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by John Q McDonald --- 19 November 2008

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

by Michael Chabon

The summer after you graduate from college is second only to the summer after you graduate from high school in its wonder and hope, its erotic potential and adventure. Pulitzer-prize-winning author Michael Chabon was just 24 when he wrote his first novel, capturing the adventure and nostalgia of a lurid summer in Pittsburgh. Arthur, our narrator, meets Arthur, a pretty young man lurking in the hallways of a university library. By a few pages in, we know where these two young men will end up, somewhere in the book. Arthur is a bit of a satyr, leading narrator Art on a journey into a sexy scene of dissipated rich college kids. Our hero meets, also, Phlox, a confused girl who uses lines from old movies to find her identity, and Cleveland, a wild man on a motorcycle, out for revenge against the world that has betrayed him. The summer these four share is erotically charged and stained by the family histories of all of them. Art Bechstein, for example, is the son of a gangster working the circuit between Washington DC and Pittsburgh (there's a DC-Pitt mob connection?). His refusal to play his father's game is both respected and rejected. Anyway, the book passes through phases of the summer, like the humid city months. Art has a deadening job at a boring bookstore and falls for Phlox. His sexual confusion mounts, though, with his strong undeniable attraction to Arthur. And Cleveland forces Art to face the business of his family. These are the three phases of Art's summer and Chabon's story. Chabon's writing is vivid and energetic. There are some excesses of exuberance, as if he, or his character, has discovered something about life that he is driven to share. His writing is rich and entertaining, littered with both popular references and sly nods to great works of literature, a sort of Gatsby meets Less Than Zero (and does the title refer to Eugéne Sue's The Mysteries of Paris?). The book is overlaid with the nostalgic reflection that makes certain summers glow with unearned joy. But it is also a tragic story of the confusion of love, friendship, obligation and loss. The book is variously successful in its ambitious themes, but all good books, particularly youthful first novels, are ambitous.

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Also by Chabon: [The Final Solution]