Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon

I recently finished a third reading of The Road, prompted in no small measure by an essay written by Michael Chabon in his new non-fiction book Maps and Legends. Chabon argues, rightfully so, that there ought to be no artificial distinction between literary fiction, by which he means serious fiction, and "genre fiction," by which he means mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, etc. He uses McCarthy and The Road to point out that serious writers of literature often write "genre fiction" and that the only difference is how such books are perceived by publishers (primarily), critics, librarians, and others whose job is to categorize. Chabon makes an excellent point. And to his point, I would add the following: writers of so-called "genre fiction" walk a more difficult path because their readers have higher expectations of conventions and rules and formulae. This is not to say that a sci-fi writer cannot break the conventions; it is merely to say that genre writers must prove they can walk the walk and talk the talk before their readers will let them get away with bending the rules. In true irony, writers of staid literary fiction walk an easier road because the conventions and formulae of literary fiction are so loosy-goosy that anything goes; and furthermore, to have any expectations for literary fiction is to restrict oneself as a reader, and that simply cannot happen. Or so we are meant to believe.

Chabon goes on to argue that writing is about entertainment, nothing more and nothing less. Therefore, artificial distinctions mean nothing when the only true criterion that exists is entertainment ability. I believe that Chabon is correct and that such dubious categorizations should be thrust aside to make way for the megalithic entity that is entertainment. (Having said that, I obviously don't support the dumbing down of cultural phenomena that seems to coincide with the centralization of entertainment, but that is another post.) We should read and judge and critique based on how well or poorly we are entertained. Chabon makes this argument partly because he admits that he writes to entertain more than anything else. And I suspect that this is true of the vast majority of writers as well. The implicit part of the argument is that "genre fiction" must be pretty darn good because of its popularity and because critics, thinking it an insult, refer to this form of storytelling as "mere entertainment" or some other coded phrase implying "genre" rather than "literary."

Many of the essays that follow in Maps and Legends are serious discussions and considerations of "genre literature" of one kind or another. I was drawn to Chabon's book because I notice a lack of serious discussion about the "genre" texts that are extremely entertaining and that I enjoy. I suspect that Chabon himself is guilty of the categorization trap. He starts off by mentioning McCarthy and The Road to lure literary elitists into the conversation; McCarthy has been considered for the majority of his career as a very serious writer of literary fiction. But Chabon quickly relabels McCarthy as a science-fiction writer based on the post-apocalyptic premise of The Road. By this point, hopefully, Chabon has convinced those literary fiction elitists that they need to broaden their perspective, and he then invites us all into conversations about entertaining reading. The main reason I love Maps and Legends is that Chabon makes it cool to talk about writers and texts that I enjoy and, yes, am entertained by. Chabon follows with essays on Sherlock Holmes and fan fiction, Philip Pullman's rethinking of Paradise Lost in the His Dark Materials Trilogy (which I reviewed here), the comic book industry and its perhaps fatal turn toward the adult audience, and comic great Will Eisner, among others. Maps and Legends talks about the stuff that I read and that my friends read, never mind the fact that these friends of mine aren't friends with each other, that they live thousands of miles and in some cases whole oceans apart, and that the main thing that unites us all is our love of comics or mysteries or sci-fi books; in short, we are bound together because we are entertained together. And those doing the entertaining should not be degraded because they choose to entertain via "genre."

Maps and Legends is a wonderful collection of essays on a wide variety of literature. Included are a few in which Chabon discusses his own motivations, fears, and loves. The proceeds of the book go to support 826 National, a national nonprofit that supports youth writing centers in seven US cities. I highly encourage folks to buy and read this book.

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Addendum:

Taking Chabon's words to heart, I decided on a little reading experiment. With a twist. I supposed that Chabon wanted folks who limited their reading to "literary" fiction to branch out and perhaps break down their presuppositions about "genre" fiction. While I am a great lover of literary fiction, I consider myself more of a genre reader. I love Herman Hesse and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but I probably spend more time reading mysteries, science-fiction, and comic books than I do reading serious literary fiction. So, I thought it high time that I broaden my own presuppositions about the literary writers. But that wasn't enough -- I wanted to find books by literary types who took a chance and jumped into the genre field. (This way I'd get the best of both worlds.) I wanted to find more writers like McCarthy, writers who took the chance to transcend the artificial categorizations of fiction. I found three books that meet my criteria and will read and review them throughout the summer months. My short list is as follows:

-Phillip Roth, The Plot Against America. Reason: This book uses the sci-fi convention of alternate-history (sometimes called alternate universe) to rethink the history of the USA if pro-fascist Charles Lindbergh had run against and defeated Franklin Roosevelt in 1940's. Roth, of course, is probably one of the most famous "literary" American writers still alive. He's taught all over college curriculums and won all sorts of serious "literary" fiction awards.

-Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union. Reason: Since Chabon made the argument that provoked my experiment in the first place, I thought I'd give his alternate-history / detective story a chance. There are a couple of things going at once in this book. One: the story takes place in Sitka, Alaska, in the modern age. Chabon's Sitka was settled by European Jews fleeing the Nazis in the 30's and 40's. Sitka is given temporarily to the Jews for 60 years, but when the time is up the district will undergo reversion. The story takes place more or less right now; Reversion is fast approaching. Two: the story's protagonist is Meyer Landsman, a hard-boiled detective in the Chandler/Hammet mold. There is a murder that Landsman must solve. And he'll get pummeled once or twice in the ensuing drama. In addition, Chabon has a "literary" reputation, despite the fact this his last few publications have been strictly "genre" (see my review of Gentlemen of the Road).

-Audrey Niffinegger, The Time-Traveler's Wife. Reason: My partner recently finished this book and loved it. She hates "genre." Rather ironically (for my partner and I that is) Chabon writes about this book as another example of book that crosses/transcends the categorical distinctions of "literary" and "genre" fiction. He considers it sci-fi, and it does have a rather sci-fi plot from what I read of the back cover.

I'll let you know how the experiment goes.

Reading as a Father, Reading as a Fan: McCarthy's The Road Revisited

In a previous discussion of The Road, I talked about the timing of reading the novel. My first reading was before I became a father. Because of this, I connected closely with the little boy. Papa became a surrogate for my own father. And in this way I took the horrific journey that McCarthy had set out for his characters. (Since I've convinced, cajoled, and bribed everyone I know into at least attempting to read this book, I will now progress to discuss important plot points. Just so you know.) In the end, when the father died, and the little boy sat by his corpse in the woods for several days and wept, I too wept. I cried on my couch as I ceremoniously turned the final pages in the dark hours of the late night or the early morning, imagining how I someday will have to deal with my own father's death. I wondered, and still do, if I've learned enough, if I can carry the fire that drives my own family.

A completely different reading opened itself to me after my daughter was born. I finally understood the deep commitment to responsibility that drives the father in the book. All of his actions took on a clarified meaning. While I never questioned the moment when he shot a potential cannibal who grabbed his son, now I started to question why he didn't shoot him sooner. The words, the gestures, and the caresses now meant something completely different. In this most recent reading, I am no longer the passive recipient of such actions, I am speaking, doing, holding myself. There is an urgency to how I read the book. I know the father is dying. While I knew that the first time I read the book, the immediacy of it never connected with my comprehension of the narrative. Now, every cough in the day, every night spent in unsleeping agony by the father hits me on an emotional level that I never experienced before. He is absolutely aware of the world in which he will leave his son. It is Hobbesian- nasty, brutish, and short. So he must protect him as long as possible and then hope against hope that he did enough. These are the same requirements for any parent, though I didn't know with the pit of my soul about this as I read the first time. Now I know.

The angelic and messianic perspective that the father holds for his son also became much more prominent in this reading. It is no coincidence that the boy's hair is an unruly mess of golden tangles or that the light tends to hit him just so. If it is true that the father and son are carrying the mysterious "fire" of goodness, then the boy is undoubtedly a messiah or an angel. And, the father, his protector, must in turn be ruthless and cold on occasion to ensure his survival. And if there is no one to spread the fire to, then the father's agony is all the more poignant because his actions ultimately amount to nothing and his son's existence is also futile.

