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Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands

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Maps and Legends is an essay collection by American author Michael Chabon that was scheduled for official release on May 1, 2008, although some copies shipped two weeks early from various online bookstores. The book is Chabon's first book-length foray into nonfiction, with 16 essays, some previously published.[1] Several of these essays are defenses of the author's work in genre literature (such as science fiction, fantasy, and comics), while others are more autobiographical, explaining how the author came to write several of his most popular works.

210 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2008

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About the author

Michael Chabon

146 books8,339 followers
Michael Chabon (b. 1963) is an acclaimed and bestselling author whose works include the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000). Chabon achieved literary fame at age twenty-four with his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), which was a major critical and commercial success. He then published Wonder Boys (1995), another bestseller, which was made into a film starring Michael Douglas. One of America’s most distinctive voices, Chabon has been called “a magical prose stylist” by the New York Times Book Review, and is known for his lively writing, nostalgia for bygone modes of storytelling, and deep empathy for the human predicament.

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Displaying 1 - 30 of 530 reviews
Profile Image for Sean Gibson.
Author 6 books5,910 followers
August 28, 2018
Michael Chabon is to writing what I am to making Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (okay, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration—Chabon isn’t THAT good of a writer).

While I’m sure there is an immeasurable amount of effort and diligence behind it, his prose flows effortlessly across the page, and everything he writes is linguistic treasure, whether you enjoy the story/topic or not. In this collection of essays that explore the interplay between genre fiction, flights of fancy, and literature, I’m happy to report that the topics are almost universally enjoyable (though, man, does that guy like to prattle on about golems).

There’s a downside to reading Chabon if you harbor any aspirations toward storytelling yourself, as you realize that you’ll never even come close to approximating the skill and confidence with which Chabon writes, even when he’s writing about his own insecurity as a writer. But, that’s a small price to pay to witness the dazzling interplay of his words as he synthesizes so many aspects of literature and pop culture, from Sherlock Holmes to comic books to noir to, yes, golems, golems, golems (which I’m pretty sure is the name of the discount store at which you can purchase all of your golem-making supplies).

If you’ve read and enjoyed Chabon’s novels, you’ll undoubtedly enjoy this. If you haven’t and you’re wondering if this is a good point to jump into Chabon’s oeuvre, I’d say yes, with one extremely large caveat: you need to enjoy writing about writing and the intellectual trappings that go along with reading one of American literature’s foremost stylists attacking that task with gusto. So, it’s not for everyone, and if you’re new to Chabon, I’d recommend The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay first and foremost (Wonder Boys would be a close second, though I personally prefer The Mysteries of Pittsburgh…Wonder Boys just feels more broadly accessible).

It’s unlikely that Chabon will ever truly scale the heights of his profession in the same way that I have when it comes to boiling water, ripping open a blue box, pouring in dried elbow macaroni, cooking it to just the right state of al dente, draining it, adding in the perfect amount of butter, dumping in the cheese powder, and then pouring in at least twice as much milk as is called for (try it—you’ll thank me), and mixing it all together before serving it to discerning gourmands. But, the guy’s about as good as it gets when it comes to stringing words together on a page, and never more so than when he’s waxing poetic about Sherlock Holmes.

Well worth a read.
Profile Image for El.
1,355 reviews497 followers
May 25, 2008
Anyone who has worked in a bookstore, or spent quality time in one, can appreciate Michael Chabon's argument that there is a gray area between "literature" and "genre fiction". Many of his essays in his first (and personally long-awaited) nonfiction collection focus on that gray area, the "borderlands" as he calls it, specifically in regards to fantasy/sci fi and mystery. There are books that straddle that fine line between literature and genre and it's often difficult to decide exactly where to place it on the shelf. The biggest difficulty, suggests Chabon, is that genre fiction is generally looked down upon as something less important than full-blown literature. He himself grew up wanting to write about space adventures but as he discovered while writing his second novel (which was finally abandoned after many years when he turned to his Wonder Boys) about just that, there was a lot of insecurity surrounding writing what many would consider to be just pulp.

His examples of borderland genre fiction range from Doyles' Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy. There are a handful of chapters about one of Chabon's best known obsessions: comics. He continues to maintain that comics are just as literary in his household as any bigwig piece of LITERATURE. His chapter surrounding the question of why children no longer read comics was interesting, though, as it came up in discussion in my home, there was no mention of inflation in Chabon's essay and how children no longer could afford to buy their own comics as they could in the 60s.

