{"id":725,"date":"2011-10-10T20:38:46","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T20:38:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=725"},"modified":"2024-01-21T11:39:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-21T16:39:25","slug":"chabon_gentlemen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2011\/10\/chabon_gentlemen\/","title":{"rendered":"Chabon, Michael: Gentlemen of the Road<\/cite> (audio)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was halfway through the audiobook of Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road<\/cite>, narrated by Andre Braugher<\/strong>, when I just stopped listening for no specific reason that I can remember now. It’s not particularly long and I had a good bit of driving over the last couple of days, so I went back to the start and finished it this morning.<\/p>\n

This is known as a fun historical adventure tale in the pulp tradition (it was originally published in serialized form). It certainly has a great setting, 10th century Khazaria (now southwest Russia), and plenty of the classic swashbuckling elements (well, okay, I have no idea if elephants are part of that tradition, but if not, they should be).<\/p>\n

However, unlike apparently everyone else in the world, I found this ultimately a bittersweet, somewhat melancholy experience. The narrative is keenly aware of the constraints that its characters live under, and while its ending is as happy as it could be—or perhaps even a bit more so, really—somewhat perversely, that had the effect of highlighting just how the narrow the scope of that ending was, and how much I would have liked it to be different.<\/p>\n

I was also disappointed in Braugher’s reading on this listen, finding it faster and flatter than I would have liked. However, when someone gets to deliver dramatic dialogue, he unsurprisingly does very well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was halfway through the audiobook of Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road, narrated by Andre Braugher, when I just stopped listening for no specific reason that I can remember now. It’s not particularly long and I had a good bit of driving over the last couple of days, so I went back to the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Chabon, Michael: Gentlemen of the Road<\/cite> (audio)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,118],"tags":[160],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-single-narrator-audio","tag-chabon-michael"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2497,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions\/2497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}