| Title | : | Gentlemen of the Road |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0345501748 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780345501745 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 204 |
| Publication | : | First published October 30, 2007 |
Gentlemen of the Road Reviews
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(C+) 66% | Almost Satisfactory
Notes: Grandiloquent verbosity and overlong sentences make what should be an escapist tale a needlessly bothersome read. -
"All the evil in the world derives from the actions of men acting in a mass against other masses of men."
- Michael Chabon, Gentlemen of the Road
Jews with Swords? I guess that was Chabon's working title, if Chabon is to be believed. He is a bit unreliable. His prose, however, is delicious. His perspective is always new and fresh. I don't think this is nearly one of his great ones*, but it seems like it might have been the most enjoyable (that I've read so far) for Chabon to write. It is a yarn, a tale, a swashbuckler, a grift, a rollick, a legend. I'm not sure why it hasn't been made into a movie. It is NOT, however, a live promotions company, record label and organizer of the global series of Stopover Festivals. That is a different set of Gentlemen.
This short novel seems like some Jewish equivalent to
The Princess Bride (yes, I understand that William Goldman is Jewish, but the Princess Bride was not directly a Jewish adventure). Anyway, it was the perfect book to read as I flew from Phoenix to Dallas to start a weeklong eclipse road trip with my brother and
Douglas Laux. It was tight and the prose was classic Chabon. One of my favorite things about this book? The chapters:
"On Discord Arising from the Excessive Love of a Hat"
"On the Seizing of a Low Moment"
"On Anxieties Arising from the Impermissibility, However Unreasonable, of an Elephant's Rounding Out a Prayer Quorum"
"On the Melancholy Duty of Soldiers to Contend with the Messes Left By Kings"
* Great Ones:
1.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
2.
Moonglow
3.
Wonder Boys
4.
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
5.
The Yiddish Policemen's Union -
It is impossible to verbalise how much I wanted to like this book. I became an ardent fan of Chabon's output after
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and subsequently read The Wonder Boys hoping for more of the same. I rapidly realised that Chabon is an author who might thematically link his books in many ways (Judaism, homosexuality and the struggle to achieve an identity are ongoing themes) but he's not one for sticking to the same style, much like grand-master of the ever changing style China Mieville who is also a tricksy SOB with that kind of thing.
Gentleman of the Road seemed to be right up my, er road. Slight but well presented with an excellent cover and a historic theme set in an area of the world which I am interested in. So, to summarise historical swash buckling which knowing Chabon would be meticulously researched, pretty pictures and a tome which was not going to test my glass back if I had to carry it around with me for a while.
That's why it is such a tragedy and with heavy heart I have to report that I didn't even quite make it to the end of this and its only 204 pages long! I've checked my attention span and it seems to be intact. The book is definitely in English not Quechua or Latin so no problems there. The problem is definitely the words themselves and the issue is that whenever I tried to read this they sort of swam around in front of my face, without ever piercing the backs of my eyes and getting through to my brain in any sort of sensible stream. Well then, you might point out, the problem is clearly with your brain. I have considered this too but all the other words seem to be going in just fine.
Perhaps I'm just spoiled by Kavalier and Clay but this book lacked the bazinga pizazz of previous output for me and I struggled to engage with Amram, Zelikman or the whiny Feliq. Ok so you want your kingdom back? Well stop whining and running away. As predicted this book was well researched (lots of environment detail regarding buildings, landscapes, clothing and weaponry of the period) and appears from the outside cover to have the key ingredients for an old fashioned adventure story, but for me it just didn't have to push to take it from rip-snoring to rip-roaring. -
I thought this was great fun. The writing has been criticised as rather over-wrought – well, it is certainly a little baroque but Chabon's tongue is firmly in his cheek, and there is a wittiness to his descriptions which makes me very willing to go along for the ride. Besides, the sentences may be elaborate, but they are always interesting, utterly free from cliché, and often strange and beautiful:
Then, as if overhearing and taking pity on the maudlin trend of his thoughts, the wind carried to his nostrils from the fires of the troops camped in the valley the desert tang of a camel-dung fire, and with it the plangent cry of a soldier-muezzin calling his saddle-weary brothers to a belated Jumuah.
