Michael Chabon is no fuckin' good. Lately everybody seems to go on about how incredibly amazing his prose is, like he's some literary acrobat. Not remembering that from The Amazing Adventures of Bullshit & Crap (and not having been able to get past the first chapter or two of The Yiddish Babysitters Club), I found myself squinting my eyes with a particular kind of nervous attention every time I read excerpts from his books in a review, searching for a clue to what was so great about this guy...and never did the excerpts seem to justify the excitement. Then, one day, I came upon this one little shit-nugget being presented as a diamond and finally figured it out: what people were trumpeting as good writing was actually bad writing! People just don't know what the hell they're talking about!
...which of course was a tremendous relief.
But so here, see for yourself. From New York magazine, which suggests that Bullshit & Crap is an exemplary New York novel:
"[Blah blah blah] Chabon's signature abracadbra prose (the East River is a 'flatulent poison-green ribbon')."
A flatulent poison-green ribbon.
OK:
(1) A ribbon cannot be flatulent.
Right? So then one of three things is possible:
(a) it could be a badly mixed metaphor [in which case like Q.E.D.],
(b) it could be two separate metaphors that are just, like...roommates? [in which case see (2) below]—or
(c) maybe flatulent or ribbon is not in fact part of the metaphor: like, either the river is a (cue metaphor) "ribbon" that is actually somehow literally flatulent, or the river, which is literally a ribbon in some sense, is (cue metaphor) "flatulent" [in which case see (3) below].
(2) A phrase containing two separate, competing metaphors with no connection to each other, separated from each other like a snake and a rat by a removable wall in a cage, is not so much "abracadabra prose" as it is bumbling and careless prose—think of a magician reaching into his hat and pulling out a bleeding handful of broken glass. (No, wait...that's awesome.)
(3) The East River is not literally flatulent, and calling a river a ribbon is stupid.
And poison-green? After Joyce's snotgreen and scrotumtightening, you can just go ahead and color me unimpressed.
Here's what I like: Pynchon's description of a "doper" as having "eyes like two piss-holes in a snowbank."
That's what I'M talking about. BOO-YAH!
2 comments:
I think u are jealous of Mr. Chambon, ha ha!! I though do like your blog, alturnative!
Oh, I don't know about that, Coolio...I mean, I'm not trash-talking any other very successful and critically acclaimed writers, so why would I be so jealous of Mr. Ham Bone specifically? But, I don't know, maybe you're right. Thanks for the comment, compliment, etc.
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