Telegraph Avenue

A Novel

By: Michael Chabon

Narrated by: Clarke Peters

Length: 18 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's summary

As the summer of 2004 draws to a close, Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe are still hanging in there - longtime friends, bandmates, and co-regents of Brokeland Records, a kingdom of used vinyl located in the borderlands of Berkeley and Oakland. Their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, are the Berkeley Birth Partners, a pair of semi-legendary midwives who have welcomed, between them, more than a thousand newly minted citizens into the dented utopia at whose heart - half tavern, half temple - stands Brokeland Records.

When ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in the United States, announces plans to build his latest Dogpile megastore on a nearby stretch of Telegraph Avenue, Nat and Archy fear it means certain doom for their vulnerable little enterprise. Meanwhile, Aviva and Gwen also find themselves caught up in a battle for their professional existence, one that tests the limits of their friendship. Adding another layer of complication to the couples' already tangled lives is the surprise appearance of Titus Joyner, the teenage son Archy has never acknowledged and the love of 15-year-old Julius Jaffe's life.

©2012 Michael Chabon (P)2012 HarperCollins Publishers

Stay with it. Interesting Story Race & Family

What made the experience of listening to Telegraph Avenue the most enjoyable?

The story itself.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Telegraph Avenue?

The final scenes with Julius and Gwen in the hospital as she delivered her baby, and then when he left and went looking for Titus...I found Julius to become a great hero of this novel and really liked it.

What aspect of Clarke Peters’s performance would you have changed?

I think the way he performed all the women and children sounded the same...and sometimes I that annoyed me. His encapsulation of the 70's vibe of Nat and Archy were on point, though.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No, but it was a good, solid story.

Any additional comments?

this book really took me by surprise. i listened to the first chapter and honestly thought -- i'm not going to make it through. it seemed...er...do i want to say pretentious? maybe? or...perhaps i'll just say, it seemed like it was going to be too much for me. just too much.

but something kept me listening. and i'm super glad i did.

i found the lives of archy and gwen, nat and aviva, julius and titus, so enthralling....i ached for more of each of their stories. yeh, i totally just said that.

it's funny, because i know that this book was intended to be about the two men -- archy and nat -- but i found myself more riveted with the other characters' stories. i mean, i loved those guys. archy was a particularly intriguing character. i wanted him to do the right things. i rooted for him to be the good guy.

but overall, gwen was my favorite character in this book. she was tender but serious. a no nonsense woman who was raised to never sit by and let her situation get out of control. yet, all the lives around her were out of control....and she struggled to take charge and be the woman she was intended to be. her sensibility was right on.

i also loved julius. he was such a sorry little boy. my heart went out to him every time he looked at or thought about titus. i think he was one of the true heroes of this novel. as i said, his scenes at the end of the book when gwen was in labor were truly special.

this is another book where all the ancillary characters were so strong and well developed. 'chan the man,' gibson goode, 'the king of bling', luther...every single one of them had depth and purpose. i enjoyed each and every story that intertwined with our main protagonists.

i think the most interesting part of this book was the underlying (and at times overlying) element of race that was the theme of the novel. the world views that are so different between nat and archy, aviva and gwen, titus and julius. the ability they have to coexist, as best friends, business partners, lovers...yet the inability to absolutely understand the other's point of view...never able to grasp the uniqueness of the other's race. and the wedges that formed between them all because of race.

Another Pulitzer?

Chabon has done it again. Can't get enough of his books. They feel real. If you've shopped for vinyl records in Oakland, you will know what I mean. Can't wait for his next one

Perfection

To my taste, Chabon’s greatest. Warmth, humor, and endless delights in the prose. The reader is superb. I laughed out loud so many times. Grateful for this remarkable work of genius.

Another Very-Well-Written Book by Mr. Chabon

What did you love best about Telegraph Avenue?

The use of language in "Telegraph Avenue" is so rich and seductive that I really didn't want the book to end. Listening to the reader was pure joy. The language conveyed not only the bones of the story, but also varied according to each personality. In addition, the language revealed the ages of the protagonists by being apropos to each person.Mr. Chabon must have done a mountain of research or be an aficionado of vinyl himself. He reveals an encyclopedic familiarity both with jazz of the fifties to the seventies, but also of contemporary music. Listening to stories is one of my all-time favorite activities. The excellent reader sustained the voices of the four pairs of protagonists.

What other book might you compare Telegraph Avenue to and why?

There are passages that reminded me of Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu," in the minutia of details about the music; of Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" in its panoply of characters and of Joyce's "Ulysses" in the sweep of time.