The plot, for its part, is a full-on no-excuses Adventure! tale, with plenty of derring-do and Byzantine soldiers and isolated kingdoms and swordplay. It's like H. Rider Haggard meets…well, meets Michael Chabon.
Unfortunately, the book is rather spoiled by an unnecessary and bizarrely defensive author's afterword, in which Chabon seems to feel the need to apologise to his readership for not having produced another literary novel about modern-day Jewishness. Despite this current novel, Chabon apparently wants to point out, he is still to be regarded as a "serious, literary" author. I can't help feeling that if you find it necessary to attach a lengthy apologia to a book then you shouldn't bother writing the stupid thing in the first place. It is almost unbelievably patronising and irritating.
But try to ignore that, and concentrate on the story itself, which really is unashamedly enjoyable. -
“There was no hope for an empire that lost the will to prosecute the grand and awful business of adventure.”
“The Gentlemen of the Road” is a buddy adventure epic set in the Caucasus Mountains region in 950 AD, with a lapsed Jew named Zelikman and an African named Amram as the titular duo. It is an adventure story through and through, but it is written in a literary style. It is not often that the two combine, however Michael Chabon, the author, pulls of the feat admirably. Chabon can write. There are some long beautiful sentences in this text. Not all of them necessary, but well executed nonetheless. Once you read a chapter or two you get use to the style and the text flows nicely.
The plot goes along effortlessly, and this 196 page story has only 15 chapters. The novel was originally published as a serial story in a magazine and you can see how it would work in that format.
The chapter titles are clever in this book, take for instance this chapter title- “On The Belated Repayment Of The Gift Of A Pear”. After reading the chapter, looking back at the title makes you appreciate what you have just read a little more.
The book features 15 illustrations by Gary Gianni, who also draws the “Prince Valiant” comic strip. It aids the text in creating the world of the story for the reader.
In the Afterward to “The Gentlemen of the Road” Mr. Chabon acknowledges what may be an issue for some of his readers, the so called “incongruity of writer and work”. This text is a fun story that moves along, and is well written by a gifted writer. Nothing wrong with a great writer writing a book whose plot makes you want to pick the text up and keep reading.
I enjoyed this text, you will too. -
What occurs when you have the freedom to produce any-length book after winning the Pulitzer. Believe it! This one is too short to be adventuresome, too busy in its prose to match its zippy plot. Every single sentence must be odd and fascinating... which does nothing to make the tale odd and fascinating. It's an adventure ("Jews with Swords") that's not really worth taking.
("K & C" may just be the only way to go...?) -
A rollicking book. If any book deserves the word 'rollicking', this is it. This adventure yarn draws heavily and with much love from Michael Moorcock, Fritz Leiber, and Robert E. Howard, among others. While some readers may wonder 'what's the point?', the reader who does not look for a point to everything will enjoy the ride immensely.
-
#18 in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2015:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIWkw...
Michael Chabon pretending he is Jules Verne. Combines all the sheer, unbound awesomeness of Jules Verne and Michael Chabon. If all the books I read were this good I would do little in my life but read. -
A fun little picaresque tale of adventure and daring-do. I had no idea what to expect from this book when I picked it up a few weeks back from Powell's after a particularly entertaining reading from the author (not this book, he read from his newest). I do have to say that, after reading three of Chabon's book at this point, that the man definitely has a knack for keeping me guessing. He follows the muse wherever, and I do mean wherever, she may alight.
This may not be a piece of Chabon's work that will stand the test of ages, but it definitely serves to flip on its head the current cultural stereotyping of Jews as neurotic Woody Allen clones or tight-fisted Manhattan attorneys. Rather this book looks back to over a millennium past at the adventures of two very different Jewish brigands (or Gentlemen of the Road, as the title allows). The first is Franco-Jewish Zelikman ben Solomon, a physician who has turned his smarts to the more practical (for 950 a.d. Eastern Europe) skill of lightening the purses of fellow travelers. Along with his partner, Amram, a hulk of a man who hails from North Africa and who has adopted the Jewish faith, they find themselves in the company of the youngest son of the recently overthrown bek of Khazria (present Azerbaijan) and struggling to return him to the throne of his father.