While McCarthy is often considered a "serious" novelist (see post on Chabon's Maps and Legends), this book is very clearly in the science-fiction / fantasy style. McCarthy uses some of the techniques from this "genre" quite effectively. I think back to Tolkien's work and how the characters routinely found a safe haven that allowed them to collectively catch their breaths for the next part of their journey. These save havens were frequently semi-magical forest realms, peopled by the immortal elves, where time seemed to stand still. McCarthy's morbid twist is that anything combustible is already destroyed or burning as his duo walk the road, yet they too find safe-havens. The most notable is an underground bomb shelter, a leftover relic from the Cold War that unfortunately did its builders no good in the nuclear holocaust that presages the events in the book. The father and son find temporary sanctuary, though they, like the hobbits of Tolkien's Middle Earth, know that their journey has not ended and that despite the temptation, they too must continue. I've always enjoyed this technique and the various ways in which my favorite writers choose to employ it. There are few authors as morbid as McCarthy, and it was intriguing to see the way he would twist this genre device.

Finally, like many readers I believe that what makes a book good is that it endures. Each reading is new. Each reading presents new interpretations and imagery and connections. The Road is a dark and twisted book. In many ways it is on par with the horror works of Stephen King or Edgar Allan Poe. It is also transcendent because it finds the common thread of humanity that connects us all - the fire it is called by the father and son - and builds on that thread, tenuous though the structure may be. Like the father and son, the book itself endures even though the world it depicts may not. I look forward to reading the book again in a few years to see what new discoveries await me.

Dying Inside

I sometimes read like a starving man. I don't always notice the details, but I know when I'm satiated, if I'm satiated. The voracious style, as I like to call it, can be problematic at times. For example, I am rereading The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The book is dark. Really dark. I remembered the cannibalism, just not the quantity and the ubiquitousness. I remembered the theistic ruminations, just not their intensity. I am reading slower this time, being more methodical. I'm writing down the lines that jump out at me. (For example: "Where you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them." Crazy beautiful.) This particular rereading has the feel of the first time through. Perhaps its McCarthy. Perhaps its me.

I recently finished Dying Inside by Robert Silverberg. I took it down quickly, perhaps too quickly. It was given to me by a close friend. I am hesitant to read books recommended by close friends. What if I don't like it? Worse, what if I think it's rubbish? How do I tell this to someone who treasures the book so much? Yes, book recommendations can be a tricky thing. Dying Inside has that tricky feel to it.

The protagonist is David Selig. He can read minds. And he is slowly losing that power. I found the premise both rich and personal. Who hasn't dreamed of the possibilities of mindreading at one time or another? Who hasn't thought, perhaps a little guiltily, that maybe someone is reading their mind? I have done both, mostly as a child, but there are paranoid times when still I wonder. Silverberg does a tremendous job of writing an interior monologue for a character who has/had the ability to pick up on the interior monologues of others. Selig basically invites the reader to do what he does all the time, namely to tease out the innermost details of what makes us who we are. And his inner self, like yours, mine, is convoluted, insecure, and just trying to make it from day to day.

The book is full of allusions to "literature," by which I mean the type of stuff that Harold Bloom would canonize if society just let him categorize to his elitist little heart's delight. I caught a lot of the allusions, though I couldn't tell if they were mentioned to move the narrative along or to name drop. Selig too is a voracious reader, and he peppers his interior monologues with the aforementioned connections. But the character, with his vast repository of classical knowledge, does little more than mope. He is an older, more bitter Holden Caulfield who has the ability to read minds but does little with the ability other than spy, gripe, and lament his own insecurity. I couldn't stand The Catcher in the Rye, and I had that same terrible feeling for a good portion of Dying Inside. Fortunately it was short, and the author concludes with a slightly more redeeming feeling about mankind.

The human condition is ultimately what all narratives are about. Some lament, some celebrate, some ruminate, some plain and simply are there for laughs. The redeeming feature of Dying Inside is that while it spends an inordinate amount of time lamenting the human condition, it is ultimately a celebration of those very characteristics that make us human, that make us beautiful, and that make us fragile. The name-dropping, which I feared at the outset as a sort of intellectual masturbation, may in fact be a celebration of intellectual and cultural pleasure. The rampant insecurities explored ad nauseum by Selig take on a slightly more salvific connotation when he makes it clear to the reader that his insecurities are the very things that unite, not separate, him from the society in which he struggles to live.

This book is surely not for everyone. Those with an interest in deeply existential narratives will enjoy it immensely. Those who may want a glimpse into the psyche of Holden Caulfield at a later age may find it helpful. It is not, however, a quick summer read, and for the most part it is not a "feel good story." But it is the human condition at its most redeeming.