A memoir of an author’s imagination
Moonglow’s protagonist has a model spaceship habit so obsessive, it freaks out his new lover: She’s appalled by its “scope, depth and singular-mindedness,” and “the degree of painstaking detail he brought to bear.” Chabon’s writing can invite a similar reaction: He recreates places and times — Philadelphia in the Depression, war-torn Germany, a New York prison in the 1950s, a Reagan-era retirement community in Florida — with exacting diligence. But in the end, his emotional richness is hard to resist.
At its heart, Moonglow is about contradictions, starting with the Author’s Note. Chabon calls his book a “memoir” but then tells us he set facts aside when they wouldn’t “conform with memory, narrative purpose, or the truth as I prefer to understand it.”
Juggling eras, Chabon tells us the fictionalized life story of his grandfather (who is never named), and of how his scientific understanding of reality confronts the messy nature of human interaction. As a boy, he becomes determined to “save” a hermaphroditic junkie prostitute who refuses his help; later, as a Second World War intelligence agent and a rocket enthusiast, he aims to track down space pioneer Wernher von Braun in Germany, but he grows to detest his idol when he discovers the human cost of his technological breakthroughs.
Chabon swaps the gloriously baroque nerdiness of his previous novel, Telegraph Avenue, for a more lyrical tone, shot through with images both tender and unsettling. His grandfather’s unstable wife, for instance, is “a woman with a crack in her brain that was letting in shadows and leaking dreams.” By backpedaling the prose, Chabon focuses us on a number of moral quandaries: Can we separate an amoral doer from his good deeds? Can a relationship still be meaningful if it’s founded on a lie? And if we fail at our life’s quests, does this make us failures?
The last one, at least, is answered by the grandfather’s resilience. He retains a sympathetic dignity despite his many imperfections — and if he can’t make it to the moon himself, he’ll build a damn good model rocket. Sure gravity always wins, but there’s something to be said for temporary triumphs. Mike Doherty is a writer in Toronto.