Moonglow by Michael Chabon

[Daniel Mattingly]

I really like Chabon's stuff, and was really looking forward to it after
Telegraph Avenue. (Which it seems that a lot of people didn't like because
of meandering jazzy prose riffage, plotting excess and a relatively smaller
scope than K&C or Yiddish Policement's Union). In retrospect, some of the
criticisms of the excesses of T.A. have some credence, although I still
enjoy its dazzling runs of language, as well as the 'deep history' in the
margins of the main story, and the multitude of fine details that are woven
into the fabric of the narrative. I had a feeling, though, that Chabon
could possibly respond to the claims of bagginess by attempting to ''scale
down' a bit for his next book, although thankfully this wasn't quite the
case...

Moonglow took a while to warm to, for me, but after I adjusted to the
meta-memoir form, I did definitely enjoy it. The Pynchonian riffs didn't
come as a big surprise, to me, after reading Telegraph Avenue, and to a
lesser extent some of his earlier stuff (particularly Wonder Boys), and a
few of his essays about literature in Maps and Legends. Purists may say
that he's no Pynchon, but I think that his channeling of Pynchonian
language etc. definitely comes from a place of sincere appreciation, rather
than opportunism or cynicism.

Without a doubt, I feel that Chabon is definitely one of the premier
stylists and conjurer of  striking phrases and ideas out there, in terms of
his generation of American writers who came of age heavily influenced by
Pynchon, DeLillo, et al. As far as whether Chabon really 'needed' to riff
on Master P. or not, my feelings are that he's having something of a
reckoning with his two impulses of stylistic maximalism and content-heavy
'fullness' for lack of a better way of explaining it, on the one side, and
a sense of appreciation of smaller scale, intimate writing on the other
side. If he started a heavily indebted to the Program writing method, and
broadened his reach to redeem 'lesser' literary forms and styles later,
he's now in the process of reconciling both, while trying to avoid
portentousness or extreme naval gazing.

Chabon may not be considered as much of a traditionally literary
heavyweight as some of his peers, but I doubt he'll ever write a novel that
will settle for creatively or stylistically 'treading water'. I'll always
look forward to seeing what he comes up with next, more so than the likes
of Franzen or Eugenides, for example.

On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 3:23 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> By me it's lesser Chabon (although that's still near the top of fiction in
> general). The working out of "what did Mom & Dad *really* do in the war,"
> its playing out in their postwar  lives and in the narrator's _bildung_, is
> very very good -- and BTW adds even more depth to Chabon's smart reading of
> _Bleeding Edge_ as "what we do and don't tell the children."
>
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/11/07/thomas-
> pynchon-crying-september-11/
>
> But the V2 - von Braun - space race & modern Florida threads seemed to me
> neither as good in themselves nor productively tied to the story above --
> almost another book.
>
> In GR, Pynchon ties V2 and death camps together by embedding them and the
> Mittelwerk, the Oven myth/metaphor, the madnesses of Blicero and the
> Hereros, etc, within one grand critique of everything since Eden. But
> without that infrastructure and surround, the connection between the V2 and
> the book's genealogy of suffering and emotional scarring doesn't work for
> me. No doubt that owes something to my own, maybe idiosyncratic view that
> (1) the V2 mattered for what it foreshadowed in the 1950s and 1960s, not as
> a uniquely evil or terrible weapon in 1944-45, and (2) that the whole "von
> Braun as crypto-Nazi corrupter in the postwar US, if only They hadn't
> hidden the truth from us" narrative is a morally vacuous evasion.
>
> Moonglow is definitely worth reading, definitely a hard-won and not
> unworthy homage to what Chabon has learned from P -- but also a case study
> in the anxiety of influence
>
> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 9:10 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Who else has read Moonglow by Michael Chabon?   What did you think?
>>
>> I’m about 2/3 through and have mixed feelings.   It’s obviously an homage
>> to TRP (and I know he has put mention of TRP in many of his books) -  what
>> else?   In some way that homage kind of spoils it for me.  I’m not sure how
>> to say it.
>>
>> I love Pynchon  - (YES!)  and I've really very much enjoyed Chabon’s
>> works,  especially Kavalier and Clay and the Yiddish Policeman’s Union.
>>  Chabon is already great.  It feels like he really didn’t need to do this.
>>
>> I understand there’s a lot more to Moonglow than the V2 rocket scenes
>> (etc.)  and that part is pretty good - inventive, funny and original in its
>> own way.  The structure of the book is amazing and Chabon’s sense of humor
>> shines through (hilarious in places).    I’m glad Chabon wrote it and I’m
>> glad I read it but …. there are these mixed feelings I don’t know what from.
>>
>> Becky
>> https://beckylindroos.wordpress.com
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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