Prose Worth Reading

I have finally finished Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It was not for lack of interest that I took so long. First, and foremost, is the problem of a book-o-phile like me has- and that is library books. They need to be read and returned. So, since Kavalier and Clay was borrowed from my daughter, the urgency wasn't there.

But there was another reason. I was afraid to finish it. It's presence on my nightstand somehow or another gave me a sense of literary presence. If I finished it, I would have to give it back. Plus I would come to the end of what is truly a Great American Novel. Chabon is nothing short of remarkable in this tour de force of writing. Like I mentioned with Denis Johnson last week, Chabon doesn't let a page go by that doesn't have at least one sentence of wonderful structure and wording. He can master a run-on sentence by making the whole sentence into its own short image.

Johnson has a power in his words that pull you in, carry you along, even sometimes as they drag you through the mud of human existence. But unlike Johnson, Chabon's words and style have a lightness to them that floats you along to the next phrase and into the flow of the story. Yet it is a structure that doesn't get in the way. You don't even notice it. Imagine being in an airplane soaring above a landscape of great beauty and clouds floating by with a reminder that you are in a special place. And you don't even know the plane is there. That's Chabon.

Then there's the story. The plot and the personalities are real, though clearly fiction. But their fiction carries within them the truth of humanity, or at least the slice of humanity that Chabon is interested in. As in his more recent book The Yiddish Policeman's Union even fantastical ideas become carriers of life and messengers of truthful reality.

You think I love Chaon's book? You bet I do!