Telegraph Avenue (novel)

Plot

Set in 2004, Archy Stallings, who is black, and Nat Jaffe, who is Jewish, are proprietors of Brokeland Records, a record shop located in north Oakland for twelve years. Their used vinyl business is threatened by ex-NFL superstar Gibson Goode's planned construction of his second Dogpile Thang megastore two blocks away. They feel betrayed because their local city councilman, Chandler Flowers, has switched sides, and now supports Dogpile.

A subplot concerns their wives, Gwen Shanks and Aviva Roth-Jaffe, who are partners in Berkeley Birth Partners, a midwifery business. A home birth goes wrong, the mother is rushed to the hospital, and the attending physician, after taking care of the mother, insults Gwen in a racially tinged manner. She blows up, and the doctor has the hospital start procedures to drop Gwen and Aviva's hospital privileges.

Another storyline concerns Luther Stallings, Archy's father, an actor in blaxploitation films in the 70s. He was never a part of Archy's life, and Archy wants nothing to do with him. Luther has been in and out of jail and on and off drugs since his acting career ended, has been clean for over a year, and he keeps himself trim. He is involved with his former co-star Valetta Moore.

Luther had been best friends with Chandler in the old days. Their friendship came to an end, after Luther abetted Chandler in the murder of a drug dealer. Luther is trying to exploit his knowledge in order to finance the making of a film.

Another storyline concerns Julius Jaffe, Nat and Aviva's 14-year-old son, and his new best buddy, Titus Joyner, who has shown up from Texas after his grandmother died. Titus, it turns out, is Archy's long lost son. His arrival is the last straw in Gwen's relationship with Archy.

Setting up a gig for a fundraiser for an Illinois politician, Barack Obama, running for U.S. Senate, Archy learns of the death of Cochise Jones, Archy's spiritual father, and Archy fills in. Obama is impressed with the performance, and tells Gwen he admires Archy's dedication to doing what he loves. Gwen takes those words to heart, and resolves to stand up for herself. The first stand she takes is to walk out on Archy.

The funeral for Jones is held in the store. Plans are made, people get drunk, and the stage is set for the shaking up everyone's future.

Marketing

As part of the book's marketing, HarperCollins created a real-world Brokeland Records as a pop-up store. To coincide with the book launch, an independent Oakland bookstore was, for one week, September 7–14, 2012, made over into a used jazz record store, using stock from an independent dealer. In addition to the new signage and stock, "Brokeland Records" bags and other paraphernalia were provided.

Reception

In the end, Chabon's novel suggests, what has the power to fill the void inside us isn't artifacts, but paternity.

In "Telegraph Avenue," Michael Chabon's characters join with the giddy excess and unlikely rigor of his prose to mount a sort of meta-argument that we might bridge racial distance using the skills found in our bigger-hearted novelists ....

But despite Chabon's dazzling brilliance as a stylist, huge sections of "Telegraph Avenue" read like they've been written by a man being paid by the word who has a balloon mortgage due.