I have long found that I tend to like an author's non-fiction or fiction works, but not the other way round (i.e. if I like their novels, their essays/letters bore me, or vice versa). There are some exceptions (Poe, Hornby) but they're uncommon. Michael Chabon is one of the former kind; his novels have just never particularly gotten to me, but his essays, collected by McSweeney's in 2008 as Maps and Legends, I quite enjoyed.

In this collection, most of the pieces from which were previously published elsewhere, Chabon writes about writing, and reading, and life, and how all three go together (or, occasionally, don't). He muses on the state of modern short fiction, and golems, the Yiddish language, comic books, the stories of M.R. James (which I must add to the reading list) the Sherlock Holmes canon, Philip Pullman's works, and much beyond. The language is careful, precise, and spare, and I liked (as I tend to do), reading of the author's thought processes and inspirations in writing (how did that idea come into being, anyway?).

Funny, touching, and diverting. And nicely designed, in that McSweeney's way that is so pleasing to the eye and to the brain.

http://philobiblos.blogspot.com/2009/... ( )

http://lampbane.livejournal.com/539786.html

"The essays are almost all reprinted from other publications or lectures, so it really is a mish-mash of different subjects. There's some pieces from the New York Review of Books, and then stuff from other literary publications. Putting aside the pieces that were previously unpublished, it's hard to believe that the essays in this collection were all written separately for single purposes. That is, until you realize that Michael Chabon has his obsessions, and he tends to write about them a lot, until they become an overall theme. The two biggest ones are his Jewish heritage and comics. There's also some stuff about his upbringing and personal life which is pretty prominent.

Everything not focusing on these subjects does have a tendency to dip into these subjects sometimes; his essay about Norse mythology starts off with his childhood, which is really the most comprehensible part of the piece. It's not that his writing is bad, but that sometimes there's a lack of context. I know who Sherlock Holmes is, so that wasn't a problem, and I was even pretty sure I knew which Norse God book he was talking about, so I could sort of picture the images he was referring (and it turns out I was right). But then there were things like his essay about The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which was only marginally interesting to me, and his analysis of post-apocalyptic literature made me realize how much I can't stand post-apocalyptic literature (it's so clichéd).

Which really brings me to the one thing that annoyed me about the book. Though the essays are from different sources, they fit together because of a well-thought-out selection process, a tendency for Chabon to write about the same subjects, and a final essay that serves to tie all the elements together, making it feel as if with each essay, something is being built, that everything services the same conclusion. For the most part it was well-done, but in his conclusion Chabon seems to have forgotten some of the main points of his earlier essays."

(#11 in the 2009 Book Challenge)

Over the years I've grown so nervous about essays on literature written by authors whose fiction I deeply like, because it can be so disappointing if it doesn't work out. Sometimes when I read them, and realize the author and I have very different viewpoints about reading and literature, it feels like rejection. Personal rejection. So it was with great nervousness I started this, and right in the introduction, he breaks out with "Like most people who worry about whether it's better to be wrong or pretentious when pronouncing the word 'genre,' I'm always on the lookout for a chance to drop the name of Walter Benjamin." Talk about a kindred spirit moment, I think that myself at least twice a day! Except he was talking about "The Storyteller" and I usually have "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" in mind so you can see I have a totally healthy and normal set of boundaries and won't go off stalking Michael Chabon like a crazed ... well, stalker. Topics of the collected essays include golems, Sherlock Holmes, the His Dark Materials series, Cormac McCarthy, and comic books.

Grade: A
Recommended: He talks about how many of these things impact his own writing process, so excellent for anyone who likes Chabon's novels and would like to know more about their genesis. ( )

Sixteen essays on the nature of Chabon‘s and other genre fictions. The essay on McCarthy‘s The Road, I didn‘t read, as I haven‘t yet read the novel. The cover is one of the best and most unusual I have ever seen: the outside has an ancient Greek ship in teal, alongside a sea monsters. Then there‘s a green jungle scene with Sherlock Holmes & Dr. Watson, a cracked up biplane and Tarzan. Inside that cover is a tan desert scene several ragged adults and a parent, an ill or dead child and a shopping cart, a cowboy on a horse, Napoleon, a golem, and Thor at the top watching it all (on all the covers?) and inside that the hardcover with Michael Chabon‘s name, the “o“ is a sun peaking out over all the covers, with “Maps and Legends” (a cut out from all the other covers) as a big gold ‘X.’ Chabon‘s point, is that genre fiction is just another way to tell stories and as valid, such as it is, as any other fiction. “Imaginary Homelands,” or the ideas that lead to The Yiddish Policemen’s Union came from a Yiddish phrasebook for a country that never existed, where Yiddish is the primary language. In “Trickster in a Suit of Lights; Thoughts on the Modern Short Story” Chabon writes: “Entertainment has a bad name. Serious people learn to mistrust and even to revile it. The word wears spandex, pasties, a leisure suit studded with blinking lights… The brain is an organ of entertainment, sensitive at any depth, and over a wide spectrum. But we have learned to mistrust and despise our human aptitude for being entertained, and in that sense we get the entertainment we deserve. I’d like to believe that, because I read for entertainment, I write to entertain.” ( )

Chabon’s writing is challenging in an energizing way, spurring this reader on to further thought, related reading, and flights of fancy. I was reminded of the essays of dear, departed David Foster Wallace–erudite AND entertaining, though Chabon’s book has far fewer footnotes. I’m not sure the book would be as entertaining to non-geeks, but I found a great deal to appreciate. ( )