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Quotation of the Day for December 2, 2010"It's just that in Gentlemen of the Road, as in some of its recent predecessors, you catch me in the act of trying, as a writer, to do what many of the characters in my earlier stories -- Art Bechstein, Grady Tripp, Ira Wiseman -- were trying, longing, ready to do: I have gone off in search of a little adventure. "If this impulse seems an incongruous thing in a writer of the ("serious", "literary") kind for which I had for a long time hoped to be taken, it might be explained -- as I think the enduring popularity of all adventure fiction might be explained -- with simple reference to the kind of person I am. "I have never swung a battle-axe, or a sword. I have never, thank God, killed anybody. I have never served as a soldier of empire or fortune, infiltrated a palace or an enemy camp in the dead of night, or ridden an elephant, though I have -- barely, and without the least confidence or style -- ridden a horse. I do not laugh in the face of death and danger; far from it. I have never survived in the desert on a few swallows of acrid water and a handful of scorched millet. Never escaped from prison, the gallows, or the rowing benches of a swift caravel. Never gambled my life and fortune on a single roll of the dice; if I lose $100 at a Las Vegas craps table, it makes me feel like crying." - Michael Chabon, on writing his adventure novel, Gentlemen of the Road (which had the working title "Jews with Swords"). [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3668843/Michael-Chabon-Like-the-men-in-my-old-stories-Im-looking-for-a-little-adventure.html] Submitted by: Terry Labach Oct. 25, 2010 |
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