TELEGRAPH AVENUE

Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Summerland (a novel for children), The Final Solution, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, and Gentlemen of the Road, as well as the short story collections A Model World and Werewolves in Their Youth and the essay collections Maps and Legends and Manhood for Amateurs. He is the chairman of the board of the MacDowell Colony. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.

“An amazingly rich, emotionally detailed story….[Chabon’s] people become so real to us, their problems so palpably netted in the author’s buoyant, expressionistic prose, that the novel gradually becomes a genuinely immersive experience—something increasingly rare in our ADD age.”—Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

“Chabon is an extraordinarily generous writer. He is generous to his characters, to his landscapes, to syntax, to words, to his readers—there is a real joy in his work….Both ambitious and lighthearted, the novel is a touching, gentle, comic meditation.”—Cathleen Schine, New York Review of Books

“Astounding….steamrolls the barrier that has kept the Great American Novel at odds with the country it’s supposed to reflect….[A] huge-hearted, funny, improbably hip book.”—John Freeman, Boston Globe

“Forget Joycean or Bellovian or any other authorial allusion. Telegraph Avenue might best be described as Chabonesque. Exuberantly written, generously peopled, its sentences go off like a summer fireworks show, in strings of bursting metaphor.”—Jess Walter, San Francisco Chronicle

There are many different variations on father-and-son relationships—both real and makeshift—explored in the novel. What might the author be trying to convey through these complicated liaisons?

The majority of the characters in the novel are members of some minority group—African American, Jewish, Asian. Would you say that Telegraph Avenue is fundamentally a novel about race?

Like her husband, Archy, Gwen is African American, but of a decidedly different social class, upbringing, and education. How do these differences affect her marriage, as well as her position in this close-knit Oakland community—both in her own view and in the view of others?

Telegraph Avenue, the real-life Bay Area street at the center of the story, is described as “the ragged fault where the urban plates of Berkeley and Oakland subducted.” How do the conflicting cultures of upper-middle-class Berkeley and working-class Oakland clash in the novel?

Why do Archy and Nat see the imminent arrival of ex-NFL quarterback Gibson Goode’s mega-mall as a threat not only to their record shop, but to the community at large?

As the legendary Berkeley Birth Partners, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe have worked together for many years, and their husbands are business partners as well. Beyond their professional lives, what sense do you get of the friendship between these two women? How does the crisis that confronts their business bring out the best and/or worst in their pairing?

When a home birth goes awry, the midwife Gwen goes ballistic when faced with criticism from an obstetrician at the hospital. The emotional outburst severely jeopardizes her career. Do you think she is justified in her reaction, or should she have tempered her response?

Telegraph Avenue is set during the summer of 2004 in Oakland, California. Do this time and place have special bearing on the events of the novel, or could the story take place in a different or more ambiguous setting?

An intriguing “character” in the novel is Fifty-Eight, the African grey parrot that belongs to Cochise Jones. What does its name mean and what do you think the bird might symbolize or represent?

Some of the characters in the novel seem to be holding onto the past, as evidenced by their love of vinyl records and 1970s “Blaxploitation” martial arts films. How do you think this attachment to the past affects the characters’ grasp on their present realities?

Archy Stallings makes some questionable choices in his dealings with his wife, Gwen, his son, Titus, his partner, Nat, and his business rival, Gibson Goode. Do you find him a sympathetic character?

How would you assess the relationship between Julius and Titus? Is it a genuine friendship for both of them?

To what extent are the characters in this novel in control of their own destinies, and how much does the inevitability of uncontrollable change come into play?

The novel is filled with colorful, eccentric characters. Which did you feel were the most arresting? The most real? Why?