MOONGLOW: A NOVEL (2016)
Michael Chabon
HarperCollins, 428
pages
★★★
Michael Chabon's Moonglow
is a novel. Or is it? The book's narrator is called Mike and two of its major
characters have no name other "my grandfather" and "my
grandmother." Many have speculated the book is either wholly or partially
autobiographical, assertions upon which Chabon coyly refuses to comment. Is it
or isn't it; that's not really the question. Better to ask is it a good book,
and my assessment is that it's a mixed bag. It is, at turns, eloquent and
gripping, but also plodding and self-indulgent.
The book's set up is that Mike is summoned to his
grandfather's deathbed and, over the course of ten days, hears tales that are
part confessional, part historical, and part familial. As befits such a
scenario, the book plays lose with linear time. Our first major incident unfolds
in 1957, but the book's core is revealed in a 1944 exchange between grandfather
and William Donovan, who headed the Office of Strategic Services—the forerunner
of the CIA—during World War II. Donovan was recruiting intelligence officers to
go deep into Germany during the war's waning days and unearth information about
Nazi rocketry. As a man nicknamed "Wild Bill," he wasted no time with
pretense. "You've been looking for trouble your whole life," says he
to grandfather. The book's central tension is whether that's literally true, or
if our protagonist is simply the sort of chap that trouble always manages to
find. He's certainly the sort who marches to a different drummer, a trait we
glimpse in his adolescence, the war years, the 1950s, and into old age.
Donovan's task suits grandfather well, as he is an
introspective man obsessed with rockets. As a youth, when not hustling pool, he
built detailed scale models of missiles and launch facilities, a hobby that
took on greater sophistication and continued throughout his life. By 1944, he
was also obsessed with Wernher von Braun, whom he wished to eliminate. In the
book, he came close to finding his quarry; there is a harrowing showdown between
he and Stolzmann, another Nazi scientist failing to pose as a farmer. Of
course, we know that he didn't get von Braun. If you think that the morality of
government today has problems, consider that Operation Paperclip granted
residency and eventual citizenship to at least 1600 Nazi scientists, including von
Braun. Many of these individuals became the foundation of both America's
nuclear weapons programs and of NASA. This gives poignancy to the grandfather,
who has retired to Florida and never misses a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral.
If only von Braun were his only tension. After the war
grandfather acquires a French-born wife who already has a child: Mike's mother.
She's exotic, vibrant, wild, a Jewish survivor of Nazi death camps, and as mad
as a March hare. Grandmother spends much of Mike's childhood in and out of
asylums before dying—often obsessed with images of the "Skinless
Horse." To say that grandfather didn't live a conventional life is an
understatement. About that 1957 'incident,' Mike's grandparents were living in
Philadelphia when grandfather went berserk when he lost his job with a barrette
manufacturer who fired him to give a job to a recent parolee: Alger Hiss! Hiss
left prison and grandfather went to Wallkill for almost murdering his
ex-employer. Add "jail bird" to his checkered résumé.
Moonglow, which
takes its name from a Benny Goodman standard, is filled with quirks such as
these. There are also offbeat relatives such as his flamboyant rabbi brother
and a late-in-life love interest; also amusing incidents involving bad theme
parties, a missing cat, Tarot cards, python hunting, and grandfather's
propensity for finding himself amidst smart alecks and fast talkers whom he
can't decide if likes of loathes. On the more serious side there are questions
about Jewish identity, PTSD, and mental illness. A Zippo lighter operates as
Chabon's version of Chekov's gun. Some of my favorite parts are of Chabon's
descriptions of 1950s culture. You can almost sniff your way through the decade
via remembrances of the smells of Lifebuoy soap, Prell, Ban, smoke-filled
rooms, and Tom Collins cocktails.
As noted, the structure is non-linear. Although this gives
the hook of capturing remembrances verisimilitude, it also makes for ragged
reading on occasion. There are also passages that reference and are inspired by
Gravity's Rainbow, which isn't
necessarily a good thing. That Thomas Pynchon novel also covers World War II
and rocketry, but I'm among those who found it overrated, unreadable, and
pretentious. Some of those traits rubbed off on Chabon. When he's at his best, Moonglow is like The Things They Carried in the way it blurs fiction and
non-fiction. Unlike Tim O'Brien, Chabon isn't consistent within that voice. I'm
sure that some readers will find his handling of Nazi death camps—his
protagonist helps liberate Nordhausen—oddly matter of fact in tone and ponder
over why a Jewish character would allow a rocket obsession to take precedence
over the surrounding horrors.
Whether autobiographical or not, Moonglow is a bit like its namesake
title. It mostly glows dimly rather than brightly, thought illumined d by the
occasional supermoon. It's certainly worth reading, but it doesn't rank among
Chabon gems such as The Mysteries of
Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, Telegraph Avenue, or the Pulitzer-winning Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
Rob Weir
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment