The Final Solution, Final

by Michael Chabon
Harper Perennial / Nov. 2005

I feel odd and a bit behind the times by reviewing Michael Chabon’s novella The Final Solution when all of the rest of the world is reading and reviewing his new full-length novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, released on May 1st. But I’m always behind the times (just ask the friend to whom I said a year ago, “Have you heard of this new thing called the iPod? It’s amazing!” I’m young enough where I should wake up just knowing these kinds of things). But I accepted my unfashionable fate long ago, so: The Final Solution.

It is the summer of a year sometime during World War II, and an old man whom we assume to be Sherlock Holmes spots a young boy with a parrot on his shoulder standing dangerously close to the rail road tracks. We soon learn that, between the boy, an orphan from Nazi-occupied Germany, and his African grey parrot, the parrot is the only one who can speak, rattling off a cryptic series of German numbers. So begins the mystery of The Final Solution. What do the numbers mean? Are they top secret SS-codes or access codes to Swiss bank accounts? And, after the parrot is stolen, who would take the bird and why? And what unspeakable experience lies behind the boy's inablility (or unwillingness?) to speak?

Such a mystery is fit for only the greatest detective ever known to the continent. But does a man whose sharp wit and predatory intelligence helped him solve even the most impossible cases still possess that same mental agility now that he’s reached the dottering old age of eighty-nine? Among many things, The Final Solution is a contemplation on the passage of time and how even the most heroic of us can’t hold back the inevitability of old age. Chabon’s old Sherlock, a Sherlock who’s tilting toward dementia, is as tragic to see as it was to see Christopher Reeves, the original Superman, consigned to a wheel chair. Hot on the pursuit of a lead, “the old man” finds himself outside of a locked bird store on a Monday:

The old man stood with spittle on his cheek…The light went out from his eyes. “A Monday,” said the old man sadly. “I ought to have foreseen this.”
“Perhaps you might have rung in advance,” Mr. Panicker said. “Made an appointment with this Black chap.”
“No doubt,” the old man said. He lowered his stick to the pavement and then, sagging, leaned heavily upon it. “In my haste I…” He wiped at his cheek with the back of a hand. “Such practical considerations seem to lie beyond my…” He lurched forward, and Mr. Panicker caught his arm, and this time the old man failed to shrug him off. His eyes stared as if blindly at the unanswering face of the shop, his face inhabited only by a hint of elderly alarm.

In a perfect world our heroes would never die; never grow old, but in that world we would always be a step removed from our heroes. The younger Sherlock, with his uncanny powers of deduction, was a man whom we could admire but, I suspect that most readers – or at least this reader– didn’t relate as much to Sherlock Holmes as they did to Dr. Watson, who seemed, in his confusion and awe, much more fragilely human than his super sleuth companion. In the The Final Solution, this super sleuth is brought down to ground and is now suffering from the kryptonite of old age. It’s a little sad to see, but Chabon has made Sherlock Holmes a much more sympathetic character, and he handles it with such deftness and respect – love, even – that you have to thank him for it.

Bringing the Rain...

This is the very first book I fell in love with, Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema. I remember being six and harassing my mother as I asked her how to pronounce those secret words that went with the beautiful glossy pictures. I memorized every line. By the time I saw this on "The Reading Rainbow," I could narrate it word-for-word along with James Earl Jones. (Sigh) They just don't make tv like they used to anymore, do they? What was the first book you remember falling in love with?



And if you're looking for a great laugh, see this other hilarious Reading Rainbow clip. When was the last time you heard a rap song about reading? Someone posted in the comments, "Ha, ha. You'd think reading was gangsta (a.k.a. "hip," "cool," or "fashionable" - take your pick)." My response: reading is gangsta.

