Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

I believe I have read just about everything that Michael Chabon has written, give or take, starting with The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which was assigned reading for a course I took in grad school (with the inimitable Scott Bukaman) on the history of comic books.  It knocked me off my feet.  I wish I hadn't loaned my copy to a friend, who loaned it to his friend, with whom he had a falling out...  I'll never see it again.  I will, at some point, break down and buy another copy.

After winning a Pulitzer Prize for the rather amazing Amazing Adventures, Chabon wrote a series of smaller-scale genre exercises, which are varyingly entertaining and, after such a grand work as AAKC, disappointing.  I was therefore excited when I saw the heft of Telegraph Avenue, a novel of mighty proportions, promising to encompass a grander scope.  And, indeed, it does.

Set in the hippy hills of Berkeley and the gritty back alleys of Oakland, the novel is filled with contrasts and with overlaps.  At its core are six characters:  two couples, and their (more or less, their) two sons.  One couple is Jewish, the other African-American.  The women are partners in a midwife business, and the men are parters in Brokeland Records, a classic vinyl shop in Oakland (on, of course, Telegraph Ave) that is barely scraping by, catering to an odd assortment of jazz hounds in leisure suits.

The situation seems more or less stable at the outset.  Both couples seem fine, both businesses seem, if imperfect, fine, but then a serious of events upsets the balance that holds these two couples and two friendships together.  Gibson Goode, a former NFL-starter-turned-media-mogul plans to open a megastore a few blocks from Brokeland Records, which will surely annihilate it.  A secret son from a former relationship, now a teenager and otherwise orphaned, arrives on a doorstep (and rapidly becomes the best friend and love interest of the other son).  And then one of the midwives looses her cool (quite justifiably), in a way that jeopardizes their business.

Everything begins to spiral out of kilter, as the central question is raised, implicitly and then, increasing, explicitly:  can all these boundaries be crossed?  Can people from such divergent backgrounds truly be friends?  Can men and women understand each other enough to truly be heard?  Can lactose-intolerant Berkeley raw-foodists connect with Oakland heroine junkies?  Of course, you'll have to read the novel to find out.

Everyone is a geek of some sort.  Characters are vinyl fetishists (that is, devotees of classic records), Blaxploitation film buffs, Samuri film buffs.  Quotes from Star Wars appear, as do references to A Canticle for Leibowitz, (recommended to me by a friend back in grad school, and worth reading, as well!).  Even the glamorous (if tacky) Gibson Goode turns out to have been a comic book fan in his youth.  Chabon's Berkeley and Oakland are clearly a reflection of his own interests, and the impression is something like the towns have been recreated by Quentin Tarantino.  Characters saunter in hats made by Borsalino, the brand made famous by every celebrity from Humphrey Bogart to Michael Jackson to Samuel L. Jackson.

After several years, we have a novel from Chabon that encompasses vast (and vastly important) issues, but, after his years in genre writing, he brings to it humor and lightness.