Two more!

I'm well into the school year, but before returning to Skidrow, I read Junot Diaz's short story collection, Drown, and The Street of Crocodiles, by Bruno Schulz. Both were phenomenal. I'm out.

Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson

I completely forgot; I finished this book a few weeks ago. In fact, I remember avoiding logging it on here--mostly because I wasn't sure what I would say. Housekeeping came highly recommended from friends and family, and I was looking forward to the beautiful command of language everyone claims Robinson has. For me, it was a bit of a slough to get through, simply because of the total lack of plot or forward motion, but some passages were, indeed, endowed with an unbelieveable grace and beauty. I agreed with the critic who felt as if Robinson had been storing up material for the novel her entire life. It is, in it's own way, a kind of masterpiece, but I'm not sure if I appreciated it as much as others I'd heard from (including Nick Hornby) were able to. Gilead was on my to-read list as well; maybe I will give Marilynne Robinson another shot.

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Michael Chabon

I wanted to read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh the minute I finished Michael Chabon's recent nonfiction collection, Maps and Legends. My usual taste in debut novels runs averse to post-graduation coming-of-age tales, but I found Chabon's to be entertaining without the usual trite-ness of the genre. It definitely helped that the copy the library held for me was one of HarperPerennial's much-adored Olive editions:

The story, involving the Pittsburgh Jewish mafia, a mysterious Cloud Factory, and party scenes that echo The Great Gatsby so vividly that I was unsurprised to learn that Chabon had read F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel immediately before writing his own, runs a bit into the territory of the fantastical. Art, the protagonist, is dealing with such powerful issues--his bisexuality, his relationship with his mobster father, the death of his mother--in such a haphazard way that the novel never risks entry into the gooey, mushy arena of the typical coming-of-age story. Essentially a good book about summer, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh might be the perfect book to round out my past four months of reading.

I'm starting The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories before returning to Skidmore, and I hope to get farther into it than I did when I began it in April. Until then...