It's Just, Like, My Opinion, Man.

Michael Chabon, onetime awesome author, has tried to write a Pynchon novel, and has failed. Zany character names, check; each paragraph brimming with cultural references, check; any other semblance to the depth and artistry that Thomas Pynchon brings to a novel, the box is empty.Michael Chabon is not a black man from the the east bay, and though it may be argued that that should not disqualify him from using that 'voice' to tell his story, in order to for him to pull it off without the whole exercise seeming like a lit-fic minstrel show, he was always going to have to paint a fine line. Instead he takes the ham-fisted paint roller approach to slap a multi-cultured patina on a rather boring story filled with characters neurotic enough to be on the Larry David show rather than Telegraph Avenue.