Mysteries of Pittsburgh (3/5) with spoiler

I just finished another book that I assumed wasn’t a Young Adult book but turned out to be yet another coming of age themed book, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. The only real mystery is why our protagonist is okay leaving some very real issues unresolved and how he will just push people away instead of finding out what happened.

I just watched the trailer for the film and got very upset. One of the major characters has been removed from the plot completely. The dapper homosexual doesn’t exist and instead the attractive protagonist apparently has a dalliance with the scruffy bear biker! What an unlikely pairing.

Gay boy gets involved with a crazy girl and then winds up with another gay boy and runs off to Europe when their mutual self destructive friend dies in a botched robbery. The end.

Part of my problem describing the book will be because the two gay boys are named Arthur. The protagonist is Bechstein and the lover is Lecomte. Lecomte appears to be a well bred and genteel gentlemen. His background is much more humble and he’s prone to relationships with men who don’t return his affection.

Bechstein is the son of a connected numbers man for an organized crime family. He thinks his mother was killed accidentally instead of his father. But we don’t know if that’s true because he refuses to talk to his father.

Phlox is the crazy girl whom Bechstein is in a relationship with. She’s rather homophobic and their brief attempt at sodomy was unfulfilling mainly because — and the book doesn’t say this but I thought it was obvious — Bechstein is a bottom and doesn’t receive pleasure from putting his penis in other people’s anal cavities. No, he wants to be penetrated himself. Phlox as far as I know never tries that bit and therefore their relationship is doomed.

Cleveland is the self destructive biker and he could be amusing at time but you just know that he is fated to die. How it happens isn’t fulfilling either.

The prose made the book difficult to consume rapidly. The characters didn’t seem to have much depth. I think I read a goodreads review that seemed rather pleased with Michael Chabon’s descriptions of architecture. If that is something that one finds lacking in a book, then I don’t think we have similar interests.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *