Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure [Paperback]

 

 

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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But the historical references were interesting, ones that I'm glad I learned from reading the book.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.

...just like this review.

If you love language...if you love adventure-writ-economical...if you believe that 'less is more'...then this novel is for you.

It's not for everyone. It is a sortakinda set-piece of muscular language; imagine if you will, Shakespeare writing a novella, and doing it with brevity in mind. It presumes that you're either familiar with many/most/the majority of arcane references...or you have the mental chops to connect the dots, to keep up with alacrity...while having a ball.

Having said that, as a screenwriter/novelist, part of my reaction to any book is, at the risk of infuriating literary purists, to ask the question 'Would it make a good movie?'

'Gentlemen of the Road' would make (in the right hands, with the right touch) a fantabulous film.

My fingers are now crossed.

Award-winner Michael Chabon usually focuses on the disaffected of the present, or at least the near past.

But he goes over a thousand years into the past for "Gentlemen of the Road," an old-fashioned adventure story with some gloriously offbeat heroes. It's a fun, quirky read (the original, fitting title was "Jews With Swords"), with lots of unique twists but the prose gets a bit purple at times.

In caravans and on the road, the giant Abyssian Amram and gawky Frank Zelikman make money however they can -- even staging mock fights. After their ruse is found out by a weary mahout, he offers to take them on as bodyguards to a sullen young prince, Filaq. Then the mahout is murdered, and the two "Gentlemen of the Road" find themselves babysitting a snotty teen with a tendency to run away.

Unfortunately, the fortress they're heading for has been destroyed, and a gang of hired thugs kidnap Filaq. For no reason they can explain, Amram and Zelikman find themselves racing to rescue the kid, and beginning a quest full of checkered pasts, civil wars, ancient elephants... and the discovery that Filaq isn't quite who he seems to be.

There's something very classic about the flavour of "Gentlemen of the Road." Maybe it's because it was actually serialized in the New York Times Magazine, or maybe because Chabon apparently soaked up the works of Moorcock, Alexandre Dumas and Fritz Lieber. Think a Jewish version of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

"Gentlemen of the Road" does have one flaw -- Chabon's prose gets dense and purple at times, which sent me spinning right off the narrative. But it does a pretty good job of evoking the dusty, harsh life of people on the march, brothels, attempted executions, ancient elephants, and the occasional mercenary joining up with the "gentlemen."

But Chabon doesn't let the story become leaden. He peppers it with wryly amusing dialogue ("Now, will you ride calmly behind me or do we need to bind you at the ankles, too?" "You had better bind my ankles") and the occasional running joke like Zelikman's mutilated hats. There's even a Norse axe humorously called "Defiler of All Mothers."

As you'd expect, Zelikman and Amram are likably rough, with some dark pasts -- one has left his home and family behind, the other has been roaming in search of his daughter for twenty years. Chabon doesn't try to make either a likable person, and that makes them even more so -- the same with Filiq, the feisty princess in drag.

"Gentlemen of the Road" is a solid adventure story, with a classic flavour and slightly overblown prose. Certainly a worthwhile read.

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