Prosthetic Shoulders for the Book-Needy

Last Sunday, I flew to Houston, Texas (work again) and I decided that, although I was scheduled to be there for two weeks, I would pack light. This meant that, instead of bringing my super-large, heavy duty suitcase, I would bring my light, compact carry-on, which I would then "check" because the bad thing about leaving ole' Heavy Duty at home is that there isn't any room to pack any of my books. Luckily, I have a heavy duty bag/tote which provides ample room (probably too much room) for all of my books, magazines, wallet and all other feminine purse things which somehow find their way to being carried around on my shoulder. Imagine this list of books and magazines I thought it wise to put in my bag:

Big, Fat, American Baby by Judy Budnitz
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
How to Read Like a Writer by Francine Prose
Heat by Bill Buford
The Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe by Christopher Marlowe
The Final Solution by Michael Chabon
The Shakespeare Riots by Nigel Cliff

Did I mention all of these were hardback? They were. Not to mention:

the current Bookforum
an old issue of The New York Times Review of Books
and...I'm counting...four old issues of The New Yorker

Not so bad, right? Sure, I was struggling but I'd rather lug around seven books than to leave one behind only to discover that that one is the book I'd rather to be reading on the plane. The problem with this arrangement is that I never leave room for books that I might likely buy while I'm away. I buy books at the airport. I can't help it. Even as I'm leaning over, almost buckling from the weight of my bag, those airport bookstores just beacon me (Hey you. Yeah, you with the big bag of books. Come and see what I've got. Come on, you've got time to kill. It never hurts to look, right?)

I don't usually pick anything up because the selection is often very poor (New York Times Top 10 bestsellers, eh, I'm not often very interested) but this week I had the misfortune of coming across some very well-stocked airport bookstores, one of which happened to be independently owned. So in addition to the seven books I was already carrying, I bought four more books - that's right, four more books. I bought two on the way to Houston and two more coming back:

In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl
Absurdistan by Gary Shteyngart

So there I was dragging myself through the airport in Houston carrying eleven books. The gentleman I sat next to on the plane looked at me as I jammed my grotesquely large bag under the seat in front of me, looked at my books, looked at me again as I opened the book I had in my hand - I was reading my first chapter of Special Topics in Calamity Physics - smiled and asked the question I get all the time: "So you're a student, huh?"

"No," I say with a smile. "I just like to read a lot." He blinked once, twice, shook his head (probably wondering why he had to sit next to the crazy book lady), then returned to the nice, single paperback he'd slipped into the seat pocket. I envied his leg space and his probably un-aching shoulder. But on the almost three hour flight from Houston to D.C. he only had a choice between one book and sleep. I, however, had eleven choices plus sleep. That's worth the prosthetic shoulder I'll probably need after my right shoulder falls off.

A Sumptuous Meal...

In Chapter 5 of Francine Prose’s How to Write Like a Writer, she writes:

All this should begin to give us an idea of the different options available when a writer is choosing to write a story from a particular point of view, or when, as more often seems to be the case, the story is choosing the point of view from which it wishes to be written. To speak as if there were two major points of view - first and third - is like saying that the only thing we need to know in order to prepare and enjoy a delicious multicourse dinner is that there are five basic food groups.

I’m a quarter of the way through Joshua Ferris’ debut novel Then We Came to the End and already I know I’m sitting in the kitchen of a five-star master chef:

While waiting for Lynn to arrive, we killed time listening to Chris Yop tell us the story of Tom Mota’s chair. We loved killing time and had perfected several ways of doing so. We wandered the hallways carrying papers that indicated some mission of business when in reality we were in search of free candy. We refilled our coffee mugs on floors we didn’t belong on. Hank Neary was an avid reader. He arrived early in his brown corduroy coat with a book taken from the library, copied all its pages on the Xerox machine, and sat at his desk reading what looked to passerby like the honest pages of business.

And this is a gorgeously decadent slice of pecan pie (I’m real partial to pecan pie):

Jim made us wince with awkwardness, but we winced for his sake. Joe Poe’s awkwardness caused an entirely different brand of wincing and it was hard to put a finger on. “ ‘He was not only awkwardness in himself,’ ” declared our own poetaster Hank Neary, “ ‘but the cause that was awkwardness in other men.’ ” And like always, we had no earthly clue what Hank was talking about. Unless he meant to say that Joe Pope’s presence made us feel awkward. That was very true. Joe felt no obligation to speak. He would greet and be greeted like a normal human being, but beyond that he remained brazenly, stoically silent. Even in a meeting or a conference call, the man could let long episodes of silence fill the room while he was thinking of what he wanted to say, without hemming and hawing nervously in order to fill the oppressive silence bearing down upon us all. Perhaps that could be called composure, but it made the rest of us uneasy, so much so that Hank, determined to get it right, returned with a second quote pulled form his infinite lode of worthless erudition - “ ‘He inspired uneasiness. That was it! Uneasiness! Not a definite mistrust - just uneasiness - nothing more.’ ” - and when that quote went from one of us to the other via e-mail, we congratulated Hank on finally saying something comprehensible. Uneasiness. That was it precisely.