A fun and fast read, I barely stopped to savor Chabon's always exquisite style of writing. While definitely an exercise in wish fulfillment (Chabon admits as much in the book's afterword) he still crafts an eminently enjoyable tale of adventure. The book has everything: elephants, silken garrotes, cross-dressing royalty, smart horses of the kind that normally appear in Owen Wilson Westerns, hash smoking, and ancient (ridiculous) rites. Definitely ideal for a plane trip or a few hours spent waiting in the reception area of the doctor's office. -
I stole this book from my friend Krystal. Ok, not so much stole as co-opted for a few days. I see her at the coffee shop and she shows me the book she just started reading. She then starts talking to other people. Having left my book at home in a rare moment of bibliotardedness, I start reading hers. She wanders off to run errands nearby and by the time she comes back I'm a third of the way into it. She gathers her things to go and tells me, "Go ahead and finish it. I've got another book."
*sniff* That's friendship right there, people. She is the sweetest person in the world right now, and maybe even for the rest of the week.
Anyway. This is a fun adventure story and I liked the characters immediately, but Chabon sometimes gets in his own way when he bludgeons his reader with rather ponderous sentences. At barely 200 pages, I was glad for the brevity. The man's style would wear me down in a longer book. When he's not torturing a metaphor, however, he comes up with some entertaining prose:
"...[he] began to explain that any king who controlled both the treasury and the army was, in the eyes of the world, legitimate, and that while no one could know the mind of God, the Almighty had in the past shown a marked tendency, in his view, to ratify public opinion."
"I don't save lives," Zelikman said. "I just prolong their futility."
"She had always found a paradox in the crime of blasphemy, for it seemed to her that any God who could be discountenanced by the words of human beings was by definition not worthy of reverence...."
Thanks, Krystal. I think you'll like it. -
Okay, this book was f****** great. And for those of you who are a little slow those asterisks stand for ucking. I would give it 6 stars if I could.
Really though, this book was just excently written. It was fun, had great character development (which I think was the main thing lacking in Chabon's last novella experiment, The Final Solution), and of course a great story with unexpected turns and an excellent ending.
I've seen that some other people have written lesser reviews and I'm not sure why. It is a strange pairing, the dense, articulate language used by Chabon with the adventure-story genre, but who says it shouldn't be done?
I think it is my second favorite book of his after Kavalier and Clay; really, it's that good. read it. -
A fun little tale of adventure that comes a little too close to being trite. Very few of the twists actually come as a surprise. I found myself both lamenting that many scenes/actions/characters were described briefly and broadly instead of unfolding in greater depth, and also being thankful that the book wasn't twice its length to accommodate more complete storytelling.
In short, pleasant, but not essential in the least.
And yet, if Chabon ever wrote a sequel, I'd read it. -
I'm rewriting my review now that the book has finally come out (read it in August as an advance); I knew it would divide fans and perplex even more.
"Gentlemen of the Road" draws from what some might call 'pulp' fiction styles, or in other cases 'adventure fiction'. The language is very much a product of these styles of writing; frankly, prose was more complex back then (not that I'm saying it was better, but it was definitely different)-- longer sentences, oddly constructed, and florid.
If you have read Dumas, Sabatini, or any fantasy writer of the 20s, 30s, and 40s that was NOT Tolkien, you'll find traces of them in Chabon's book.
"Gentlemen of the Road" is a tribute to an overlooked style of storytelling, and an overlooked period in Jewish history. This one will define the true fans from the fair-weather dabblers.
I love Chabon's literary career arc: full of novels and projects he feels like doing 'cause it's fun, 'literary' establishment credibility be damned! -
I love these kinds of books usually, but this one lacked the grit and shamelessness that makes escapist fantasy work.
It might be a good intro to sword and sorcery for the uninitiated, but for fans of Conan, Elric and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser it will seem milquetoast. -
If you favor long periods and complex wording this book is a delightful study in characters. It's not an easy read but I truly liked the protagonists and their development, not to mention the horses&elephants. What's more, I had no idea lush prose and emotional descriptions could fit a swashbuckling adventure so well; the result is intense.
I mean:
“Get up,” Amram said.
