A Tasteful Evening with Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon delivered a new, untitled lecture at the University of Denver's Newman Center for the Performing Arts on 2/15/05. Your pal the Rake was there.

This, friends, was a very tasteful affair, depending on your definition of "taste."  The Pen & Podium is the type of literary event that brings out the animal known as the Series Subscriber—to be blunt, the person of a certain age who, when the words "literary" and "lecture" are mentioned, thinks I must have my fur coat cleaned.  The perfumed, pearled, befurred women were out in force.   It was only right, then, that Rake and friends snuck in and to their seats in the very back of the "left parterre" in the dark, with the introductions in progress.  After several sets of introductory remarks—including, somewhat incongruously, the words of Lisa Kennedy, the film critic for the Denver Post—Mr. Chabon came on the stage.

The stage design was such that Chabon stood dead-center, suspended in an ovoid pool of light, behind a small lectern and to the immediate right of a ten-foot tall stylized pillar that carried on its shoulders a yellow plant from which a tangle of bushy, incorrigible tendrils had exploded.  He seems a fairly soft-spoken guy, but it's clear he's spent his fair share of time in front of the microphone as his lecture—an untitled "new talk"—was delivered in dramatic fashion, occasionally in the melodramatic voice of a Late Nite Movie mad scientist, and with great comic timing.  Chabon is the picture of the perfect college roommate—if you brought him home for Thanksgiving, he'd charm the hell out of your parents.

Chabon's talk—for which I would have suggested the title "The Importance of Lying, The Pitfalls of Memory," after a couple phrases he used—turned out to be about the genesis of his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.  (Unfortunately, this is the only Chabon novel I haven't read, and if I'd known, I would have read that instead of The Final Solution last weekend.  But I digress.)  He began the book while living with his mother and step-father in the summer of 1985, right before entering UCI's MFA program.  The first attempts were pecked out in a humble little bunker he called "Ralph's room," after the previous occupant—he worked at an extremely high workbench, so he had to sit in a folding chair precariously perched on a steamer trunk, and composed on an Osborne 1a computer that he bought in 1983.  The room smelled of "soil, coal dust, and bicycle grease." He was living somewhat under a cloud at that time, and described his skull that summer as full of "loneliness, homesickness, and women in short pants."

Although he had affection for genre stuff—horror, sci-fi, crime, fantasy—he eventually took as his models Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) and Roth (Goodbye, Columbus).  He noted at the time that each book took place in roughly the span of a summer, so he started with the idea of a "three-act" book—June, July, August, he deadpanned—and the words of other intoxicating poets of summer: Ray Bradbury and Bruce Springsteen.  Later, he moved out, but kept writing.  He told everyone, usually apropos of nothing, that he was writing a novel.  And when school started, he had a "robust" 113 pages.

Here, the tale became a series of small, character-building mortifications.  Most notably, one of his instructors—Oakley Hall, author of the Thomas Pynchon favorite, Warlock—reads the manuscript and declares, flatly: "I don’t like it."  He also said it was "showy," "dull," and furthermore, there was "no goddamn story."  According to Chabon, he was absolutely right.  The one promising part, Hall said, was a description of the main character's father having a "gangster body."  Unfortunately, Hall was hoping the character was in fact in gangster, but it turns out young Chabon was just being a little cute with his description.  Long story short, he cut back from 113 pages to 13 pages, and, with the encouragement of his roommate, decided to make the father a real gangster.  This is when, according to the author, that he learned the importance of lying and the pitfalls of memory—he'd been using material that was too close, too autobiographical, and, after all, "life is not a story…or, not a good story," anyway.

The happy ending comes when Chabon’s instructor MacDonald Harris—who actually tells MC's workshop mates at one point not to offer him any "suggestions, criticism, or comments" because he knew what he was doing and it would just screw him up (even though I DIDN'T, cries Chabon)—forwards the manuscript to his agent without the author’s permission or knowledge.  The rest is history, although MC eventually has to live though his workshop comeuppance in a session led by Oakley Hall.

