The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

How is that all of my book reviews have centered on predominantly feminist readings? Am I slowly finding my way into an analytical niche, or am I just inundated with feminist influence given a certain essay topic I’ve been tackling lately?

(No, you don’t want to read it. No one wants to read an essay on the masculinization [among other things] of Miranda in The Tempest. I know hardly any of you read these more light-hearted reviews. I can’t imagine anyone being interested in reading something with legitimate citations and attached bibliography, except for my obliging friends who I am forcing to read it for feed back [thanks, friends!].)

But I’m going to go out on a literary limb here and say that one cannot discuss Michael Chabon without discussing his female characters. And why, you ask? Oh, unknowing reader, I’ll tell you: Chabon is undeniably a man’s writer. All of my wily womanly ways tell me that there shouldn’t be a difference, but all of my literary theory days tell me that there is: there is a difference in how men and women view the world, what they, therefore, choose the write about, and how, arguably, they write about it.

There is nothing to argue about with regards to Michael Chabon. His male characters are complex, rich, complicated thinkers. His women are flat, unfeeling, sometimes disgusting people. I find myself wondering if maybe all of this man-love is an indication of his closeted tendencies. But no. He has a wife. A wife who absolutely adores him. And babies. Lots of happy Jewish babies.

But still, there is a feeling I get when reading Michael, a not so happy feeling that my gender is being ever so slightly insulted, misunderstood, and that I am, without a doubt, being left out. At the risk of incurring the wrath of many well-read women, I find it interesting that many people compare this novel to The Great Gatsby or The Catcher in the Rye, interesting because I kind of (brace yourselves) hated both of those books. Gasp! Shock! Horror! I know. But I did. And it’s only NOW, reading that comparison on the back cover that I realize why: they’re boy books.

Judge away, but it’s true. They are about boys, they follow boys, they revere the inner workings of boys in a way that is far from universal, and that is a theme that I just cannot latch onto. I can sit on a couch and read 297 pages of it, but it is from a removed perspective. I don’t find myself underlining or starring or exclaiming, “Yes!” out loud while I read. I read as an outsider. Yes, this is how some men must feel. Yes, this is how it must feel to come of age as a man struggling with his sexuality. But I can’t, could never, understand that.

Now. That’s not to say that a book about such themes can’t be good, because, while I hated Fitzgerald and Salinger, I looooove Chabon. Okay, maybe I should reserve the multiple o’s for a writer I identify with more readily, but I feel the need to use them here to show just how much the above discussion was not one containing any ounce of distaste. It just… is what it is. I’m a girl. I can’t relate to a lot of Chabon’s male characters. And I can’t relate to his female characters either. I guess this is what I should start with then. Get the feminist nonsense out of the way so that we can get onto the good stuff. And by good stuff, you know I’m talking about sex.

The first two sentences of the book set up the unbalanced portrayal of women in the novel: “At the beginning of the summer I had lunch with my father, the gangster, who was in town for the weekend to transact some of his vague business. We’d just come to the end of a period of silence and ill will—a year I’d spent in love and in the same apartment as an odd, fragile girl whom he had loathed, on sight, with a frankness and a fury that were not at all like him” (9). I didn’t underline this sentence or add any marginal notes because it came so early on in the novel, too early to be a part of my outlining of themes to discuss and examine. I wasn’t prepared for such an immediate indication of women being boring and odd and lifelessly discussed, but upon opening the book for examination just now, just this minute, it immediately jumped out at me. It sets up a precedence that is upheld throughout the novel: women are vaguely described in terms that show a lack of understanding on the part of the narrator.

Perhaps the clearest indication of Chabon’s jaunty depiction of women is Phlox, a pathetic, haphazardly put together, odd kind of woman. She senses Art’s sexual unrest before he does and in that way is allowed one graceful opportunity to shine above her male counterparts. But then that is just as quickly thrown out as she corners Art into meeting her in the library and arranges his fall back into her arms. Cleveland says it best when he reassures Art that Phlox’s determination to never see him again is temporary, as if her feelings and consequences are fleeting and flimsy and therefore not to be taken seriously. Even when she does argue with Arthur, it is an argument against an empowering lyric in a Bruce Springsteen song. And when Jane comes to her aid, it is not to stand up for her but to sympathize with her: “As soon as [Jane] heard that anyone was or had been in any kind of distress, she became an engine of sympathy, hurtling to the rescue” (152). Jane’s sympathy is one-dimensional, insincere. Even Phlox’s name is floral. She is superficially described by the clothes that she wears and the color of her hair. Not much else is revealed aside from her petty detailing of women who are jealous of her and her own jealousies towards Arthur, with whom she suspects Art is in love.

