The Lit. Log: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

In reading this book I am reminded primarily of another book; Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. Both books center around a male main character who is “coming of age” during the summer. While the main character in Dandelion Wine is significantly younger the texts do have common themes. For example, in Ray’s work there is a character that creates a “happiness machine” that serves much the same purpose as the “cloud factory” in Mysteries of Pittsburgh. It stands as a symbol of what I call the “fate factor” of life. 

Michael Chabon, relays to his audience a stark reality that the American pursuit-of-happiness often entails. Chabon’s story centers around the lives of three twenty-somethings: Art, Arthur, and Cleveland. Each has an inherent - as Art would say - “will-to-bigness.”

Chabon’s narrative unfolds around the lives of Art, Arthur, and Cleveland. Art, a mob boss’s son, has lived a life shrouded in obscurity. He is at a loss for understanding who he is. He says himself,  “[I] feel nostalgia for a time I never even knew." His life is a tension between desire to actualize his self, and fear that he will be repulsed by what he finds. Arthur is a self proclaimed “free atom.” He recreates himself on a daily basis. When the two meet, Art begins to think that he, like Arthur, doesn't need to be confined by his past. At this point, Art begins breaking ties with his family. That is, until Arthur’s friend Cleveland comes on the scene. Cleveland is “evil incarnate.” He destroys and consumes everything he touches. His destructive nature does not lend itself to a typical forty-hour-a-week job. Thus, Cleveland becomes involved with the Pittsburgh branch of Art’s father’s mob. He starts off in “pick up and delivery,” but wants to work his way into more dangerous jobs.

Each character's will-to-bigness is directly linked to his personality. Art’s will is to be like Arthur - self-created and free of his past. Arthur, though free in appearance, is just as constrained by his past as Art. Arthur’s life is a constant facade to guard the fact that, in reality, he is a reject. Having grown up the son of a poor single mother, jobless, and without a formal education, Arthur’s will to bigness also takes the form of freedom. Cleveland’s will is the will after which the will-to-bigness is named. His desire is to consume, and to become “big.” He has no other means to do this than to destroy anything in his way. Bigness, for Cleveland, does not equate with wealth, fame, freedom, or any particular object of desire. For Cleveland the will to bigness is primal; “bigness is the goal of life."

If anything this book has served to show that what I, and pop culture, call love and freedom exists on a spectrum. In the end Art discovers that what he has pursued is nothing more than a game. The relationships that he formed out of a selfish objective desire to keep his self hidden are like the cloud factory, idealized but mysterious.