Final Solution ~ Michael Chabon

Funk Rating: 9 out of 10.

Whoa. This is a BOOK. Technically a "novella", but stunning in its language, in its content, in its story.

Ask anyone who knows me (hell, you must know me if you're reading this), and the moment I have to slow down and re-read a page, and I'm going to put the book down. I don't have time to read, I want to be entertained. I want to escape.

In fact, that's what actually happened with this one. Sharlene bought it for me a while ago (birthday a year ago?) and I started to read it and bailed. Didn't have the ability to focus, didn't care. Despite one of my fondest memories when I was a freshman in college and returned home for Christmas break and read the collected works of Sir Conan Coyle in a single week listening to classical music the entire time.

This book may have made more of an impression due to the above memory, but it is a powerful and very fun read nonetheless. One bit of advice is to read it in a single sitting (or at least a single day - in my case an airplane). The language is unbelievable; you want to treasure each sentence and each paragraph. For example, try this on:

The bees did speak to him, after a fashion. The featureless drone, the sonic blank that others heard was to him a shifting narrative, rich, inflected, variable, and distinct as the separate stones of a featureless gray shingle, and he moved along the sound, tending to his hives like a beachcomber, stooped and marveling. It mean nothing, of course, he wasn't as batty as all that, but this did not imply, not at all, that the song had no meaning.

That is /typical/ of every page of this novella. Yes, it's a tribute to Sherlock Holmes. Yes, there is a deeper story here about the edge of reason, of rationality. But frankly, this book is about language. About saying something in such a powerful and perfect way that the communication between author and reader is as close to perfection as it's going to get. I'm not going to imagine what the author meant; the author is going to communicate exactly what he meant.

I didn't find the story of Kavalier & Clay particularly great; but it is a book that still lives with me today in terms of the power of its language. I'm willing to bet this one will be the same way; except this time I like the story a lot...