Telegraph Avenue Trance

And this Michael Chabon, bending over backwards to make every sentence clever and precious and "special," oh I can't stand it, it's so self-defeating, I mean you just keep registering 'Here's this ultra clever writer getting between me and the material of the story, time after time after time, he never lets up"--he doesn't give you reality, he gives you writerly reality and it reeks of artifice.  It's as if every sentence has a tiny white bow on it.  Give me a break.  You want a writer to bring you closer to reality, not to put barriers up that you have to be constantly climbing over.  He needs to be more reticent, he really does.  He's too ostentatiously clever, I can't stand it.  I'm referring to Telegraph Avenue which I picked up in an airport primarily because the price was 50 percent reduced because it was used.  Give me my rancid Th. Bernhard or my rancid Beckett, please.  

Now when Christopher Sorrentino writes in his wonderful documentary novel Trance about the abduction of Patty Hearst by the SLA, that a character buys a burrito wrapped in "thin" aluminum foil, this extremely close observation places the burrito in your hands and you experience the reality of the moment just as the character does; the writing brings you closer to reality, doesn't push you away, doesn't show off with imagined imported paraphernalia alien to the moment . . . though on a different day, in a different mood, the fireworks and acrobatic stunts and miniature white bows of Chabon's style might well come across as enjoyable to read, my main concern about him perhaps being the level of intellectual energy he brings to his material, which approaches the straight-up mania of D.F. Wallace and Robin Williams, which can have a massive downside, oh yes, most definitely . . . most tragically.


Why the paragraph supra is highlighted in white I couldn't tell you.  I've tried to get rid of the highlighting but can't seem to do it.

February 20, 2015--This Chabon is a writer infatuated with objective reality.  He presents an unending stream of material objects and provides brandnames for many.  Though I have to admit there are times when I enjoy it.