Zelikman looked up at him, his face blank, soot-streaked, filling with that unshakable weariness as rapidly as a staved-in hull fills with cold black sea.
Sure, it's also a matter of tastes but when I read that, in the context, the image felt natural and powerful because the character's thoughts demanded it. On the downside, at times the sentences were so long I had to reread to find some cohesion.
Anyway, with its many roads, fine humour, witticism and cynicism doled out in equal portions, and art even in insults (“You mendacious sons of bitches,”), this book was truly a galvanizing read!
Because adventures befall the unadventuresome as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result—and have been since at least the time of Odysseus—of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again. All adventure happens in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. -
It's sad when I enjoy the afterword (which was itself long and self-indulgent) more than the entire book. I really wanted to like this book. The scenario was refreshing, the characters interesting and language challenging. However, I was able to easily figure out the entire plot within the first chapter. The writing was difficult -- page long paragraphs with only two sentences. I'd get to the end and find myself thinking "huh?" and return to reread. This happened repeatedly. There were many foreign terms which were introduced without any situational reference allowing me to guess what it meant. I am well read and really hate the required use of a dictionary.
In the afterword, Mr. Chabon takes great pains to describe why he wrote this book. Look, I am not Jewish and do not live in an area with a large Jewish influence. I had no preconceptions and honestly did not find the overall premise ironic or mind-blowing in the least. Perhaps if I'd had that stereotype (which the author assumes every stinkin' person has), I would have liked it better. But thankfully, I don't. The title needed to stand on its own wobbly and interminably verbose legs.
This is my first (and perhaps ONLY) title by Mr. Chabon. Perhaps if I'd developed a love for his writing first, as so many of the positive reviews seem to have done, I may have appreciated it more. -
Michael Chabon has been making it hard for me lately, to love him in the way I'm used to doing. The Yiddish Policeman's Union was unfinishable for me, but I'm going to try again. This is something totally different however, a swashbuckling adventure story full of Turks, caravans, princes in disguise, swordfights and ruffians of many degree. He says in the afterward that he wanted to name the book "Jews With Swords" but didn't get a lot of positive feedback on that. But it made me like the book more, once I had that added perspective. Like a jewish Horse & His Boy with whores, melancholy and less racism.
-
A few years back I made it my goal to read at least one Chabon novel per year, but I've fallen off the wagon in the past two. Lately, my schedule has been very busy as I stare down the barrel of a Royal College exam and I've tended more towards shorter or easy to read novels. I'd forgotten just how verbose Chabon can be, but in the case of this novel it actually makes for a somewhat confusing experience.
Admittedly, I'm not familiar with the Khazars or the period of history in which this novel is set. This led to some initial confusion only bolstered by stunning word choice and Chabon's signature style. What worked best for me were the lead characters and their relationship. This novel has the feel of a classic adventure boosted by old-school illustrations and a swashbuckling tone.
This lands, for me, around lower tier Chabon. It doesn't have the grand impact of some of my favourite of his novels (Kavalier & Clay and Yiddish Policeman's Union) but is still some good fun. I wish I'd been able to follow the story a bit better, but I'll also admit to some fractured attention and distraction on my end. -
Reading this directly after Lawrence Block's "Tanner's Twelve Swingers" was quite eye-opening. Unlike Block, who relied on flimsy flash and sex to barrel through his story, Chabon created a complex world for his two Jews with swords - a French Jew (before there was a France) who looks like a scarecrow and a giant Abyssinian black Jew who wields a battle ax called Motherfucker. Sure, it sounds like the stuff of fantasy, but with this little novel, Chabon achieves what only the best fantasy stories can. His world, though immensely removed from our own (I mean, Jews with swords, how crazy can you get? (Chabon makes sure to address the anomaly in his Afterword)), seems much more real than much naturalism that purports to show modern life as it exists.
The two gentlemen of the road - Zelikman and Amram - take on a task - a quest, if you will - that rewards them less monetarily than politically, and perhaps morally - when they set out to escort a young royal to his grandfather's fortress and out of the way of the new bek's (king's) mercenaries.
