{"id":412,"date":"2009-07-16T19:06:39","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T23:06:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=412"},"modified":"2010-03-21T14:26:55","modified_gmt":"2010-03-21T18:26:55","slug":"fiction-michael-chabon-the-mysteries-of-pittsburgh-ny-william-morrow-co-1988","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/fiction-michael-chabon-the-mysteries-of-pittsburgh-ny-william-morrow-co-1988\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (NY: William Morrow &#038; Co, 1988)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/006168757X\/alcoholreviewsco\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Chabon\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/thumb\/0\/0f\/Mystpittscvr.jpg\/200px-Mystpittscvr.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"160\" height=\"230\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Sparkles and Plods<\/strong>, by Kevin R. Kosar, November 30, 2008<\/p>\n<p>This is Chabon&#8217;s first novel, and it reads like it. It&#8217;s ambitious, wooly, underdeveloped, messy, and contrived.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Mysteries of Pittsburgh<\/em> is the first-person tale of Art Bechstein, the college-age son of a gangster in Pittsburgh. Art is rather clueless; though he narrates the entire story, he&#8217;s not very good at explaining why he is such a headcase. Frequently, Art inexplicably bursts into tears while in the company of his father.<\/p>\n<p>The reader can&#8217;t help but roll his eyes as anxious Art falls in love with a peculiar girl, and then wrecks it by sleeping with a poseur fop named Arthur. Bechstein also foolishly gets involved with a reprobate named Cleveland, who happens to work for a gangster, thereby pulling Art more into his father&#8217;s world, a world he wished did not exist.<\/p>\n<p>The novel has many beautiful bits, but as the story plods on they are fewer and fewer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sparkles and Plods, by Kevin R. Kosar, November 30, 2008 This is Chabon&#8217;s first novel, and it reads like it. It&#8217;s ambitious, wooly, underdeveloped, messy, and contrived. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is the first-person tale of Art Bechstein, the college-age son of a gangster in Pittsburgh. Art is rather clueless; though he narrates the entire [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[70],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-6E","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1041,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions\/1041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}