Moonglow by Michael Chabon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dimly Reflected Emotions

Sadly Gary Cooper never made a film with Vivien Leigh. But with a script like Moonglow, they couldn’t have avoided it. The omni-competent nice guy and the sexy but flakey European as his wife are parts made for them (the required French accent wouldn’t have been all that far from her role in A Streetcar Named Desire). With all the necessary schmaltz, Yiddish wit, and Holocaust sub-text, it would have been instant boffo - America as it once was and may be becoming again: proud of its wars, politely but insistently racist, with rotten health care and tribal politics, and an ultimate hope for resting place in God’s gated community somewhere in the Florida swamps.

Depending on the Director, the script could take various tacks, from the edifying and heart-felt family drama of Miracle on 34th St. to a sarcastic variant of Dr. Strangelove. The tone depends entirely how the key decisions in the lives of the protagonists are pitched: as inevitable human tragedies or obviously avoidable mistakes. So much is hidden by Chabon as the story unfolds that it could be told with alternate points of view as it goes along. After all, the male lead does begin to appreciate eventually what he’s got himself into in marrying a ‘survivor’: “Like many of the spouses of ‘the lucky ones,’ my grandfather had observed that what got labeled luck was really stubbornness married to a knack for observation, a fluid sense of the truth, a sharp ear for lies, and a deeply suspicious nature.”

“She was always threatening rain; he had been born with an umbrella in his hand.” The proverbial pot and cover, therefore. He doesn’t want much: “in those years his ambition was not to own a piece of the world. Just to keep that piece from falling down or burning up around him would suffice.” But she also doesn’t give very much, especially after her stint in the mental ward: “She emerged from that first time at Greystone in a fragile and quiet state, holding herself like an egg balanced on a spoon.” ‘Repentance” he finds, therefore, “is the most solitary of pursuits”. But he really doesn’t have the leisure required for repentance given his crushing responsibilities. His obsession with space and technology lead him to an unhappy thought while contemplating a captured V2 rocket as, “a prayer sent heavenward and the answer to that prayer: Bear me away from this awful place.”

Although wonderfully written, I have an uncertain problem with Moonglow. It is clearly meant to manipulate my emotions. This Chabon knows how to do through his dead-pan humour, his pacing, his slow reveal. But I find myself asking is this what I want from fiction? A sort of emotional booster shot? Isn’t this just a variant of pornography? When I’m done, I am left with a feeling indeed; but I can’t even attach that feeling to the figure an actor or celebrity, much less someone I know. I don’t even know what to call it. Appreciation? Regret? Sympathy? Anger? Nothing fits. Chabon has magicked up a response out of nothing but words on a page. I don’t know if I’m pleased with either him or my reaction. Gary and Vivien at least would have given an illusion of reality I could hold onto.

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