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This week in the New York Times Book Review, one Pulitzer Prize winner reviews another as Jennifer Egan considers Michael Chabon's “Telegraph Avenue.†The novel is set in and around a used-record store on the boulevard where Oakland aligns with Berkeley. Ms. Egan writes:
Much of the wit in “Telegraph Avenue†inheres in Chabon's astonishing prose. I don't just mean the showy bits: a ¬12-page-long sentence that includes the observations of an escaped parrot, or the lovely, credible scene from Obama's point of view. I mean the offhand bril liance that happens everywhere: a woman's sun-tanned shins “shining like bells in a horn section.†Titus's memories, “a scatter of images caught like butterflies in the grille of his mind.†The interior of the gondola on Gibson Goode's zeppelin: “On the spectrum of secret lairs, it fell somewhere between mad genius bent on world domination and the disco-loving scion of a minor emirate.†Or Archy, forgiven by his wife in the moment of losing his father figure: “Somewhere in the midst of the continent of shock and grief that was Archy Stallings, a minor principality rejoiced.â€
On this week's podcast, Ms. Egan discusses “Telegraph Avenueâ€; Parul Sehgal on the flood of important fiction this fall; Daniel Smith talks about his book “Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxietyâ€; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Sam Tanenhaus is the host.
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