Wax Tracks

“Underneath all the other stuff. Good heart is eighty-five percent of everything in life.” Truth.

“Do what you got to do and stay fly.” Advice.

54.12 Telegraph Avenue

Chabon can be a wordy little bugger, and he is rather fond of his thesaurus as well, but I have been here before. His books take a bit to get rolling, to find their cadence; and since I have been here and loved what I found I stuck with it even though I found it harder going this time. Then there it was... Page 158. That moment where his characters become so human and do the absolute right, yet oh so simple, thing. It was there and I felt vindicated but unfortunately that feeling didn’t last even though I wanted it to so much.

Usually Chabon’s books have a sense of hope that runs through their core and that was missing here.  I had a very hard time getting into this story and staying with it because these were not very pleasant people to be around. Only when faced with loss did they recognize anyone’s importance and none of them seemed better off in the end. They all were searching for hope desperately and weren’t able to give it to one another, and some parts of the plot left me feeling truly uncomfortable.

As the main setting of the book is a record store, there are a lot of references to music that I wish I had been more familiar with, I imagine it may have connected me more to the story. But I can certainly identify with spending hours in record stores flipping trough all the stock until you found the perfect one, taking it home and oh so carefully putting the record on the player and lowering the needle, sitting on the bed and listening to the whole album and then starting it over again.  With iPods and ear-buds music has become a much more singular experience and that makes me long for the days of old when my mom would put on a record and we could hear it all through the house, but times they are a changin'.  In the end, the characters and the nostalgia of Telegraph just didn't make me. I love Chabon and think he is a very talented writer, but sadly I didn’t love this book.