Michael Chabon's "Telegraph Avenue"

LONGTIME Californian is one of our favorite writers here at The Misread City.

I had the pleasure to speak to him the other day about his new novel, set on the Berkeley/Oakland border. It's a long, rich book centered around a used vinyl shop that specializes in various styles of black music from the '60s and '70s. (If Brokeland Records really existed I would go digging for an original Blue Note pressing of the early works of Grant Green. And I bet they'd have it.)

This Q & A was my first piece for GoodReads. Here it is.

The interview is fairly long, but here is one more exchange exclusively for Misread City readers.

The other thing that strikes me about Telegraph Avenue is that there’s this buzz and hum to the street life, a kind of Jane Jacobs city life with its love of density. But at least going back a decade or more you’ve written at an artist’s retreat, at which you also have a role as chairman of the board. Why is that valuable to you and to other writers and artists.

I can just get more done, be completely disconnected. When you’re at MacDowell, you have no Internet access – that’s the heart of it. When I started going there, there was barely an Internet; it didn’t play anything like the role it does now in distracting me from my work. But that is what it has metamorphosed for me. More than any kind of getting away I do there, I get away from the Internet.

But a close second is having the opportunity to only be thinking about your work. When you’re not thinking, you’re reading, or walking – nothing else gets in the way. So even when you’re at dinner, and chatting with a composer and a sculptor, the things they say to you somehow feed into the work that’s your doing.

That level of immersion, 24 hours a day, even in your dreams – it’s feeding into the work. You end up using much more of your brain.

While when I’m home, I work all night, I hit my word count… But then I wake up the next morning, there are all this piddly things I’ve got to take care of, from housework to childcare to shopping for dinner, planning the menu, and the Internet, the greatest distraction of them all. I’m not working during those periods. There’s no subconscious work being done.

"Common as Air"

THE scholar and poet Lewis Hyde is a fascinating figure whose ideas about the unease of art in a market economy have developed him a cult following that includes figures like Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon and artist Bill Viola. (David Foster Wallace was also a big fan.)

Hyde's most famous and influential book -- with the possible exception of Tricker Makes the World -- is The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern Word. His new book, Common as Air: Revolution, Art and Ownership, is, says Gary Giddins in the new Bookforum, similar:

"It too, is concerned with creativity, sharing and communal property; it, too, is repetitive and larded with academic setups; it, too, peters out (Hyde has no gift for climax); and it, too, is indispensable."

I spoke with Hyde when the 25th anniversary of The Gift was released. I found him a very smart guy though I don't agree with him completely: We discussed the ideal bohemia, market triumphalism, and the marketplace friendly art of Andy Warhol. Here it is.

Magical Prose and Rethinking Literary Realism

On Saturday I led a panel at UCLA with three writers who work in what we might call slipstream, literary fantasy, conceptual fiction, surrealism, or some other school still to be named. While the specific label isn't particularly important, the emphasis on rethinking realism, on embracing the best of genres like fantasy and science fiction, and moving into what Michael Chabon has called "the borderlands" between literary categories is at the center of much the best fiction these days, I think.

HERE is a Jacket Copy blogger's coverage of my panel, which I described as about the Gen-X rebellion against doctrinaire realism, and which included the writers Aimee Bender (The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake), Lev Grossman (The Magicians) and Victor LaValle (Big Machine).

My favorite moment was when LaValle was asked if he'd drawn from any myths or legends in developing his literary style and he mentioned how he had read the Bible all the way through -- a volume, he said, drawn from so many previous ancient sources that if functions like an anthology.

The Jacket Copy post includes a pretty sharp summary of the stakes of the conversation as well as a reasonable unflattering photo of yours truly mid-syllable.

I quoted Chabon's excellent book of criticism, Maps and Legends, praised the work of Ursula Le Guin, and referred to Ted Gioia's blog, Conceptual Fiction, which is dedicated to these very issues. I also name-dropped my first "favorite writer," J.R.R. Tolkien, whose family monogram is pictured.

Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

THIS Saturday I am quite honored to be moderating a panel with three very fine novelists of my generation at the LA Times Festival of Books. The panel -- "Writing the Fantastic" -- takes place at 2, in Moore 100 on the UCLA Campus.

One of my obsessions the last few years has been the move away from realism -- and in many cases toward genre -- by writers born in the late '60s and early '70s. I sort of associate the issue with Michael Chabon, who has written so well about the matter and exemplifies it in his own work -- here for more on that -- but he's hardly the only one. Recently I've been interested, for instance, in the lead essay on Ted Gioia's Conceptual Fiction site.)

(A year or so ago I wrote about the phenomenon in a Guardian piece called "How Ursula LeGuin Led a Generation Away From Realism," here.)

In any case, my distinguished panelist include:

Aimee Bender: Known to many readers, esp Angelenos, for her debut story collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Bender has a novel coming in June called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, which continues her blending of folklore and whimsical surrealism. (Or is it folkloric whimsy -- I'm not quite sure, but I think of Chagall when I read her.)

Victor Lavalle: His novel Big Machine, which came out last summer, is my can't-put-down favorite right now. I came to this book cold, and don't want to spoil it for others, as the unfolding of a mystery that begins in a train station rest room is part of the delight of Big Machine. But this guy has a great touch. Lavalle grew up in Queens and is the youngest of the panel, born 1972. His novel drew raves from both the Wall Street Journal and Mos Def.

Lev Grosssman: I've admired Grossman's criticism, much of it in Time magazine, for quite a while now -- he's one of the most astute readers I know. His novel The Magicians has been a sensation, scoring The New York Times bestseller list, acclaim from the New Yorker and Junot Diaz. The novel superficially resembled the Harry Potter cycle in its school for magicians, but takes a much darker and more, um, adult turn.

Each of the authors has a blog, linked above, and I hope readers of The Misread City will check these three out whether they can attend the panel or not.

And remember: Though Lavalle and Grossman did not grow up on the West Coast, it was not their fault.

Lydia Millet vs. Domestic Realism

ONE of the key impulses of my generation -- what we used to call generation x -- has been the move away from old-school psychological realism into fiction's "borderlands." that's michael chabon's term, and he's generally talking about the wild frontier between literary fiction and fantasy, pulp crime, sci-fi, lovecraftian horror and comics.

but lydia millet is less interested in those fan-boy genres and more committed in her own weird soup of caricature, psychological extremity, obsession, and calvino-esque possibilities. (anyone who's lived in LA knows that those can actually be categories of realism here, but that's another conversation.) her characters are rarely likable, they're sometimes not even feasible, but they're often compelling.

here is my interview with millet from last year, when her bracing short novel "how the dead dream was released on soft skull press, then run by richard nash. millet is also an alum of what i call "the school of flynt," as in hustler: various porn and ammo magazines were her MFA program.

millet has a new story collection, "love in infant monkeys," which is getting good notices -- here is a review from the new york times book review.

this is a writer whose assumptions differ from some of my own, but who thinks in truly original ways.

Michael Chabon, Genre and Literary Criticism

READERS of this blog probably need no urging on what a fine novelist michael chabon is -- and i direct anyone who doubts over to "kavalier and clay" or a number of his other excellent works of fiction.

but literary criticism, even by as esteemed a talent as mr. chabon, tends to fly under the radar, and that's why it gives me great pleasure to highlight his essay/criticism collection "maps and legends" -- note the nod to great/overlooked early REM song -- which collects pieces from the new york review of books and other pubs. the book recently came out in paperback.

some of the essays provide the background to his life and fiction -- fascinating essay on columbia, md. (about 20 minutes from your humble blogger's hometown), yiddish and jewish identity, golems, etc.

but my favorite work in the book are his pieces of criticism -- on philip pullman ("his dark materials"), cormac mccarthy's "the road," comics god howard chaykin, the sherlock holmes stories/novels of arthur conan doyle, and why norse myth is better than the greek and roman variety. (yeah!)

here is an interview i did with MC on the book and its argument. (and here is the interview i did with him around the time of "the yiddish policeman's union.")

the collection's guiding idea is that the literary and cultural gatekeepers have been wrong about what matters and what endures. chabon's preferred metaphor is what tolkien called the "cauldron of story," in which folkloric materials can transform into "literary" and pop work and back again. it's all bubbling in the same pot.

my only regret is that now it will be harder to find the original mcsweeney's hardback -- with a cover by jordan crane that may be the most beautiful jacket of any book last year.

Photo credit: Flickr user 34