Sections with Titus, Archy’s 14-year-old son, feature Titus’s friendship with Nat’s son Julie (Julius), who’s about the same age. Now, apparently trying to blackmail his former partner, a funeral home owner as well as a city councilman, Luther carries on a volatile relationship with old co-star and flame Valletta Moore. We meet Archy’s father Luther, star of long-forgotten blaxploitation and kung fu flicks, as an accomplice to a crime in an extended sequence set in 1973. Archy’s wife Gwen shares top billing with Nat’s spouse Aviva in their little saga, dealing largely with challenges they face as midwives facilitating home births.
The subplots, though mostly linked to Archy, do not revolve around him, and they feature their own dynamics.
And a son of whom he was only vaguely aware suddenly appears on the scene. His estranged father finds himself in trouble (again). His pregnant wife is angry over his infidelity and her troubles at work.
While he and Nat struggle to squeeze money out of vinyl in the early 21st century, Archy must also contend with other worries. These mini-stories-one of which includes a cameo by then-Senator Barack Obama-prove entertaining and sometimes thought-provoking, but they also leave the book with an unfocused, meandering feel. Goode’s endeavor frames the tale, coming into play at its beginning and end, Chabon choosing to fill the middle with a plethora of subplots. Such a project would bankrupt several small, independent businesses nearby, including Brokeland Records-with its unparalleled jazz collection-owned and operated by Archy Stallings (black) and his best friend Nat Jaffe (Jewish). Goode wants to open a giant mall (a Dogpile “Thang”) on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, Calif. The loosely structured (main) plot revolves around a business venture undertaken in 2004 by NFL star-turned-entrepreneur Gibson Goode, “president and chairman of Dogpile Recordings, Dogpile Films, head of the Goode Foundation, and the fifth richest black man in America.” Serious subjects course through this nearly 500-page novel, but they rarely congeal into solid themes. In Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue, style methodically drowns out substance with unrelenting, trivia-heavy riffs on music, a broad selection of quotes and scenes from a pair of fictitious blaxploitation films, admittedly amusing banter between characters and inventive yet painfully long descriptions of insignificant minutiae. Style is often called upon to compensate for a lack of substance.
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