Another handful of chapters surrounding Chabon himself: his life, his times, his work. He opens up a lot and shares a lot of his insecurities. He looks back on his graduate school years with a self-deprecating voice, bordering on super snotty. But I enjoy reading the processes my favorite writers have gone through in their career, from the bottom of the barrel when life couldn't suck more to the absolute elation when their dreams are published.

His discussion of golems was a nice suprise personally, and I would like to read more of his thoughts on that in the future.

The final chapter was discordant in connection with the rest of the essays. He talks about being a Jewish writer in the world and who that makes him. Not uninteresting on its own, but sort of a stretch when trying to combine it with the rest; this made the book of essays fall flat.

All in all these essays were great and he did not let me down. I expect to see more of his nonfiction in the future, and I for one would not be opposed to reading a history or full-length memoir if he decided to do so.

He actually made me think twice about Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Had I not already read those books before reading Chabon's essay I might actually be persuaded to read them. But because I have read them, despite Chabon's convictions on their worth, he and I totally disagree on that matter. I will find it in my heart to forgive him though.
Profile Image for Paul.
423 reviews50 followers
April 23, 2008
Michael Chabon loves genre fiction. Here's what each essay in this collection concerns, in a word or two: genre fiction, MC's childhood town, Sherlock Holmes, Norse mythology, Philip Pullman, comics, comics, McCarthy's The Road (as science fiction), ghost stories, comics, comics, MC as a young writer*, MC's writing his second novel, golems, being Jewish, golems/being Jewish. This isn't a mistake or anything; there's a quote in the first essay that says something about the most successful authors succeeding in the borderlands, meaning in those gray areas between genre fiction and literature, and the book's subtitle is, indeed, Reading and Writing from the Borderlands. As such, the collection has a definite cohesiveness, though I found this to be actually a limitation, as the whole thing felt a bit rushed. Essay collections usually comprise things that have already been published, sometimes over the course of an entire decade, and each one feels singular, polished, diversified. This collection, however, has the feel of having been written in one sitting (though there are a few things therein that dispel this thought). The entire thing is only 220 pages long and, as you may have deduced from the above, there are sixteen essays. That's less than fourteen pages a piece, and most are much shorter. From a guy as prolific and prolix as Chabon, this seemed a bit odd.

Also, dude has a more sprawling and esoteric vocabulary than David Foster Wallace. I guess that's all there is to say about that, but shit, man. Keep a dictionary handy.

So, the design. McSweeney's did a great job, as usual, of creating a really cool package. I won't describe it, you can see it here: http://www.designrelated.com/inspirat... . Once you get inside the thing, though, you start to notice some pretty shoddy underpinnings. I caught -- I caught -- two instances of double spaces, meaning two spaces between words within a sentence, I caught several cases of words that were hyphen-ated in the middle of a line, where obvi-ously no hyphen was required, I caught a few misspellings, and then MANY, let's say 8 to 10, instances of soft returns that make for horrid letterspacing -- this is something I can't really show here, but what happens is a designer/typesetter puts an arbitrary soft return at the end of a line to fix a widow or a bad break or something, and everything looks fine, but then a word gets changed by an editor e.g. and the designer/typesetter forgets to remove the soft return and what you get is a paragraph whose top half is packt like sardines and whose second half is as spacey and airy as a Terrence Malick film. It's not hot. And all of this is a case of bad (or nonexistent) copyediting/proofreading. I should say that yes, it is a huge part of my job to recognize and fix errors like these, i.e. I literally spend hours every day flowing manuscripts into book layouts and then going through and fixing bad breaks, letterspacing, typos, etc., so my eyes are trained, but I definitely don't go through books looking for errors. It just doesn't happen. This was totally egregious, and quite disappointing.

All this said, MC's a good writer, so it was no chore to make my way through this collection. I didn't really get much out of it, but that's probably my fault for not being a fan of science fiction.

---
*This essay actually kind of pissed me off. It's about MC graduating college and moving to California in hopes of getting into an MFA program. He gets two recommendations from undergrad professors who attended, respectively, Stanford and UC Irvine, and the Stanford one doesn't pan out so he's forced -- forced -- to begrudgingly -- begrudgingly -- attend, instead, one of the best programs in the nation. What a bummer. What also miffed me about this essay is that it's all, "When I first sat down to write my debut novel, you may have heard of it but of course at the time I had no idea it would be so successful, I was using this old-ass computer with a tiny green and black screen, I was in this old basement with a crappy workbench, I was so naive and unsure of myself, ho ho, I was only twenty-two," and the only logical conclusion is "And now I've published multiple best-sellers and won the Pulitzer -- isn't it funny how life works out sometimes?" I dunno. Some might call this jealousy -- MC would use a different word probably, one with like eight syllables and Greek roots. It struck me as glib, if unintentionally. And it also represented a major turning point in the collection, in that the focus of the essays shifted decidedly from other authors/subjects to MC himself. The very next essay was, as I mentioned, about him as a slightly-older author working on his second novel. Come on, Chabon.
Profile Image for Bryce Wilson.
Author 10 books202 followers
May 20, 2008
"Every book is a sequel, influence is bliss."

