The term gets attached to Michael Chabon like a perpetual baggage tag. No matter where the author ventures literarily, his passport is stamped “prose stylist.”
It’s true that Chabon is often fond of taking his sentences out for a lively swerving spin, letting the words purr as he shifts into higher verbal gears while simultaneously steering us toward precise pop-culture references until the whole high-flying passage feels like the Ferrari joy ride in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”
(Harper) - ’Telegraph Avenue: A Novel’ by Michael Chabon.
(Jennifer Chaney) - Author Michael Chabon.
That’s the gift of knowing you can floor your metaphors. But as Chabon can acknowledge from experience, sometimes it’s best to first know your terrain.
That was a lesson learned over years as Chabon mapped his way along “Telegraph Avenue,” his new novel, which he’ll discuss Sunday at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Northwest Washington to help kick off the annual Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival. (The 15-event celebration runs through Oct. 24.)
The story behind the story of “Telegraph Avenue” began in the late ’90s, when Chabon hatched the idea for a project but hit one slight obstacle: One of the most acclaimed novelists of his generation says he wasn’t qualified to write it.
“Telegraph Avenue” is set in his adopted home of California’s East Bay. Only upon reflection — after writing the concept as a script — did Chabon realize he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t lived there long enough to intimately understand the geography and social geology.
“At some point, I became worthy,” the Maryland transplant says now. “My familiarity with, and appreciation of, the place I was living made me more qualified to write that.”
Today, Chabon sounds grateful that this became the tale of the avenue not taken.
It was in 1999 that TV producers approached Chabon about developing a TNT series. He wrote a two-hour pilot, the producers approved it and things seemed on track until suddenly — as so often happens in Hollywood — they weren’t. So Chabon shelved the script and went about his career, which the next year would produce his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.”
That mothballed TV pilot continued to gather dust as Chabon crafted a string of well-received books, yet like an antsy offspring, the script refused to stay hushed. “So many times, over a long period of years — through ‘Summerland’ and ‘The Final Solution’ and ‘The Yiddish Policemen’s Union’ and ‘Gentlemen of the Road’ — I would meet somebody or hear a story and think: Too bad I never did that,” Chabon said recently by phone. “Too bad I never did that TV show.”
That lost TV show was set on a cultural fault line between Berkeley and Oakland — the shifting tectonic plates of neighborhoods long populated predominantly by whites and blacks, respectively, and long marked by a wide disparity in average income. As the District-born Chabon came to understand the social rhythms of his region, he decided it was time for “Telegraph Avenue” to resurface.
Then, however, came Chabon’s second miscue: He kidded himself that he could simply novelize his script. “It was a stupid thing to try to do,” he says. “There’s no real relation between a pilot script and a novel . . . . It just messed me up for two years and I had to start over.”
A guide to audience participation.
1369494614000
A powerful debut novel about misery in the South pushes us to think about the bargains we make with life.
1369438260000The books Washington has been reading.
1369432836000
A federal judge says those cards are worthless, but we know better.
1369415006000
Indie booksellers keep trying to find new ways to compete with Amazon.
1369414510000
The final novel in the British writer’s wonderfully entertaining ‘Old Filth’ trilogy stands on its own.
1369347240000
These books offer keen insights into leadership and management challenges, which on a day-to-day basis can bring their own dramas, twisting plot lines and, in this city, political intrigue.
1369340481000
Bestselling author Sylvia Day was paid at least $1 million to launch this new series of e-novellas.
1369315818000
The 20th-century family saga has a brisk pace, unencumbered by hurdles of richness or complexity.
1369262514000
How addiction is taking over your world, and how you are empowered to stop it.
1369178404000
In comic series, writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja follow Avengers’ Hawkeye through daily life.
1369177847000
The author of ‘American Rust’ is back with a spectacular saga about the settling of Texas and the flow of oil.
1369174080000
In Logan's absurdist first novel, sex-crazed zombie bovines threaten the earth.
1369142796000
The bestselling author of “The Kite Runner” returns with another powerful story about Afghanistan.
1369071240000The Post Most: EntertainmentMost-viewed stories,videos, and galleries in the past two hours
Loading...
Comments