Mysteries of Pittsburgh

I think my last post enthused about the excitement of surveying Lee's book shelves in Hobart. After enjoying Richard Yates, I made time to read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which is Michael Chabon's first book, and currently unavailable at either of my libraries. It was a total winner! Like other novels that have the enjoyability of "first novel/first bloom of youth/roman a clef" (Monkey Grip-Helen Garner; Don't Ask Me Why-Tania Kindersley (though not actually her first novel), and so forth, this book had really memorable characters, the immediacy and detailed landscape setting that you'd expect of a highly observant person involved in a memorable stage of their life.

Graeme Blundell commented on the role that landscape plays in crime novels, how it is a setting, essential for context, provides a structure for the plot. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh isn't quite a crime novel, but having mafia characters included in it, does mean that there is a need for the landscape to be described, and Chabon does draw to life Pittsburgh. I don't know what the city is like, but he describes the parts that are relevant to a newly graduated student that is slumming the summer in a bookshop job and newly befriended by university library workers who in turn are friends with affluent and foreign educated graduate students; the level of detail for all the characters is wonderful yet they all ring true as unique fictional creations. It had funny quips along the way, despite being a "serious drama". Very amusing and enjoyable; probably the best part of it was the lead character's awareness that he was overly attached to nostalgia-when nostalgia represents a time that is already finished and dead.