Michael Chabon is one of those maddeningly-talented, show-offy world-creators that never uses one metaphor when three will do, and while his writing is dense -- with scholarship, with words, with life -- it isn't hard or inaccessible; just exhausting. Telegraph Avenue takes place, for the most part, at a barely surviving used vinyl store that specialises in soul-jazz-funk (by artists I've never heard of), and the following is a totally typical line:
Brokeland Records was nearly the last of its kind, Ishi, Chingachgook, Martha the passenger pigeon.One idea, three metaphors, too bad for you if you don't get the references. And never mind the metaphors: the straight-up details of this story are derived from such niche interests (Kung Fu/Blaxploitation movies, comic books, collectible 1970's leisure suits, classic muscle cars, sci-fi movies and novels) that much reads like overhearing a nerdy conversation that you're not particularly interested in, and that's totally aside from the music, and I must confess: whether I'm reading a book about Mozart composing a symphony, Clara Rockmore playing a theremin, or Cochise Jones jamming on an antique Hammond organ, once an author gets specific about the mechanics of the music, I get lost. What redeems Telegraph Avenue, however, is that this is a book about characters, and as in the other books I've read by Chabon, these characters come to life.
Brokeland Records is owned by two men -- Archy, a black, former Army Engineer, who is anticipating fatherhood, and Nat, a bipolar Jew with a teenage son. They play funky music together in a jazz quartet, share the same love for classic vinyl, and spend more time BSing with customers than selling records. Their wives -- Gwen and Aviva -- are midwives and business partners, and Gwen is very pregnant. The record business is under threat because Gibson Goode -- a former NFL player from the neighbourhood who has parlayed his fame into a multimedia empire -- is intending to build a five-storey multimedia complex (complete with a huge vinyl section) down the road. The birthing partners' business is under threat after a homebirth went wrong and Gwen disrespected a doctor who used borderline racial slurs against her. Archy's father -- a former kung fu champion turned blaxploitation film star turned crackhead -- is back in town, trying to crowdfund his comeback film by blackmailing his former friend and respected City Councillor, Chandler Flowers. And the 14-year-old son that Archy knew about but never took responsibility for -- Titus -- has appeared, causing Julie (the son of Nat and Aviva) to come out of the closet. This is broadly who these characters are, but the life is in the details: take the image of skinny little Julie skateboarding down the street in tie-dyed longjohns with a portable, khaki eight-track player slung over his shoulder (tinnily producing Kansas and other 70s prog-rock just to annoy his Dad); these kinds of details made every one of these characters real to me.
Telegraph Avenue also has a lot to say about race: Archy, who resented the fact that his own father never raised him, yet never made contact with (or even sent money to) Titus, is now contemplating running away from Gwen and their future child, which to Gwen is the legacy of racial injustice:
Gwen found herself in possession, coolly palmed in her thoughts like a dollar coin, of the idea that she was about to bring another abandoned son into the world, the son of an abandoned son. The heir to a history of disappointment and betrayal, violence, and loss. Centuries of loss, empires of disappointment. All the anger that Gwen had been feeling, not just today or over the past nine months but all her life -- feeding on to it like a sun, using it to power her engines, to fund her stake in the American dream -- struck her for the first time as a liability. As purely tragic. There was no way to partake of it without handing it on down the generations.Gwen is also wanting to abandon the midwife business: as the high-achieving daughter of high achievers, it was a shock to them when she chose her career. Gwen had wanted to serve her community in a hands-on manner (reviving the traditions of her great-grandmothers), but when she moved to Berkeley, the only clients who wanted midwives were rich white ladies, with their yoga mats and ylang-ylang candles. As she sat at the hospital disciplinary commission -- a hugely pregnant black woman facing down three white men -- the power imbalance was out-of-whack with her own sense of pride.
