Gentlemen of the Road: Another Buddy Book from Michael Chabon

Another Michael Chabon discussion coming up Thursday night: this time it is his Gentlemen of the Road, a swashbuckling adventure set in 10th century Central Asia.  Originally Chabon was going to call the novel--first published as a serial in The New York Times Magazine--Jews with Swords.   It takes place in the Kingdom of the Khazars, which was a Jewish state for a few hundred years when Islam was expanding and Russian Orthodoxy was too.

The two heroes are a melancholy medecine man from what would become Germany and  a giant African descendant of the Queen of Sheba.  They are bickering brothers in arms who usually champion good folk, albeit reluctantly.  When the novel opens they pretend to fight to the death, and plan on profitting from wagers made on who will killl whom.  They end up escorting the heir to the throne across  desolate, violent countryside.  Their adventures are told in Chabon's signature long, florid sentences which are only a few degrees removed from being parodies of 19th century lad lit.

This will  be the second  of my book discussion groups to consider the book.  Only one of the first group liked it: most of the  members thought it too bloody, too simplistic.  Tomorrow's discussion promises to be quite different since one of the members of the group argued to put in the reading list and thought it was terrific.

But one thing is certain: Chabon repeats himself.  I recently finished his Telegraph Avenue (also full of baroque writing) which also is a story of unlikely buddies.  In the more recent  book the pair consists of a depressive Jewish semi-intellectual and a big, direct, more-intelligent-than-you-might think guy of African descent. 

There's much more to Telegraph Avenue than to Gentlemen of the Road.  For anyone looking for a good read, I'd recommend it highly.  The other novel is a conceit, a joke, whose major value  is that it might make you go learn a little about the history and  ethnic divisions of Central Asia as Vladimir Putin's Russia tries to wrests back its influence in the region.  Here's the link to the Wikipedia entry.