Word: novelizes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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There is the mystery of the hero's sexuality. Is Art Bechstein, who is graduating from college as the novel opens, heterosexual or homosexual? Both or neither...
There is the mystery of Bechstein's early years. Bechstein's mother died under peculiar circumstances when he was young. Throughout the novel, he grows ever more curious about how and why his mother died...
MICHAEL Chabon, whose short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, is following in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac and J.D. Salinger with this novel. Like Kerouac, Chabon seeks to explore the outskirts of human discontent and disillusionment. Like Salinger in The Catcher in the Rye, he writes about a certain time--in Bechstein's case, a summer--charged with uncertainty and doubt...
Although this is his first novel, Chabon manages to convey his hero's journey in prose void of fatuousness or sentimentality. It is not fair to compare him, as his publisher has, to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Chabon's words do not have a jazzy tone; they sing in a disjointed melody, a music chopped into bits of drama and contemplation. Besides, being the next F. Scott Fitzgerald today often means finding your book in the bargain bins tomorrow...
Chabon is one in a long line of young novelists to examine the strange bric-a-brac of our day. Unlike Jay McInerney--whose debut novel, Bright Lights, Big City, was a dirge devoid of rebirth, and set in the heart of the New World jungle, New York City--Chabon retains a Midwestern sensibility and even-mindedness. Chabon's prose can be as funny as McInerney's, but its message is more cheerful...