The Testament of Gideon Mack, Final

by James Robertson
Penguin Group/March 2007

"What can this work be? Can it be anything other than the ramblings of a mind terminally damaged by a cheerless upbringing, an unfulfilled marriage, unrequited love, religious confusion and the stress and injury or a near-fatal accident? Who would dare, in this day and age, to suggest that Gideon Mack was, as he maintained to the end, telling the truth?"

So wonders the fictional, reluctant publisher of Gideon Mack’s memoir. Can it be the truth? Can a man who claims to have met and befriended the Devil be anything other than insane? The pleasure in reading The Testament of Gideon Mack is that even as you turn the final page, you’re not quite sure. This novel is full of slight tricks of hand. They begin, not with the mysterious appearance of a standing rock, but with Robertson’s introduction of this fictional publisher. This very effective literary device forces us to consider the extraordinary (perhaps supernatural?) circumstances that occur in and around Gideon’s life in the context of the real world. By doing so, he ensures that Gideon Mack’s testament is not easily dismissed. He forces us to share in the publisher’s own confusion: an inclination to disbelieve something so fantastic which battles the desire to entertain, at least, the possibility.

Is it a coincidence that this struggle between belief and disbelief is similar to the one many experience when it comes to the subject of religion? Indeed Gideon, an atheist minister, is the very embodiment of this struggle. But what makes Gideon, this lonely and desperate man, the hero of his own memoir is that, when confronted with the empirical proof of the existence of the supernatural -that is, if we accept Gideon’s own testimony, the veracity of which is highly debatable - he unhesitatingly believes. How many of us would have the courage to do that? How many of us wouldn’t dope ourselves up with the latest anti-depressant and check ourselves into a mental hospital after we recall memories of having spent three days in the company of a man whom we believe to be the Devil? To not only accept that as a reality but to also share that truth with the entire world makes you either very, very brave or very, very crazy. Robertson leaves it up to you to decide which.

But, like any great magician, he doesn’t make it easy. If the standing rock is real why doesn’t it appear on film? If it isn’t real why is Elsie, Gideon’s friend and lover, able to see it? Did she see it? After confessing to having seen the mythical stone, Elsie mentally backtracks:

”I think I saw it..That’s all I have from that night - a maybe. I might have seen it. That’s not enough. It’s not real.”
“So what’s real?” I said.

The “I” in this quote could very easily be Robertson asking us that very same question. What is real? If you’re an agnostic waiting for that empirical proof to make your final decision, how would you define it? The supernatural and the miraculous, by their very definition, don’t follow the laws of nature - at least not as we currently understand them. The supernatural can appear one day and disappear the next; was it real?

But even as we begin to consider such high-minded philosophical concepts such as the definition of reality, we’re never for one moment allowed to forget that it is all grounded on the crumbling pie crust of one man’s testimony. It isn’t even ever clear that the man whom Gideon believes saved his life is really the Devil. The Devil clearly never identifies himself as such. Instead, he’s sardonic and enigmatic, never answering a pointed question, leaving Gideon (and us) to draw our own conclusions. It says something about our main character that, when confronted with a supernatural being, he assumes him to be the Devil based on little or no proof. Perhaps it says too, something about ourselves and about what we choose to believe of this “man” dressed in black, who steals boots and lives a despairing existence in a cave with junkyard furniture.

This reader has her own suspicions about who this Devil actually is but, for now, I’ll keep them to myself since I haven’t quite found a way to make all the pieces fit (two days and counting - I’m still working on it and having a grand ole’ time). The Testament of Gideon Mack is at heart a mystery and it’s likely to leave you with more questions than answers. But that’s not entirely true. The Testament of Gideon Mack, like any great scripture, supplies all the pieces; you just have to decide what picture it makes.

Saturday Morning Cartoons...On Sunday

If you haven't already, please, oh please check out the Weekend Extras over at Book Ninja. Cha-booooon!