Bufff Orpington Quarterfinals

Judge: Pamela Thomas

Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue

vs

John Kenney, Truth in Advertising

Michael Chabon spins a tale of the same caliber as Kavalier and Clay in Telegraph Avenue. Bombarded with brilliant but occasionally weighty prose, his observations on the way people, especially the downtrodden, live and think are unsurpassed. He has a joyfulness and curiosity in his writing that is intriguing – I sometimes wonder if he’s had time to live his own life while he’s paying so much attention to the lives of others! For me Telegraph Avenue would read better without Michael Chabon trying to stuff every possible piece of history and culture into this one work, which he writes as if he’ll never get a chance to write on the subject again. It makes it hard reading at time, but he’s worth it. Every few pages, Chabon writes of a philosophy of living or on an emotion or a place and time that just strikes home no matter what the reader’s background. When his wife coll apses in his arms and she’s so heavy with child that he fears he cannot hold her up, the thoughts he expresses are funny and endearing and familiar.

  ...She went completely boneless on him, expecting him to hold her up, all one hundred and sixty-odd pounds of her, bloodstains and belly, arms thrown around his shoulders. He resolved to do it. He belted her to him with his arms like her chute had failed and they were plummeting earthward a hundred miles an hour at the mercy of wind, cable, and rippling silk. He resolved on the spot to be equal to the challenge of bearing up. He was a husband who could be true. He was Superman grabbing hold of the train engine as it plunged from the bridge.

How can you not love a book that observes us all so well?

I appreciated Truth in Advertising because of its moments of friendship and pathos and humor, but Telegraph Avenue tops it with its story of an era, a culture, and the human condition. Winner: Telegraph Avenue.