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Elizabeth's review

The Final Solution: A Story of Detection (P.S.)
by Michael Chabon

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16696.The_Final_Solution_A_Story_of_Detection?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="The Final Solution: A Story of Detection (P.S.)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166740674m/16696.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16696.The_Final_Solution_A_Story_of_Detection?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">The Final Solution: A Story of Detection</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2715.Michael_Chabon">Michael Chabon</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2943065?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 2 of 5 stars<br/>I’m downgrading this to a two and am tempted to give it the damning single star but for the fact that Chabon is such a master of cleverness and has such a huge vocabulary I have to admit some sliver of awe and respect. That’s the failing, too, of this book for me. I looked hard and could find no soul. It read like an exercise, with a few interesting results (an admirable point-of-view-of-the-parrot passage, an attempt to embody the mid-century Britishers’ mannered language and vocabulary). This edition has an interview with the author at the back in which he extols the virtues of the genre-pulp writers, as well as (or including) Conan Doyle, the model for this one. In theory I love that idea but in the end my problems with this book stem from 1). its excessive cleverness and ultra-self-conscious prose and 2). the limits of genre. As for the latter, I’ve found most of the other attempts to reclaim genre-writing equally unsatisfying—for instance Motherless Brooklyn. Both books seem the equivalent of listening to Winton Marsalis when you could be listening to Miles. What’s the point? Chabon perhaps brings an interesting postmodern sensibility in his prose style (zillion-dollar strings of colliding words), but the minuses that come hand in hand with the genre in the end take it down more than his obviously high IQ can lift it up (those minuses being cardboard characters, formula plot, lack of emotional depth, soullessness). How someone like Chandler (one of my heroes!) and other pulp/noir writers overcame those minuses was through a fresh and subversive writing style that was utterly unaware of its subversiveness (those over-the-top metaphors—I was so hungry you could see my spine through my stomach—!!), and through complicated and clever plots (usually, though The Big Sleep does happen to have a huge hole in the plot). The “mystery” of the Final Solution turns on a single revelation that is preceded by barely a clue and is clumsily handed to the reader at the exact two-thirds-of-the-way through point where enre writing prepares us to expect denouement. In the end neither my heart nor my brain were really engaged, though in the short moment, Chabon certainly glitters. While I’m ranting: When I finished this book with a feeling of having been cheated I did an estimation of word-count and came up with about 30,000. How does he get away with that?! No fair. 
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  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/66384?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Elizabeth's review
rating:

I’m downgrading this to a two and am tempted to give it the damning single star but for the fact that Chabon is such a master of cleverness and has such a huge vocabulary I have to admit some sliver of awe and respect. That’s the failing, too, of this book for me. I looked hard and could find no soul. It read like an exercise, with a few interesting results (an admirable point-of-view-of-the-parrot passage, an attempt to embody the mid-century Britishers’ mannered language and vocabulary). This edition has an interview with the author at the back in which he extols the virtues of the genre-pulp writers, as well as (or including) Conan Doyle, the model for this one. In theory I love that idea but in the end my problems with this book stem from 1). its excessive cleverness and ultra-self-conscious prose and 2). the limits of genre. As for the latter, I’ve found most of the other attempts to reclaim genre-writing equally unsatisfying—for instance Motherless Brooklyn. Both books ...more I’m downgrading this to a two and am tempted to give it the damning single star but for the fact that Chabon is such a master of cleverness and has such a huge vocabulary I have to admit some sliver of awe and respect. That’s the failing, too, of this book for me. I looked hard and could find no soul. It read like an exercise, with a few interesting results (an admirable point-of-view-of-the-parrot passage, an attempt to embody the mid-century Britishers’ mannered language and vocabulary). This edition has an interview with the author at the back in which he extols the virtues of the genre-pulp writers, as well as (or including) Conan Doyle, the model for this one. In theory I love that idea but in the end my problems with this book stem from 1). its excessive cleverness and ultra-self-conscious prose and 2). the limits of genre. As for the latter, I’ve found most of the other attempts to reclaim genre-writing equally unsatisfying—for instance Motherless Brooklyn. Both books seem the equivalent of listening to Winton Marsalis when you could be listening to Miles. What’s the point? Chabon perhaps brings an interesting postmodern sensibility in his prose style (zillion-dollar strings of colliding words), but the minuses that come hand in hand with the genre in the end take it down more than his obviously high IQ can lift it up (those minuses being cardboard characters, formula plot, lack of emotional depth, soullessness). How someone like Chandler (one of my heroes!) and other pulp/noir writers overcame those minuses was through a fresh and subversive writing style that was utterly unaware of its subversiveness (those over-the-top metaphors—I was so hungry you could see my spine through my stomach—!!), and through complicated and clever plots (usually, though The Big Sleep does happen to have a huge hole in the plot). The “mystery” of the Final Solution turns on a single revelation that is preceded by barely a clue and is clumsily handed to the reader at the exact two-thirds-of-the-way through point where enre writing prepares us to expect denouement. In the end neither my heart nor my brain were really engaged, though in the short moment, Chabon certainly glitters. While I’m ranting: When I finished this book with a feeling of having been cheated I did an estimation of word-count and came up with about 30,000. How does he get away with that?! No fair.

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message 1: by Gregory

08/21/2007 04:31AM

I completely agree with your review. Kudos. I, however, did give it that damning single star - only book I've done it to!