The twists and turns of Chabon's tale delight in a rather light manner. This young royal isn't what he at first seems. The relationship between the two unorthodox Jews proves to be comically warm and the political climate of the Near East is much more interesting and varied than one would have thought. Chabon does a good job of showing that ages old fault line where the three masses of men - Christians, Jews, and Muslims - smash into each other with devastating consequences - not that Chabon delves too much into the conflict between the religions, but the obvious rifts are evident.
One of the more interesting political devices in the novel is the structure of the government of Atil - a great massive city-state split down the middle between the Jews and the Muslims - in which the bek rules over the lives of his subjects, but the kagan - a man who lives in a fortress on an island in the delta of Atil and never sees another soul except for his blind servant - tells the bek what to do. Sounds like Cheney and Bush.
A land of elephants, caravans, silk embroidered head gear, daggers, whores (love the whorehouse scenes), and Vikings makes this little book burst. A fun, fun read. -
With the longest sentences in the history of sword & sorcery.
I thoroughly enjoyed. -
in his apology...er...afterward to this quick-witted and enjoyable historical adventure story, chabon discloses that the original working title was 'jews with swords.' (personally, i think that would have been a pretty kick ass title.) chabon goes on to explain how it came to be that he, a capital-L-literature-author, ended up writing a story that involved swords. unintentionally it smacks of condescension, of a slight embarrassment of what it was trying to be. that was my only significant complain of this otherwise delightful romp involving two friends cum con-men who, trying to make some quick cash, end up toppling a dictatorship. the prose is erudite, polished. the narration takes great pleasure in it's wit--an experience, i think, that most readers will share, save for perhaps a vague sensation that the prose is _trying_ to be worthy of intellectual scrutiny. the characters were sympathetic and likable. despite a gosh and disturbing treatment of rape, the author executes the plot well. i hope chabon continues to produce adventures of this time...though perhaps not one that is so...self-conscious.
-
An adult selection. I listened to this one on audio, and it was a perfect companion for a trip from Dallas to San Antonio. I haven't read everything by Chabon (my mom is still dismayed that I haven't gotten to Kavalier and Clay yet, since I'm a comic book fan), but I enjoyed Summerland and I thought Chabon did a good job in Gentleman recapturing the feel of a Dumas adventure. The language of the narrative was as antique and exotic as the setting, and I mean that in a good way. It wasn't an easy read, even in audio. I felt like I was listening to Faulkner -- "I know there will be a verb in this sentence eventually, if I just keep going." I probably had a very confused look on my face as I was driving, but about the time I hit Waco, I started getting into the feel of the narrative. The main characters -- your typical Jewish Ethiopian and Jewish Frankish swashbucklers -- were a perfect pair. I can definitely see a sequel to their adventures, although Chabon never does the same thing twice, so I'm not holding my breath!
-
I didn't want to believe the negative reviews when I started this book. I'm a big fan of Michael Chabon and have been impressed with his writing. However, this novel seems to tread the line of wanting to be literary fiction or pulp adventure fiction as a result it fails at both.
The novel is bland and empty. Things happen and there is a fast pace at times, but I didn't care. That's the first for a Chabon novel. I don't care about any characters or what happens to them.
So, leave this one on the shelf and don't bother. Read Wonder Boys or the Yiddish Policeman's Union or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. -
There is no writer that I have more of a love-hate relationship with than Michael Chabon. Having rated his works everything from 5 stars for The Yiddish Policemen's Union which I enjoyed immensely for its humor, plot, and overall fine writing down to 2 stars for the plodding and dull Telegraph Avenue I enjoyed this book more than I thought but with some caveats. It's a fun story in a swashbuckling way but the prose is so breezy that on occasion I had to go back to the beginning of a sentence to see how what I read at the end pertained to the start. Anyone who enjoys an adventure story should enjoy this but it's not going to knock your socks off. 4 stars.
-
I read Chabon’s satisfying adventure novel in one brisk sitting and with dictionary in hand, looking up a few archaic words each page. The chore of looking up exotic English terms mimicked the ordeals of the characters dealing with one strange situation after another and helps transport you into the terms of the story. The tropes of fantasy adventure are all here, impishly deployed and beautifully rendered. This is perhaps the first historical fantasy about the Khazars, a legendary Turkish-Caucasian Jewish people. Chabon was going to call this “Jews with Swords” since its main characters are medieval Jewish adventurers, a hulking Ethiopian warrior and a melancholy Ashkenazi physician-strategist (with allusions to Michael Morcock’s Elric and Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane). The plot deals with a coup by a treacherous Khazar warlord who aims to expand his empire by instigating clashes between Russian brigands and Muslim armies. Chabon’s homage to the pulp fiction of our youth is genius.