Here, Chabon ends with a nifty metaphor, again invoking the mad scientist—this time as an avatar for the writer.  Sometimes the "monster" you make runs amuck, and sometimes he just lies on the table, his involuntary muscles twitching.  Let them mock you this time, Chabon says, because the next time your monster will get loose in the village and "break their poor little hearts."

A short Q&A followed, and the same five or six questions that seem to be asked at every reading were duly asked.  Chabon did score points when, in response to a question that began "Where did you get your Jewish identity…?", he replied,  "Target."  We learned that, for the record, he has been reading the NYRB and The Metaphysical Club, which baffled him, he said, but in a good way.  And he said that the screenplay for Kavalier & Clay, which he wrote, is still somewhat in limbo despite being named the hottest screenplay in Hollywood by some entertainment rag a few years ago (an embarrassment, Chabon reports, second only to being named "the coolest writer in America" by the Christian Science Monitor.

Chabon thanked the crowd and we dispersed.  There was a reception area downstairs, but the Tattered Cover-sponsored table covered with Chabon books was swamped, the cash bar was cash only, and the line forming at the signing table was taking on Space Mountain-like proportions.  Plus, the ladies in furs were milling carelessly about, and I felt like I was in danger of being gently mauled to death by slow, tame bears.  Like a bird, like a plane, we flew right out of there and made it in time for the end of happy hour at The Kentucky Inn.

***

Remainders

The working title of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh: Searchlights and Giant Women
What Chabon was reading while writing TMoP: Proust
Approximate number of drafts of Kavalier & Clay screenplay completed by MC: 11
Mentions of Jethro Tull: 1
Mentions of Adam and the Ants: 1
Approximate weight of the Osborne 1a: 25 pounds
Approximate size of the Osborne 1a's screen: Smaller than an index card
Current computer: Mac
Other early influences: J.G. Ballard, Calvino, Borges, Barthelme
Gift given to Chabon by Tattered Cover in 1996 (lost immediately and inadvertently): A small bookmark with a personalized engraving
First lines in books compared to: Baby sharks

Comments

[amcorrea]

Thanks for sharing this!

Did he elaborate on what "baffled" him about Menand's book? I'm curious...

[Tito]

No one beats you for reading coverage in my book. Nice to hear the latest volley in XTC vs Adam Ant battle has been launched. I'm assuming his comments regarding Adam and the Ants and Jethro Tull were positive? I don't know if citing Jethro Tull will help maintain status as 'coolest writer in America', though.

[Scott]

Nice write-up. For the record, I know what you mean about the "mad scientist" voice. I think he just sounds like that, though; when I heard him speak, there were many mad scientist-esque moments but he wasn't really trying for any effect.

[Rake]

OK, lessee.

As for The Metaphysical Club, MC said, humbly, that he likes to read things that are a little over his head--in short, it had been awhile since he'd tackled ontology, epistemology, etc.

Jethro Tull was mentioned kinda off-the-cuff, something about being so lonely that you only get to talk to record store clerks about JT. He also made humorous mention about people in Pittsburgh who (I'm paraphrasing) get their life instruction from Adam and the Ants.

And finally, he was clearly, at the end, reaching for that mad scientist, Dr. Frankenstein stuff (mentioning "throwing the switch" and so on). Some of the lecture was written in intentionally overheated monster movie boilerplate (although I can see that he'd lapse into that voice unintentionally).

[Rake]

(I appreciate the linkage, all. And special mention goes to Mr. Formosus, who emailed to set me straight on "UCI." I'd originally referred to it as "Cal-Irvine," which is apparently a lame coinage of my own invention. I'm all better now, thanks.)

[Jimmy Beck]

Aqualung is a classic, but Side 1 of Thick As A Brick has true staying power.