Wonder Boys

I swore, after reading Herzog, that I would never read another novel about middle-aged academics in crisis. However, by the time that I figured out that the middle-aged academic narrator of Wonder Boys was in crisis, I couldn't put the book down because I had to find out what happened to the tuba.

I'm really glad I couldn't put this down because this turned out to be a great Passover novel. Will the first-borns be saved? Will Tripp (the middle-aged academic) be able to stop wondering around the wastelands of Pittsburgh? Will he be able to give up the flesh-pots of Egypt for the hope of life in the promised land? Those are the questions that keep the novel moving forward. In addition, there is a scene with a Seder that was one of the show more funniest things I've read in a long time (and I've been to some amusing Seders in my time,) show less

A writer/professor, Grady Tripp, has been in the process of writing his fourth novel for seven years, with no end in sight, though he tells anyone that asks he is “almost finished.” At Tripp’s invitation, his friend and editor, Terry Crabtree, shows up to attend the college’s annual writer’s conference. Crabtree hopes to obtain the long-awaited novel from Tripp, as he needs it to save his job. Tripp’s personal life is in turmoil due to his adultery. He is using so much marijuana that it is affecting his judgment and is not helping him finish his 2600-page (and counting) tome. Tripp is conflict-avoidant and has trouble making choices, but people are drawn to his congenial nature. He keeps procrastinating until decisions are show more made for him by default. Before the weekend is over, he will lose and gain relationships, influences impressionable students (not always in a good way), experience close encounters with an unruly dog and a boa constrictor, search for an expensive piece of a memorabilia collection, attend a Passover Seder with a Jewish family, several native Koreans, and a few lapsed Christians, and store a tuba and an assortment of unlikely items in the trunk of his car.

This book is a wild ride. The writing is outstanding. Chabon employs vivid and detailed imagery and his prose is imbued with a sense of energy. Although the story goes a bit over-the-top, it is filled with sardonic humor and tidbits that keep the reader engaged in trying to figure out what else could happen, and how it will end. I felt immersed in the story. The themes include identity, creativity, sexuality, substance abuse, storytelling, and aging. I had previously read two of the author’s works, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (which I loved) and Moonglow (which I didn’t), so I was interested to see how this book stacked up. It is more similar to the former than the latter but not as far-reaching in scope. Chabon walks the fine line between entertainment and message, absurdity and philosophy, and pulls it off quite impressively. show less

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only reader who got to about page thirty in this one and exclaimed "Oh, no! Somebody wrote what they knew!" But maybe we shouldn't be too annoyed at another book about a creative writing professor at some American university. Even chefs have to talk about what they're doing for lunch, and even architects have to sleep somewhere. I might as well get on with it and say that I think that while there a lot of reasons to dislike it -- not the least of which is following the most frequently abused piece of advice given to new writers -- "Wonder Boys" is actually a pretty good read.

There are other issues here, too. The book's got lots of drug use, some fairly inappropriate interactions between literary professionals show more and students, and a sometimes unbearable main character aging ungracefully out of his manly-man "drink, publish and party" phase. Readers who find any of those things obnoxious are encouraged to give up on this one at any time. The book's fairly masculine vibe isn't helped by the fact that said writer is about to be left by his third wife, which doesn't, of course, stop him from sleeping with somebody else. But somewhere in here there's also a very perceptive meditation on the connection between the stories authors write for a living and the lies they sometimes tell others and the compulsion to write in itself, something the author refers to here as "the midnight disease." "Wonder Boys" is also made more bearable by the fact that it's not an example of privileged Ivy League navel-gazing: It takes place at what sounds like a third-tier institution and, if anything, works surprisingly well as a love letter to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a town that's gotten its share of bad press. The affection and concern that our putative hero, Grady Tripp, shows for James Leer, a talented if troubled student of his, seems genuine, and his life seems to have had a life that has taken some genuinely strange turns. We see him attend a Seder with his soon-to-be former family, which is composed of equal parts American Jews and Korean adoptees. To Chabon's credit, this could have been played for fish-out-of-water laughs or for its sheer weirdness value, but Chanon chooses not to do that. These unlikely Asian Jews seem both believable and sympathetic, and are shown to be leading lives that are as chaotic and difficult as Grady's. This extended sequence was perhaps my favorite one in the book: over a Passover in rural Pennsylvania, we watch a family simultaneously hold it together and fall apart. As might be expected of a book that's all about writers, "Wonder Boys" feels a bit overwrittten at times. There were certainly simpler ways to get this story told. But Grady's take on the writing life is both funny -- he describes one of his students writing "teenage drug jazz." And "Wonder Boys" also has a lot to say about relationships between writers: I enjoyed its surprisingly melancholic take on Grady and Terry's relationship, a portrait of a long-term male friendship in continuous, and perhaps permanent decline.