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I reviewed this for Esquire when it came out:
http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/... -
This is a picaresque adventure story set in the Caucasus Mountains (Khazar Empire) in the year 950. The protagonists are Zelikman, a non-practicing Jewish man, and Amram, an African. The two are very different in personality, background, and stature. The storyline involves the two men embarking on a journey, finding themselves in various dilemmas, and figuring out how to get out of them. It is historical fiction written in a literary style. It reminded me a bit of Don Quixote. It is quite different from other books I’ve read by Michael Chabon. There are elements of humor and wit. It is not my favorite of Chabon’s works, but I found it entertaining.
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Ho riletto questo libro dopo circa quattro anni.
Quattro lunghi anni durante i quali questo breve romanzo ha avuto un posto speciale nel mio cuore. Ogni volta che penso a un'avventura nel deserto, Cronache di principi e viandanti; quando mi si chiede consiglio su un romanzo d'avventura, fra gli altri, Cronache di principi e viandanti; e quella volta che mi ritrovai Michael Chabon in una puntata dei Simpson, oh guarda! È l'autore di Cronache di principi e viandanti.
Essendomi ritrovata nell'incresciosa posizione di dover scegliere quale opera portare in montagna, lo sguardo mi è caduto proprio su questo libretto. Non amo rileggere i libri nella loro interezza, spesso quando un libro mi colpisce mi limito a rileggere i passaggi salienti, ma per ragioni a me sconosciute, forse mossa da una sorte di malinconia, per una volta ho deciso di iniziare e finire un libro che, di fatto, ho già iniziato e finito.
Cosa posso dire a distanza di quattro anni?
La storia è molto bella. Non complessa, con due personaggi principali che ho trovato molto interessanti nelle loro stranezze e nei loro silenzi. Un bel romanzo di avventura quindi, ambientato in un luogo e in un tempo distante e sconosciuto, nel quale di intrecciano senza troppe cerimonie lingue, culture, religioni.
Il grosso, enorme problema di questo libro è lo stile.
Michael Chabon si perde in tanti, troppi incisi, spesso usando termini in lingue antiche e intraducibili che, certo, aiutano a entrare nell'atmosfera generale, ma che rallentano inutilmente la lettura. Le frasi iniziano un discorso e dopo mille giri ne raccontano la fine di un altro, portando confusione e la frustrazione di dover rileggere interi passaggi, andando così a spezzare il flusso narrativo. Spesso durante la lettura mi sono chiesta: cosa sto leggendo? Dove sono? Devo forse intendere qualcosa che non è stato detto?
Insomma una grande confusione che bene o male nasconde dentro di sé una gran bella storia. Chi lo sa, magari tra altri quattro anni lo stile di Chabon mi sarà totalmente e assolutamente chiaro, ma per ora, ahimé, le cose non stanno così.
Quindi do cinque stelle, sì, ma più per sentimentalismo che oggettività. -
If Robert E. Howard had been writing his historical adventure fiction at the beginning of the 21st century instead of toward the beginning of the 20th, this book might very well have come from his pen. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the Howard collection "Sword Woman."
Still, while I'm recommending it, it's not without its flaws - some of those the same as I feel the Howard stories contain. The narrative can get bogged down in technical details that impede the flow of the tale, and the characterization is fairly basic. The 'big reveal' here is also pretty obvious right from the beginning.
This is a fun little book, but it's really not in the same category as 'Yiddish Policeman' or 'Kavalier & Clay." -
Charming tale of adventure, all the promise of a serialized penny dreadful fulfilled by a first rate writer like Chabon. For such a short piece, I fell in love with the characters.
Marred by a curiously hostile afterward which chastises the reader for thinking that adventure tales are frivolous, though such readers are the least likely to reach the end of the book. It is clear that Chabon has moved on from the "late twentieth century realism genre" as he calls it, and that's a good thing.
