Dana, Book Review, *Wonder Boys, *Michael Chabon

Wonder Boys: A Novel by Michael Chabon


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Wow. This wasn't my first foray in the the wonderful world of Michael Chabon, but it was his first adult novel that I have read. I had previously read Summerland which is a fantastic Young Adult fantasy. I'd seen the movie version of Wonder Boys ages ago and loved it, so I was definitely excited to pick up the book. I had high expectations and Chabon exceeded them.

In brief, Wonder Boys is about a college professor, Grady Tripp, who is also a bit of a has been writer. Tripp saw great success with his first couple of novels, hence the professor job, but has been unable to finish his thousand page epic Wonder Boys, due partly to his marijuana addiction, partly to his disastrous marriage and affair, and partly to the fact that he's just trying to cram far too much into this novel. When Grady's neurotic and addict editor rolls into town for the college's LitFest, the pair end up on an epic adventure involving a suicidal student, Tripp's ex-in-laws, a dead dog and a lot of drugs.

While the plot of this novel is hilarious and well crafted, I enjoyed the writing the most. What I wouldn't kill to have Chabon's gift. He is a beautiful writer and each sentence is so melodiously crafted that they are hard to get out of your head. He finds uniques ways of saying things and his comparisons are superb. I would highly recommend this novel to anyone because it's a great book, but I would especially recommend this novel to writers. Seriously, study how this man crafts a sentence, a paragraph, a book. It's beautiful and lyrical. Well worth the read.

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WONDER BOYS, Michael Chabon

Just finished reading this. It's book #10 for me.

I've *loved* two books by Chabon--THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY, and THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION. I loved them so much that despite really not loving two others--GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD and THE FINAL SOLUTION--I decided to complete the entire Chabon ouevre as part of Fill-in-the-Gaps.

I'm left with not a whole lot to say about Wonder Boys. I'm not going to bother to do a full review over on thebookbook. There is no plot to speak of; it's about a lecherous pot-head middle-aged mid-Western writing professor with writer's block (blech to the premise) and offers a lot of moments of discomfort for those of us who work in publishing. But it's full of beautiful little Chabon-isms. So overall: meh. I didn't love it. But I didn't hate it. And here are some nuggets:

"Like most good first novels it possessed an imperturbable, mistaken confidence that all the shocking incidents and extremes of human behavior it dished up would strike new chords of outrage and amazement in the reader." (249)

(ouch. that one stings.)

"All male friendships are essentially quixotic: they last only so long as each man is willing to polish the shaving-bowl helmet, climb on his donkey, and ride off after the other in pursuit of illusive glory and questionable adventure." (326)

(gents, is it true?)

"It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world."

(applies to my parents, at least.)

Anyone else read it? Wanna chat?