Even when Art is not the one detailing the nature of women, they still are one-dimensional. He tells the story of a man that he meets who says that “’Every woman has the heart of a policeman’” (217) and shares the story of his ex-fiancée who figured out that another woman was interested in him with an exchanged glance. Of course in this man’s telling of the story, his fiancée is paranoid and suspicious, and he is the innocent. The validity of his tale is questionable, but the instance of women being unattractive is not. When Phlox writes Art a letter, she spends half of it talking about how incapable she is of expressing herself in writing and how self-conscious she feels knowing that he is more intelligent than she is and probably examining it for mistakes. But when she does get to the point of the letter, she comes off as egomaniacal and demanding: “There is only one place in the world where you are supposed to put your penis—inside of me” (230). It raises a few eyebrows, no? I’m not sure of any woman who would ever say something of this nature, but welcome to the world of surface, unlikable female characters. Welcome to the world of Michael Chabon’s women.

But, then again, maybe it is partly purposeful, considering the narrator. He is a young man struggling with his sexuality and his opposite and demanding attractions to men and women after all.

(Take that as my transition into the good stuff.)

The main pull of the novel is Art’s struggle with his sexuality, his back and forth attempt at figuring out who he is attracted to more, men or women, and how he can rectify his ability to be attracted to both. We’re allowed the objective and critical viewpoint as readers to examine how he discusses men and women differently to realize which he prefers before he even does. By simply noting the way in which he describes his contact with women, one can see how uncomfortable he is in their presence. When walking with Phlox down the street, he describes his discomfort: “My arm was around Phlox’s waist, chafing against the funny white leather belt she’d used to hitch up her dress” (149). In a post-coital embrace, Art experiences a similar awkward and irritating embrace: “I grew more and more uncomfortable, bound up in Phlox’s arms on the rough carpet. I wanted a cigarette, wanted to unstick my prickling skin from hers” (261). Even Art’s interactions with women become a show and insincere: “I lifted her and swung her and kissed her, through all three hundred and sixty degrees, like a soldier and his girl. We got some applause” (141). His conversation with Phlox becomes “empty” but “happy” (142), devoid of depth and real emotion other than those found on the surface. Enjoyable acts of affection become irritating, and through the negative depictions of his interactions with women, Chabon reveals the true direction of Art’s sexuality even if Art hasn’t realized it yet himself.

Throughout the novel, Art’s sexuality plagues him, and we wince and want to tap him on the shoulder and point out the points at which it seems instinctually true. When faced with the love of another man or the suggestion of his homosexuality, the truth of that confrontation soars within him: “I felt something. It flew around my chest like a black bat that has got into the house, terrified me for an alien moment, and then vanished” (41). And when he decides that he can’t decide whom he wants to be with, Phlox or Arthur, he uses a coin to determine who he should be with, who he should call. But still, the instincts of his sexuality override the arbitrary outcome: “Finally I reached into my pocket and flipped a quarter. Heads was Phlox, tails was Arthur. It came up heads. I called Arthur” (239).

Overpowering everything else, feminist or fun, is the underlying path of the coming of age novel. It has the undertones of The Graduate, where time stretches on and on, seemingly endlessly. The timeline of the novel is one short summer, but pages and pages pass as plot unfolds and the reader is surprised to learn that only a few days have passed within the lives of the characters. It’s without a doubt a celebration of young adulthood, those magical years between the imprisonment of childhood and the freedom of adulthood. It’s through Art’s loss of innocence, the realization of his sexuality, and his sexual encounters with Arthur that he is set free from the confines of his powerful father and the weak-willed ways of his childhood. It is quite a lovely novel, capturing that time that we remember so clearly but so exaggeratedly with nostalgia: “When I remember that dizzy summer, that full, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another’s skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness—and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything” (297).

I give this novel three and a half stars.