I don't know if I would have picked Michael Douglas to play Grady -- he lacks what I imagined to be Grady's imposing physical stature -- but you'd swear that the pale and slightly mumbly Tobey Maguire was born to play James Leer. As for Robert Downey Jr., we might or might not be able to call his performance as the desperate, substance abusing Terry Crabtree acting. I could have done without at least half of the dead animals we see in "Wonder Boys," but perhaps you've got to let authors write their own books, even if, like Grady, they're stoned more than half the time and can't seem to keep it in their pants. This one can be entertaining in places and trying in others. For better or for worse, it's such a uniquely American story that Brit-centric readers should be forewarned. But it's still mostly recommended. show less

I've been avoiding writing this review because I don't know that I can do it justice. When I started to read it, the central character so annoyed me that if I hadn't had to read it for book discussion I might have put it down. Glad I didn't.

Grady is a mid-life professor of literature who is simultaneously an avoider of adult behavior. He's awash in drugs, mainly but not exclusively marijuana, about to be left behind by his third wife, deeply involved with the wife of a colleague, and unable to finish a mammoth manuscript he has been promising his college friend/editor for years. Through a series of increasingly hilarious crises, he struggles to be a good lover, a good friend, a good mentor, a good son-in-law, and a good writer, all show more without the requisite growth that would make him less of a has-been wunderkind and more of an adult.

Chabon's language is lovely, inventive, funny, with flights of wonderful description. He tells Grady's story through the stories everyone creates about themselves, either explicitly with foreknowledge, or incidentally, as we all create our life histories. And Chabon is above all else a storyteller, playing with the distance between the public face and the private truth of those who strive toward some wild success of which they inevitably fall short. It's a work about the value of failure, as much as anything, a story that I think will reward many rereads. show less

It's not easy making a dysfunctional, self-sabotaging pot addict with poor impulse control someone you want to like, let alone root for, but Michael Chabon has that skill. Grady Tripp, a novelist and college writing professor working on his third failing marriage and having an affair with the married college chancellor narrates with a self-awareness that could come only with the perspective of time.

The story, one of Chabon's earlier books, takes place over a single weekend, revolving around a literature conference being held at the college. The book's title comes from the novel Grady has been writing for the past seven years and the end is nowhere in sight. Stress is pushing on Grady from all sides: his editor and friend, Terry show more Crabtree, is attending the conference and eager to read Tripp's manuscript; his wife has apparently left him; his lover is pregnant; and one of his students, James Leer, is obsessed with Hollywood and might be suicidal. Throw in a dead dog, an increasingly tense Passover seder, a stolen item of Hollywood memorabilia, and a tuba, burdens that are physical and metaphorical, push Grady to the breaking point.

The book works as exploration of the writerly life as well as a mid-life crisis for someone who managed to read middle-age without fully growing up. The story was hard for me to get into at first, but Chabon's prose pulled me along until Grady was able to win me over. The more absurd things got, the more I cared. I'm going to miss him. show less

Awful. Absolutely, irredeemably, inexcusably awful. I would give it 1 star if A) I didn't LOVE other things Chabon has written and B) the first 50 pages or so hadn't grabbed me. It was interesting for about that long, and then it was a slog. I hated it, but once i realized I hated it, I was too far in to turn around, so I finished the damn thing.

Just some of the things I hated:

-Tripp's friend Crabtree may as well be a sexual predator with the way he "falls in love" with this emotionally unbalanced 20 year old and feeds him prescription drugs & gives him his first homosexual experience with a creepy gross guy twice his age. Yuck.

-Tripp is NOT sympathetic, in my opinion. He's a horrible, lying, philandering POS. And he never really gets show more his comeuppance. His seemingly "knowing" he's horrible doesn't make it any better... It makes it worse! He just keeps on being a cheating scumbag through the entire book, and I have no reason to believe he doesn't just find another woman to cheat on his 4th wife with once the book is over. I did not "root" for him at any moment. I think I felt more sympathy for the necrophiliac Lester Ballard in Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God." Seriously. At least he doesn't really know any better.

-The snake. Come on. Really? That was just contrived and stupid.

I was so disappointed in this book, it made me angry. Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was wonderful. Gentlemen of the Road was a classic. This book = crap. Sorry. :/ show less

Michael Chabon is a Writer; what's more, he's a Writer that reminds me why I'm a reader. I don't love his books for their stories (although they range from better-than-average to excellent) or for his characters (although he's quite skilled at creating those as well). I love his books because they contain these amazing nuggets of Writing, not hidden but just waiting to catch you out and take your breath away when you realize how perfectly he's captured a moment, or a scene, or a sensation, or an emotion in this wonderful twist of language that you only wish you could have created. So... Wonder Boys took a while to draw me into its plot (which miraculously is honest and credible for all of its absurdity), its characters were full-bodied show more if not particularly sympathetic, and I can't put my finger on exactly what caused me to like it so much other than the sheer enjoyment of reading his writing. show less