What I’m Reading

Title: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Author: Michael Chabon

Published: 1998, William Morrow & Co.

Pages: 320 in paperback edition

Completed: September 2025

Fiction

Genre or topic: Coming of age novel

Why read this? If this is your type of story, like it is mine, it’s a fun and engaging read. I strongly recommend – for the prose style (see quotes below), the complex characters, and the portrayal of Pittsburgh. I enjoyed it from page one to finish. While his sentences are sometimes long and elaborate, causing me to need to re-read them, I always found them entertaining and worth the bit of extra effort. I think this would be a good novel to use to bounce back from a reading slump. I read it in four days.

Quick thoughts and reactions

• This was my first Chabon novel and now I definitely plan to read more. I had previously, unsuccessfully, tried to read The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, but that was during the time I was struggling to read books. This is also Chabon’s first novel and was originally written as the thesis for his MFA.
• It made me want to visit Pittsburgh even more – I’ve heard it’s quite a lovely city.
• I’d characterize Chabon’s writing style and tone as warm, witty and wry. His sentences can be elaborate, but not in a frustrating or annoying way – they remain readable. He writes with an undercurrent of irony, as well as affection for his characters. Here are some examples.
  • The opening sentence, which immediately drew me in: “At the beginning of the summer I had lunch with my father, the gangster, who was in town for the weekend to transact some of his vague business.”

• • “Being up this early made me feel as though I’d been taken to a new part of town, or like a hardened New Yorker who, finally standing atop the Statue of Liberty, cannot spot the water tank on the roof of his building and realizes with a strange delight how big and beyond him his city is.”

• • “I walked into the Hillman library sleeveless and sunglassy and ready for lunch with Arthur.”

• • “The store, with its long white aisles and megalithic piles of discount thrillers and exercise guides, was organized as though the management had hoped to sell luncheon meat or lawn-care products but had somehow been tricked by an unscrupulous wholesaler – I imagined the disappointed ‘What the hell are we going to do with all these damn books?’ of the owners, who had started in postcards and seaside souvenirs on the Jersey shore.”

• • “Each of his words was a softly falling little dollop of English mashed potatoes.”

• • “We gripped our cups and sat watching as four or five angels of silence passed through the room.”

• • “I had always felt pleasure on looking into the houses of strangers. As a child, coming home at sunset through the infinite chain of backyards that led from the schoolyard to our house, I would catch glimpses in windows of dining rooms, tables set for supper; of crayon drawings tacked to refrigerators, cartons of milk standing on counters; of feet on low hassocks, framed photographs, and empty sofas, all lit by the bland light of the television; and these quickly shifting tableaux, of strange furniture and the lives and families they divulged, would send me into a trance of curiosity. For a long time I thought that one became a spy in order to watch the houses of other people, to be confronted by the simple, wondrous fact of other kitchens, other clocks, and ottomans.”