Gibson Goode had the following to say about modern black music as he tried to hire Archy away from Brokeland, to become the curator of his future store; the educator of future black youth who might come in to browse the vinyl:
The world of black music has undergone in many ways a kind of apocalypse, you follow me? You look at the landscape of black idiom in music now, it is post-apocalyptic. Jumbled-up mess of broken pieces. Shards and samples. Gangsters running in tribes. That is no disrespect to the music of the past two decades. Taken on its own terms I love it. I love it. Life without Nas, without the first Slum Village album, without, shit, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill? Can't imagine it. Can't even imagine. And I'm not saying, just because we've got sampling, we've got no innovation happening. Black music is innovation. At the same time, we got a continuity to the traditions, even in the latest hip-hop joint. Signifying, playing the dozens. Church music, the blues, if you wanna look hard. But face it, I mean, a lot has been lost. A whole lot. Ellington. Sly Stone, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, we got nobody of that calibre even hinted at in black music nowadays, I'm talking about genius, composers, know what I'm saying? Quincy Jones. Charles Stepney. Weldon Irvine. Shit, knowing how to play the fuck out of your instrument. Guitar, saxophone, bass, drums, we used to own those motherfuckers. Trumpet! We were the landlords, white players had to rent that shit from us. Now, black kid half way to genius comes along? Like RZA? Can't even play a motherfucking kazoo. Can't do nothing but 'quote'. Like those Indians down in Mexico these days, skinny-ass, bean-eating motherfucker sleeping with his goat on top of a rock used to be a temple that could predict the time a solar eclipse was going to happen.Around these angry black characters, the white characters tiptoe (Julie doesn't want to push Titus to talk about his feelings, based on what he's learned from movies and rap videos; Aviva's official policy when Gwen gets angry is, "What do I know about being black?"), and I was never once unaware that I was reading a book written by a white man. This was most especially true when (this is 2004) the State Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, makes an appearance at Nat and Archy's gig, saying things like: "Those guys are pretty funky…My man on bass…Brother puts heart into it…A gorgeous sister in your condition." Is that the way he really talked, even pre-Presidential? There are far more black than white characters in Telegraph Avenue, and as their lives are far messier, I felt like this might not have been Chabon's story to tell.
Two more complaints: I was turned off by the 11 page sentence in the middle of the book from the parrot's point of view and I didn't believe how Archy ended.
Overall, this was a really enjoyable read, and even if I didn't get all of the references, Telegraph Avenue is a Tarantino-style homage to the 70s; the time of my own childhood. I was nostalgic at lines like, nothing on the television but Wolfman Jack and some movie where a shark-toothed devil doll was biting Karen Black on the ankles, even if I was annoyed that Aviva was called (more than once) the “Alice Waters of Midwives" like I should know who that is (and when she turned out to be a West Coast foodie, I was even more annoyed). Like I started with, this book is just so dense in the details and the scholarship (the mind reels at how much research must have went into just the music and the midwifery) that I couldn't help but be impressed. I loved the characters, the plot brisked along (especially with that crimeworld subplot involving Luther and Flowers), and Chabon can capture a neighbourhood vibe like no one else. I wouldn't rate this as high as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, but certainly above the few other Chabons I've read (and bonus points for him casually referring to golems a couple of times here).
This is the book that Mallory gave me for my birthday, based on the same advice from a book store clerk as guided her to The Good Lord Bird. The clerk thought this would be a slam-dunk based on my preferences (according to Mal's perception of my preferences), but I was a little leery about reading it: I did love The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay but nothing else I've read by Chabon (but to be fair, they've all been remainder table finds). Again, good find Mal because this is a really good book! But like with The Good Lord Bird, I'm left with uncomfortable racial questions.
While I decided to give (African American writer) James McBride a free pass on his mocking of Frederick Douglass, I don't know about Chabon's treatment of his black characters, and especially Archy.
Raised by aunts, Archy really resented that his famous father didn't have room in his life for a son. Yet, when he found out he was having a child, he didn't get involved, even after being informed that the mother had died, leaving Titus' care up in the air. He also didn't want to take on the teenaged Titus, even when he learned that the boy had nowhere to live. When he and Gwen were expecting their first child, Archy was still ambivalent about fatherhood and cheated on his pregnant wife (the second of his partners being Gwen's receptionist, a transgender planning to alter her body from female to male). By contrast Nat, the white father, is so paralyzed with love and concern for his son, Julie, that he fears every one of his words or actions will cause lasting harm. Archy really suffers in the comparison.
Gwen, raised in a successful and stable Cosby Show-like home, nevertheless falls in love with the shiftless Archy. Supposedly filled with unshakable self-respect, Gwen doesn't truly flip out on Archy when she discovers his infidelity and only leaves him when Titus shows up -- the son Archy never even told her about. I didn't believe this behaviour for a moment -- not all black women will consent to being unsupported babymamas, turning to Maury Povich to prove paternity. Gwen didn't need this dog.
And the part about Titus is a bit touchier. Although he engages in sexual activities with Julie, Titus repeatedly says that he isn't gay, and I don't think that's meant to be self-denial (and especially since he has a girlfriend by the end of the book). Is this the infamous "on the DL" that may or may not be prevalent in the young black community? Is that for Chabon to write about?
If he hadn't written about it all so well, I might have been tempted to seriously downgrade my rating just based on Chabon's lack of ownership of these characters' stories.