Which scene was your favorite?

This question--"what scene was your favorite" is like asking whether you prefer dark chocolate with or without nuts--because there were so many indelible moments. Here are two: the executor's daughter cleaning out Cochise Jones' apartment and releases his parrot, or the undertaker's nephews chatter while "tailing" Titus and Julie.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

A tag line for a film might be "The Karma of Vinyl."

Chabon wins again

Always creative and funky and lusciously written, his fiction rocks. Okay, I'm a fan of Michael Chabon.

A Very, Very, Very Mixed Review

As I was listening to this book, I kept on going back and forth in my mind as to how much I really liked it. I was almost a third of the way through, and I still could not figure out where this story was headed.

I mean, it seemed like there should be no problem. Here are two guys with a used record store called "Brokeland Records" that is barely making it, and along comes an outside threat in the form of a competitor with a big, shiny, Amazon-like record store that is selling tons of stuff much cheaper than our heroes that is being backed by the local politician. And it turns out that both guys have interesting family issues. The real makings for a plot, resolution, etc. So why wasn't it going anywhere?

What I was listening to instead were extremely wordy data dumps about one character after another, got to know them inside-out. Also, there were abrupt changes of scene that, from a listening standpoint were jarring and disconcerting. I had to look at a physical copy of the book to make sure that there wasn't something wrong with the recording, that parts of the book hadn't been left out by mistake.

Then, somewhere almost halfway through the book, the plot wheezed to life, and the story finally started moving along in an extremely contrived way.

I only stuck it out because by that time I really wanted to know what was going to happen with the various characters. Mr. Chabon certainly has a gift for making characters believable and making the "reader" care about them. And because of Clarke Peters' great narration. In fact, I think I would have thrown the book over completely if someone other than Clarke Peters was narrating it.

I also enjoyed listening to some great turns of phrase that are generously sprinkled through the book. Here are some examples:

"Like all of Mr. Flowers' younger crop of nephews, they seemed not to be wearing their ill-fitting black suits so much as to be squatting inside them until some less embarrassing habitation came along."

"This was true; Cochise Jones had made funeral arrangements of Egyptian exactitude for himself and his partner in solitude."

"A paycheck, benefits. Archy imagined coming home with such things in his backpack, how it would be if he could meet Gwen's reproachful look with news like that, the 50 percent gain in domestic peace that would result if he could move from being shiftless and cheating to merely the latter. A stack of quarters to feed the meter, move the needle out of the red, way over to the right."

"Cool as a cup of crushed ice on the drums, though, El Boom kept time like an atom clock."

"He came at Archy's soul then with the flashlight and the crowbar of his gaze."

"It was not easy, dressed in skanky b-ball shorts and a Captain EO sweatshirt with cutoff sleeves, but Archy dived down deep and hauled up all the dignity he could snap loose from the sea bottom of his soul."

So you are in for an enjoyable listen if you can stomach the extreme wordiness, meandering dialog and contrived plot.

Awful!

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

No

Would you ever listen to anything by Michael Chabon again?

I adored Cavelier and Clay. I was so disappointed. I love Michael Chabon but not this time. I found the story tediously boastful. So much hipness that means nothing in the story. Pretentiously over written, one extreme simile after another. And the reader was awful. I don't think a good reader puts lots of emphasis and irony into the reading.

Would you be willing to try another one of Clarke Peters’s performances?

No

Do you think Telegraph Avenue needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

Never!

Gaudy prose

The prose is gaudy. A character cannot even fry a pan vegetables without 2 pages of nested metaphors and similes several commas deep. 90% of the text is extraneous and could be cut without changing the story or sacrificing any understanding of the characters or scene. For that matter, all the characters felt the same.

Just not as thrilling as his previous works.

I've read (not listened to) all of Chabon's novels and this one, while enjoyable, just seems like him in a minor key. Story takes a while to get started and once it does never seems to take off. (This is odd since there is a long set piece taking place in a dirigible with a night club attached.)
Also, the story, while amusing, just didn't seem to have the depth of his best ones. I got through it but just barely.

An extraordinary novel, perfectly read.

What made the experience of listening to Telegraph Avenue the most enjoyable?

The characters are rich; the plot held my interest through all the twists and turns; the unique setting of the East Bay is perfectly captured in ways large and small; the descriptions of jazz are marvelous; the dark side of Oakland politics was portrayed better than any journalist has done. Clarke Peters' reading is so marvelous that I can't imagine just reading the book; my wife got used to me plugging my iPod into our stereo each evening saying "You've got to listen this this."