A passionate collection of work "In defense of entertainment." (mostly). That incisively examines pop culture and the inbred desire to put it down as something to be moved passed. When people complain about Chabon it's often his tendency to bite off a shitload more then he can chew that gets their knives out. Part of the charm of maps and legends is just how slight the essays are. They're not about charting America, mapping the psyche, or symbolism behind Little Lulu. They're content to be good solid pieces of intelligent criticism on everything from the pleasures of Sherlock Holmes and Cormac McCarthy, to the comic's industries abandonment of children and the sad sure decline in quality of Philip Pullman.

Unfortunately Chabon does end the book with some essays about his Jewish heritage and history. This is of course not to suggest that Chabon doesn't have the right to do so. Indeed the strong Jewish identity is what makes much of Chabon's work so unique. It's just that it doesn't fit in with the rest of the essays. Imagine you're reading a cook book, and find that the final third of it is excerpts from Tolstoy. That's very nice and pleasant. But it just doesn't fit. It's like Chabon wanted to give the book an extra seventy five pages and just figured, why the hell not.

Still a this is a very minor quibble, and I have a feeling when I visit those essays separately they'll work much better.
Profile Image for Mike.
511 reviews134 followers
April 9, 2013

Maps and Legends is a book of essays. Mostly, it is about the writing of fiction. Specifically fiction that is written to entertain – including what is commonly known as genre fiction.

For most of my reading life I have welcomed the short stories, novellas, and novels of several genres as if they were life-giving oxygen itself. Back in my youth I would gladly read a book (sometimes even two) per day camped out underneath the dining room table of all places for hours at a time. I read quickly (not at Evelyn Wood speeds mind you, just fast for normal reading methods) and two-a-day meant no book was over 300 pages. Do I regret those past summer days spent indoors instead of out tracking dinosaurs or hunting mastodons? No. Never.

As an adult (I was about to write “mature reader”, but that’s neither accurate nor a satisfactory label) I have made a conscious effort to read “litr’y fiction” as well as non-fiction from time-to-time. (The fact that I also did so back in the Jurassic is immaterial.) Long before I joined Goodreads, I would read such books on my own or at the recommendation of trusted friends. With Goodreads, I have continued to do so. I can’t say what percentage of the ever-growing TBR list is non-genre fiction or non-fiction, but it’s there.

Am I ashamed of my honest liking for the genre stuff? No, not really. I think I do a pretty good job of balancing “brain-candy” with intellectual stimulation and I normally deal with science and technology on a daily basis, anyway. I am heartened to see the range of people who read both similar and dissimilar books and write about them here on Goodreads. Do I like Sherlock Holmes stories more or less than Karen likes Monster Erotica? It’s not important to me or, I suspect, anyone else.

Having written all that, I began reading Maps and Legends “blindly”. Yes, I’ve had it on my TBR list for almost four (4) years, but that does not mean I did any “research” on it first. If I had to guess, I think I added it because author Laurie King gave it a one-line, five-star rating. But once I’ve decided to get the actual book, I don’t pre-read other’s reviews or the blurbs. So, as far as I knew it might have been a novel. Nor had I read any of the essays in a magazine.

Instead, it is a really excellent collection of writings on the nature of “entertainment writing” (i.e. genre fiction) and the power of creating stories and myths. While I have loaded up my TBR shelf with many of his books, I had only read The Final Solution previously and I had not read any biographical material about Mr. Chabon. But I’ve now learned quite a bit (in his own words and parceled out as he has seen fit) about the author.

Much to my great surprise and joy, here is a respected author writing about the virtues of the types of fiction that I have always loved. Of course I have read other writers speak and write about the importance of these genres. The late, great Isaac Asimov was very ardent in his support of the science fiction genre (since it has been one of the most down-trodden), but he also wrote (and would have also defended) mysteries. Like Asimov, this author writes autobiographical notes explaining what he liked and why.

