Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
by Michael Chabon
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Book Summary Information
Author: Michael ChabonEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-09-30
ISBN: 0345502078
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Del Rey
Book Reviews of Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure
Book Review: Literary Polish Heavily Overlaid on 15 Connected Short Stories
Summary: 3 Stars
Language should enhance a story, not distract from it. Michael Chabon has such a fine command of English that he could write a love story that only five people in the world could understand was a love story. But what purpose would that serve? It would merely indicate pride at work.
To me, an adventure story needs to focus on the action and move rapidly. I want to find myself hanging over a cliff without first realizing that I'm barreling towards it. Otherwise, I don't feel like I'm in the adventure . . . but merely reading words about someone's idea of an adventure.
As a result, I wasn't pleased with the results of Michael Chabon's imaginative series of 15 short stories. I was spending more time studying the language than I was thinking about the story. It's like having a cake that's almost all icing. Why? For some reason, he chooses to use extremely long sentences ("With his skin that was lustrous as the tarnish on a copper kettle, and his eyes womanly as a camel's, and his shining pate with its ruff of wool whose silver hue implied a seniority attained only by the most hardened men, and above all with the air of stillness that trumpeted his murderous nature to all but the greenest travelers on this minor spur of the Silk Road, the African appeared neither to invite nor to promise to tolerate questions.") and many infrequently used words (the first chapter includes "shatranj," "bambakion," "buskins," "ostler," "bodkin," "runes," "Mehr," "Varangian," "caravansary," "japery," "Parthian," and "mendacious." Now I knew all but one of those words and could figure the other one out from context, but I doubt if most people would agree that those words added to the meaning of the story.
Building a tale from 15 short stories also makes the book choppy. I would have preferred a novella or a novel. Few have written this way since the time of Dickens when books were sold by installment. There's a reason for that: It doesn't work as well.
But the historical references were interesting, ones that I'm glad I learned from reading the book.
It's a short book and well illustrated. Without the illustrations, I would have liked the book a lot less well. The illustrations, however, pointed out some of the weaknesses of the writing: You need the illustrations to complete the story telling for the words are inadequate by themselves.
Beyond that, was I glad I read the book? Not very much. The overall story is one that didn't capture my interest very much. After Chapter One, the book was all downhill for me.
This work feels like a writing exercise rather than a serious literary work designed to please a large audience.
If you like fine writing and don't care much about how well the story works, by all means read this book.
But if you are looking for the best and most accessible of what Michael Chabon can deliver, skip Gentlemen of the Road.
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