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Loading... Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure (2007)by Michael Chabon
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This is the first book written by Chabon that I've read. ( ) (Note: This review originally appeared as part of a series of capsule reviews of illustrated novels, hence the focus on the art) Gentlemen of the Road is, like Susanna Clarke’s work (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) , a bit of a throwback to an earlier literary style: A rollicking homage to the adventure novels of authors such as Michael Moorcock and Fritz Lang, this novel was originally serialized in the New York Times. Interestingly, the installments were accompanied not by Gary Gianni’s intricately cross-hatched black and white vignettes (Gianni, like Charles Vess, is an expert mimic of the illustrative style of past masters, such as Hal Foster), but by semi-abstracted, almost childish color paintings by Laura Carlin, an idiosyncratic and brave choice by an art director, which seems to have been to experimental by half for the final publication of the work in book form. The Del Rey edition suffers from poor design overall; the dust jacket in particular is an ugly, workaday design which captures little of the panache of the prose or the illustrations.
The plot and voice of “Gentlemen of the Road” recall the stories found in 19th-century dime novels and the fantastic escapades invented by Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard. Gary Gianni’s drawings highlight particularly thrilling moments, and with chapter titles like “On the Observance of the Fourth Commandment Among Horse Thieves” and “On Swimming to the Library at the Heart of the World,” Chabon works old-fashioned niceties into a postmodern pastiche.
Fantasy.
Fiction.
Thriller.
Historical Fiction.
HTML:#1 SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE “A picaresque, swashbuckling adventure.”—The Washington Post Book World They’re an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa a.d. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can—as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. But when they are dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire, they soon find themselves the half-willing generals in a full-scale revolution—on a road paved with warriors and whores, evil emperors and extraordinary elephants, secrets, swordplay, and such stuff as the grandest adventures are made of. Praise for Gentlemen of the Road “Within a few pages I was happily tangled in [Chabon’s] net of finely filigreed language, seduced by an old-school-style swashbuckling quest . . . laced with surprises and humor.”—San Francisco Chronicle “[Chabon] is probably the premiere prose stylist—the Updike—of his generation.”—Time “The action is intricate and exuberant. . . . It’s hard to resist its gathering momentum, not to mention the sheer headlong pleasure of Chabon’s language.”—The New York Times Book Review “[A] wild, wild adventure . . . abounds with lush language . . . This book roars to be read aloud.”—Chicago Sun-Times. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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