Telegraph Avenue (was RE: Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco)

[Bekah]

I need to read this!  This has been on my mind anyway.    I have old connections to Telly and Shattuck and what used to be known as "Red Square"  (a dress shop - heh).   I also have moderate connections to Chabon's oeuvre  (some great, some so-so).   Must find time somewhere - somewhere -  

Bekah
On Mar 3, 2013, at 9:34 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net> wrote:

> How is Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue (which I’m finishing now) being received in its Oakland/Bay Area setting? Beyond the “Pynchonesque” and “Nefastis Building” that Michael Bailey noted last fall, there are many debts being paid and hommages offered, e.g.:
>  
> Former NFL star and Branson-like entrepreneur Gibson  “G Bad” Goode is planning a huge new media store in Oakland, which threatens the fading used-record shop co-owned by Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe. Goode stakes Stallings for a ride in his airship, the _Minnie Riperton_ (“She is black. She is beautiful. And she goes really high”)
>  
> “Archy [was] unable to shake a feeling not just that he was stepping out on Nat Jaffe, up here dining on shrimp and flattery and all kinds of piquant sauces, but that he was in over his head, that he was going to be edged into doing something or agreeing to something that he did not want to do or agree to, into something at least that he did not understand, some kind of business being transacted by Goode… memories of watching him on television as he conducted instantaneous Einstein-deep analyses in the pocket under a heavy rush (not to mention the simple fact that he was visiting the man in the cabin of his personal zeppelin that flew on the gas of burning dollars)…”
>  
> Gasbags aside, anyone else hear the stylistic/paranoiac echoes here?
>  
> Chabon lives in Berkeley. As an East Coaster with only visiting experience, I can’t address the book’s accuracy/authenticity with respect to the real place… but as an American reader with multiple Californias of the mind overlapping since the 1960s, I think he engages how we’ve “run out of continent” there almost as well as Vineland did, and better than Inherent Vice did.   
>  
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Ian Livingston
> Sent: Sunday, March 03, 2013 9:55 AM
> To: Bled Welder
> Cc: rich; “pynchon-l at waste.org“
> Subject: Re: Rebecca Solnit on San Francisco
>  
> Oakland does, indeed have abundant character and culture. It has been the Bay Area slum for decades, where the arts and ideas fester like lilies on the shore, are borne over the bay by rumor to be claimed by the elder sister, while the younger, more impetuous one languishes in skankified infamy. I like Oakland.
> 
> On Sun, Mar 3, 2013 at 3:16 AM, Bled Welder <bledwelder at gmail.com> wrote:
> But you're....Oakland.  What is that water that lays between. the
> peninsula and Oakland?  Isn't there a large bridge?  Been over it many
> times myself.
> 
> Not as in, walking, by byself.  Driving.  I think occasionally one has
> the misfortune of landing somewhere called Oakland....
> 
> 
> On Sat, Mar 2, 2013 at 8:32 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n03/rebecca-solnit/diary
> >
> > good piece on the effects of Google and its ilk on the culture of San
> > Francisco. interesting contrast with Gold Rush in the 19th century and
> > the mining rush in Wyoming, North Dakota and other places today. lots
> > of Pynchonian echoes
> >
> > Rich
> >
> > 'All this is changing the character of what was once a great city of
> > refuge for dissidents, queers, pacifists and experimentalists. Like so
> > many cities that flourished in the post-industrial era, it has become
> > increasingly unaffordable over the past quarter-century, but still has
> > a host of writers, artists, activists, environmentalists, eccentrics
> > and others who don’t work sixty-hour weeks for corporations– though we
> > may be a relic population. Boomtowns also drive out people who perform
> > essential services for relatively modest salaries, the teachers,
> > firefighters, mechanics and carpenters, along with people who might
> > have time for civic engagement. I look in wonder at the store clerks
> > and dishwashers, wondering how they hang on or how long their commute
> > is. Sometimes the tech workers on their buses seem like bees who
> > belong to a great hive, but the hive isn’t civil society or a city;
> > it’s a corporation.'
> >
> > Last summer, I went to look at a house for sale whose listing hadn’t
> > mentioned that the house was inhabited. I looked in dismay at the
> > pretty old house where a family’s possessions had settled like silt
> > over the decades: drum set, Bibles, faded framed portraits, furniture
> > grimed with the years, cookware, toys. It was a display of what was
> > about to be lost. The estate agent was on the front steps telling
> > potential clients that they wouldn’t even have to evict: just raise
> > the rent far beyond what the residents can afford. Ye who seek homes,
> > come destroy the homes of others more frail.
>