page on Poets.org, and found three stellar offerings.

Telegraph Avenue Read-Along: Dream of Cream Edition

Order your advanced copy here at Indiebound.

  

Welcome to the second installment in our Telegraph Avenue read-along hosted by the fabulous E. Crowe at As the Crowe Flies and Reads.  If you're a Michael Chabon fan, or if you think you might enjoy a novel based in late 2000's and 1970's Oakland, CA (hence the title), I hope you'll drop by each Tuesday in July to follow me and our gaggle of fellow bloggers as we sample this promising new offering.  You'll find my first post in the series here.

Note: This installment won't contain any plot or character spoilers, but does include both kudos and questions about the first section of this novel, which is titled "Dream of Cream".


So.  Here it is, with apologies for formatting quirks as I'm traveling and using unfamiliar computers & browsers:

Well.  Hmmmm.  I'm feeling quite ambivalent about my experience with this novel so far.

Thumbs up right now for:
* The sections in which character and conflict drive the writing.  Those were utterly engaging.  The section related to childbirth was particularly engrossing for me (vague to avoid spoilers).
* A unique time period to revisit (however wee we were when the '70's hit the scene).
* Jazz and film as indispensable elements of the mise en scene/zeitgeist of the novel.
* Occasional "ah ha" insights into human nature that coaxed a nod of agreement or illumination.
* Moments of much-appreciated humor.
* Vivid evocations of Telegraph Avenue itself.  Setting seems to be emerging as a character, as one might predict from the title.
* I enjoyed the section that contained the chapter title reference, and I'm hoping that the Dream of Cream is a real thing (vague to avoid spoilers) so I can enjoy it for myself at the end of the month when I'll be in the Bay Area! And, all you blog-alongers, I was way off on my guess about what the chapter title refers to, wasn't I?  


Thumbs reserving judgment:
* The execution of some stylistic elements and narrative choices jarred me out of the fictional world on a regular basis.  I'm hoping that as I grow more accustomed to Mr. Chabon's patterns in this novel, these elements will integrate into the flow of the story more gracefully for me.  If others in our read-along are comfortable with more detail on this, I'd be happy to elaborate, but I'll wait for the A-OK from Ms. Crowe before I critique!

I do want to express that I'm pleased to have committed to this read-along with the fabulous E. Crowe of As the Crowe Flies and Reads.  In my previous experience with such cyber-conversations, my commitment to the group has led to perseverance through novels that, in the end, were some of the most rewarding reading experiences of the past few years.  I trust that this one will turn out to be equally valuable, and can't wait to hop on over to the other bloggers on this read-along to see what they're thinking about Telegraph Avenue today!

MFB,
L

p.s.  My Action Reader action is to view at least two of the films on the "Kill Bill" syllabus for the community education course in which young Julie Jaffe meets Titus Joyner.  (These two being my favorite characters in the novel so far.)

Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace :Poem in Your Post

 

 

Insomnia and the Seven Steps to Grace

 

 

At dawn the panther of the heavens peers over the edge of the world.   

She hears the stars gossip with the sun, sees the moon washing her lean   

darkness with water electrified by prayers. All over the world there are those   

who can't sleep, those who never awaken.   

My granddaughter sleeps on the breast of her mother with milk on   

her mouth. A fly contemplates the sweetness of lactose.

Her father is wrapped in the blanket of nightmares. For safety he   

approaches the red hills near Thoreau. They recognize him and sing for   

him.   

Her mother has business in the house of chaos. She is a prophet dis-   

guised as a young mother who is looking for a job. She appears at the   

door of my dreams and we put the house back together.   

Panther watches as human and animal souls are lifted to the heavens by   

rain clouds to partake of songs of beautiful thunder.   

Others are led by deer and antelope in the wistful hours to the vil-   

lages of their ancestors. There they eat cornmeal cooked with berries   

that stain their lips with purple while the tree of life flickers in the sun.   

It's October, though the season before dawn is always winter. On the   

city streets of this desert town lit by chemical yellow travelers   

search for home.   

Some have been drinking and intimate with strangers. Others are   

escapees from the night shift, sip lukewarm coffee, shift gears to the   

other side of darkness.   

One woman stops at a red light, turns over a worn tape to the last   

chorus of a whispery blues. She has decided to live another day.   

The stars take notice, as do the half-asleep flowers, prickly pear and   

chinaberry tree who drink exhaust into their roots, into the earth.   

She guns the light to home where her children are asleep and may   

never know she ever left. That their fate took a turn in the land of   

nightmares toward the sun may be untouchable knowledge.   

It is a sweet sound.   

The panther relative yawns and puts her head between her paws.   

She dreams of the house of panthers and the seven steps to grace.   

                                                - Joy Harjo

 

 

Yup.  I'm sitting pretty in Albuquerque today, and chose this New Mexico poet for today's post.  She's also a musician, songwriter, social activist, and professor.  She even has a blog, so check out her prose style there.  And visit her Poetry Foundation  page to find more of her gorgeous poems.

 

MFB in The Land of Enchantment,

L