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Wonder Boysby Michael Chabon
Powells.com Staff PickBlame the Gothic romantic deep inside me (buried alive, in a coffin), but I've long had a soft spot for the famous evening of June 16, 1816, in which Lord Byron read a book of German ghost stories to guests at his home in Lake Geneva, Switzerland, then charged each of them with writing his/her own horror tale. Perhaps spurred by the air charged with electric storms, Mary Shelley went on to write Frankenstein and John Polidori composed the first vampire story, titled "The Vampyre." The story inspires me to imagine Michael Chabon, Denis Johnson, Francine Prose, and Richard Russo sitting in a chateau one summer in the mid-'90s, the night sky split with relentless lightning, as they read Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Finally Chabon — with his fondness for comic books and genre writing, it must have been Chabon — rises to his feet and proposes that each write an academic satire about a creative writing instructor who falls in love or flirts with a student. Johnson avoided the satire angle (and made his protagonist a history professor) while Prose chose to make the satire more venomous than funny (and paced her novel like a first-rate thriller), but Chabon and Russo managed to keep their tales brisk and hilarious. Whether or not this creation scenario actually played out, these writers have contributed a quartet of superb novels built around similar elements and themes — each distinctly different and compelling in its own right. My personal favorite remains Russo's Straight Man, but I've been unable to forget Chabon's Wonder Boys, Prose's Blue Angel, or Johnson's The Name of the World. Perhaps all four books are best read together, on a single weekend, preferably with the crackle of thunder outside... Recommended by Bolton, Powells.com Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Grady Tripp is a pot-smoking middle aged novelist who has stalled on a 2611 page opus titled Wonder Boys. His student James Leer is a troubled young writer obsessed by Hollywood suicides and at work on his own first novel. Grady's bizarre editor Terry Crabtree and another student, Hannah Green, come together in his wildly comic, moving, and finally profound search for an ending to his book and a purpose to his life. Review:"Chabon's chapters aren't unreadable, but they are unstrung: a series of funny scenes about not writing a novel that somehow don't hang together as a novel." Time
Review:"Michael Chabon's second novel, Wonder Boys, corroborates what his first novel (The Mysteries of Pittsburgh) and short-story collection (A Model World and Other Stories) lead us to believe: Mr. Chabon is a veritable wordsmith and a writer for our age....His dialogue is real, as always, and the development of his plot, perfectly calibrated." Elizabeth Manus, San Francisco Review of Books
Review:"[A] wise, wildly funny story...Chabon is a flat?out wonderful writer — evocative and inventive, pointed and poignant." Shelby Hearon, Chicago Tribune
Review:"A beguiling and wickedly smart novel....There is first?rate satirical farce in Chabon's novel but essentially it is something rarer: satirical comedy." Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review:"The young star of American letters?a writer not only of rare skill and wit but a self?evident and immensely appealing generosity." Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World Review
Synopsis:Grady Tripp is a middle-aged Philanderer with a penchant for pot and failed marriages, who is unable to complete the long-awaited follow up to his award-winning novel. His brilliant student James Leer is a troubled young writer obsessed with Hollywood suicides and prone to fabrication and petty thievery. In their odyssey through the streets of Pittsburgh, Grady and James are joined by Grady's pregnant mistress, his hilarious bizzare editor, and an achingly beautiful student lodger. The result is a wildy comic, poignantly moving, and ultimately profound search for past promise, future fame, and a purpose to Grady's life.
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