Chabon and me. Best friends.

I actually really like this book so far, although I’m not entirely sure why yet. I think the style is a lot more appealing because there is just an overall lack of convention, which fits very well with the subject matter of the novel as well. When I started reading the section about the man from Naples who was arrested for illegally planting a vegetable garden on the Pitt baseball field, I had actually just picked up the book again after a few hours of not reading it, and I suddenly realized (about a page into the section) that I had no idea who this vegetable-growing man was and what on earth he had to do with any of the book or where Tripp could possibly be going with that story… but it also seemed completely natural for Tripp to be so completely off-the-wall random that I was content to just keep reading and see where it would lead, instead of trying to guess or expecting what would happen.


I also happen to love the way Chabon writes sometimes; he can describe something in such an obscure way that you know exactly, vividly what he is talking about, but at the same time could not actually picture what he described or you’re not quite sure how to take it. His descriptions of Crabtree were my first hint at this. “I knew the expression in Crabtree’s eye all too well. He was looking at me as though I were a monster he’d created with his own brain and hands, and he were about to throw the switch that would send me reeling spasmodically across the countryside, laying waste to rude farmsteads and despoiling the rural maidenry” (8). Of course you can picture Frankenstein going totally nuts while romping destructively around the countryside, but how could a person ever convey that in a facial expression?? It’s all just so bizarre. I think Tripp has a rather wild imagination that he sometimes, or maybe more often than not, mistakes for reality. But I really think that’s what adds so much to the style and I just really like it so far.