Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road was originally serialized in the New York Times Magazine’s Funny Pages. I read the first few installment’s there, but I quit when it became clear that I was going to have to buy the book.
The book reminds me of the adventure stories for boys that were in my elementary school library as a kid. I think that’s the point. The book, as a physical object, is beautiful. The end papers are maps of the foreign lands where the adventures take place. The beginning of each chapter has an eastern motif watermark going down the outside edge of the page. Each chapter has a line drawing in the classic old-school adventure tale style. The illustrations are by Gary Gianni, artist for the comic strip Prince Valiant.
It’s all very well done.
Gentlemen of the Road will not be nominated for multiple literary awards, but it is a competent adventure story that will appeal to those that like to read stories with huns and guys with swords and chases on horseback.
This being Chabon, however, there is bound to be more to the tale. According to the Afterword, the original title of the book was to be Jews With Swords. The author laments that when he mentioned the title, people would laugh. Rather than picture the “memory of some ancient warrior Jew, like Bar Kochba or Judah Macabee,” they conjured images of “Woody Allen backing toward the nearest exit behind a…wavering rapier” or “their uncle Manny, dirk between his teeth, slacks belted at the armpits.” Chabon notes the incongruity, but says that we are all ripe for adventure whenever we leave the warmth and comfort of home. This is particularly true for Jews:
For better or worse it has been one long adventure…from the moment…when God told Abraham lech lecha: Thou shalt leave home. Thou shalt get lost. Thou shalt find slander, oppression, opportunity, escape and destruction. Thou shalt, by definition, find adventure.