I just finished Moonglow, by Michael Chabon. Really enjoyed it, as I’ve enjoyed his previous stuff. If you haven’t read it, don’t read this post, because I’m not super careful about spoilers.
It’s basically a story about a guy, ostensibly Michael Chabon, who’s recounting the story of his maternal grandfather’s life, as told to him by the maternal grandfather himself on his deathbed. So he describes some scenes where he’s at the side of his grandfather’s bed, talking to him, and then he describes his grandfather’s reminiscences for a chapter or so in third person, not as if the grandfather is saying it, but as if he’s telling the reader what his grandfather told him. Keep this in mind; the book is fiction, so although there’s a “Michael Chabon” in the book, narrating the story and talking about his grandfather, the story is made up. So the “Michael Chabon” is a character in the book. So when I say “Michael Chabon’s grandfather” I’m not talking about a real person. I’m talking about a character. So Michael Chabon’s grandfather, it turns out, is not the biological father of Michael Chabon’s mother. The character. When he met the narrator’s grandmother, she already had a daughter. But he raises the girl as his own. This makes you admire the guy, because he puts up with a lot from the grandmother, who has a severe mental illness. He has principles. Also, he really likes the grandmother. So you feel admiration for the guy, and he in addition goes on spy missions during World War II but has sympathy for the German people, and he’s tough, and can fix things and invent things. Another thing I like about him; he obsessively makes rocket and space capsule models. He’s a professional model maker. So he gets paid to make these models, but it’s more than that; he has an obsession with space travel as a means of escaping the earth. The narrator keeps returning to one model in particular as a centerpiece of the grandfather’s model making obsession; a lunar base with a hidden module that contains little human figurines, meant to portray himself and his wife. Now I can’t remember if there was a figure for the daughter. That means I need to re-read the book. No problem! Chabon’s books are very re-readable.
As a side note, I know there are people who don’t like to re-read books. I consider those people level I readers. A level II reader knows the value in re-reading a good book. A level I reader reads for the surface story, and figures they’ve finished a book when they reach the last page. They believe in genres, they believe most of all in Fiction and Non-fiction. A Level II reader knows you can re-read a book and discover things you wouldn’t find on the first read-through. And they know that book publishers invented genres to sell books by mediocre writers. Especially the Non-fiction category. A level II reader knows that Author is by far the most meaningful category. I’m not talking about the Author as a person of course.
That was a Total digression.
Back to the main narrative. Actually I don’t know if I believe in main narratives either. Anarchy Now!
So the grandfather in Moonlight creates an extensive model of a lunar base with miniature figures depicting himself and his wife in a secret capsule and I think there’s a garden there too, a space garden. And I believe I was saying how much I liked the grandfather and that brings me to the beginning of the book, describing the enraged grandfather’s attempt to murder the president of the company that has just fired him. A crossroads moment for the character. An office worker knocks him out as he’s strangling the guy. If he’d succeeded in murdering the guy, he would have gone to prison for decades at the least, but for attempted murder he gets less than five years. So the office worker did him a favor for sure. Does the narrator point this out? I can’t remember. Another reason to re-read the book.
How could this character who loves space travel, and is such a devoted husband to his crazy wife, and a dutiful parent to her daughter, be an attempted murderer? Time for me to lay out the theme of the book: Escaping an imperfect Earth. It fits with his space travel obsession, and Chabon the Author doesn’t really hide the idea. It’s very overtly established and ruminated on by the narrator.
In light of my diagnosis, I would describe the attempted murder as an escape attempt by the grandfather, away from his caretaking responsibilities for his wife and daughter. The reader eventually finds out that his wife had just gone psychotic and set a fire in their front lawn and checked into a convent. I’m not sure about the chronology of those events, but I will be after the second read-through.
I think I may be dismissing the book with this theme. Maybe I’m attempting to escape something myself. Maybe there’s an even deeper theme I’m not getting. I’m thinking specifically of the Werner Von Braun theme. Von Braun is a prominent feature of the space travel theme of the book, in that the grandfather hunts for Von Braun in war-ravaged Europe, and has a personal hatred for Von Braun after seeing the slave labor camp that supported Von Braun’s rocket-making operation. But Von Braun gets away and becomes a driving force behind the real space program. So we have a contrast here; the evil Von Braun, who creates murderous rockets and later works with real life sized rockets that actually send people into space, and the good guy grandfather, who makes toy rockets. The reality is awful and huge and all-powerful, the fantasy life is small and weak. And I come back to the beginning of the book now, with the “small” man, the grandfather, attempting to kill the “big man”, the company president. And failing, but it’s a good thing, for his family. He almost contributed to the violence in the world, but was thwarted. His attempt becomes almost comical in the narrative.
Oh, and why is it a good thing for his family, that he only goes to prison for a few years? We find out later. We get almost a what if? vision later on. He has to leave the daughter, now a teenager, with his brother, a former rabbi gone bad, now a seedy gambler and con artist. Inhabitant of a fallen world. I liked the brother for most of the book anyway, he seemed fairly amiable, and rascally. But we later find out that while the teenage daughter was in his care, he got her drunk and sexually assaulted her. Pretty shocking and disgusting. Why? I thought when I read that part. Now I think it was to show what could have happened if the grandfather had succeeded in the murder. He would have gone to prison for so long that the daughter would have had to stay with the bad uncle indefinitely. Her mother would have stayed in the mental hospital maybe forever. The book describes the daughter’s behavior after the few years with the bad uncle. She’s smoking, drinking, a foul-mouthed delinquent. Going bad, so to speak.
When we find out about the assault, it’s from the girl herself, the narrator’s mother. Interestingly, she minimizes the assault by saying he wasn’t her biological uncle. Just as the grandfather is not her biological father.
I really need to re-read the book before I say anytmore
No comments:
Post a Comment