(Note: A lot of Asimov’s were written as introductions to stories in collections: I think that “Before the Golden Age of Science Fiction” and maybe “The Golden Age of Science Fiction” both have these notes.)

As printed this book develops a theme starting with the author’s younger years and continuing on into his professional career. They may not have been written in that order, but they do form a reasonable progression. I have to say that I liked something in each and every one, but I have my favorites:

“Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story” had me hooked from the first paragraph. Not only the breezy style, but the content was refreshing.

“Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes” is an excellent look at the persistent popularity of the World’s Greatest consulting Detective and his creator. In this essay many of the facts about Conan Doyle that I previously knew are woven with how the writing of the stories was truly and original concept even when “detective stories” had previously been written by Poe and others. The author makes an excellent case for ACD having created a story format and method that no one had used before. The impact that these stories had on the young reader (he and me) is well-described, I especially liked the comment that, “all literature, highbrow, or low, from the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction.” I might never have thought of it that way, but I heartedly agree.

Not to slight the other material in the book (I am really just trying to keep this down to a manageable length), but I also have an extra-warm place in my heart for:

“Kid’s Stuff”, “The Killer Hook: Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!”, “Thoughts on the Death of Will Eisner”, and “Golems I Have Known, or, Why My Elder Son’s Middle Name is Napoleon”.

While the last 2-3 stories may not totally fit in the “theme” I think they were perfectly suited to inclusion in this collection (I listed the final one in my “best of” list just above this line.)

Do I wish I had read this the day I put it on my TBR shelf? Hell, yes. Am I even more pleased that I have other books of his to read? Ditto. Will I start them immediately? Ah, well, I have this HUGE list of books and I’ve already got several others waiting to go, so, No. But, don’t let my foolishness stop YOU! Return, ever so briefly as I did to those thrilling days of yesteryear and see how today’s author can be fun, too. This is at least a 4.5 star book and I’m going to round it up to the coveted full FIVE (5) Stars.


Note: For those that care, the “Aeneid” was Virgil’s attempt to legitimize the Roman Imperium that had been established by first Gaius Julius Ceasar and then his adopted son (blood grand-nephew) Gaius Julius Ceasar Octavianus (born Gaius Octavius but better known as Augustus). It crafts a new story around the pious hero Aeneas making him instrumental in the “root-stock” of the Latin peoples and through them the Romans. Thus, giving the Roman people a “history” that extends back to the days of the Iliad (and a claim on many lands throughout the Mediterranean.)

Profile Image for Ryan Van.
13 reviews4 followers
June 20, 2008
I really can't take Mr. Chabon's essay style. At all. I love him dearly as a novelist, Kavalier and Clay is one of my favorite books of all time, and I enjoyed The Yiddish Policeman's Union as well. His self indulgent prose is very much like the descriptive passages in his novels, but it seems that when you take away the plot-motivating aspect of the words, I can't stand him. Michael Chabon is a very talented writer, and the next time he publishes a novel, I will be in line to buy it, I just could not take this one.
Profile Image for Alexandra.
51 reviews14 followers
May 5, 2008
Oh that clever Michael Chabon. What a wit. He's precocious, you know. Sheeer talent. So tender, so--for lack of a better word--raw. Don't. You. Dare. For. Get.

But I mean, getting past the endless (admittedly lush) lists and lists of anything you could possibly list and more (semi-colon dash semi-colon period repeat), he really is a fierce essayist with clean ideas and enticing presentation. I admit to being a kid who relished fantasy and then was scared off it when I learned that such sub-genres are rarely considered top caliber literature. This book let me know what I've missed. The author defends and champions sci-fi, fantasy and comic books by interweaving his own experiences with theses on the complex themes and cultural significance of, for example, Sherlocke Holmes. He also highlights the work of lesser known masters within those genres, which is all very enlightening.

While some of my favorite essays in the collection deal directly with one work/author--the Sherlocke Holmes essay, the Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) essay and the Cormac MacCarthy essay--Chabon's at his best when he writes about himself. His tale of coming into the person who would write his first novel is brimming with pathos and awesome. The golem tales (where he can't resist tossing in a little homegrown fiction) are duly chilling and cool. You definitely get a sense of who and why and how this author got to be a genre-straddling Pulitzer winner.

The gemmiest gem of this book is not in the sharpness of the prose but the lovingly crafted theme. In lamenting and accepting the end of all childish innocence, it re-imbues the reader with the ecstatic fan quality of children. It lifted me up and made me want to, like Chabon, join the ranks of my favorite writers--to be a teller of exciting, effective stories.

As a former fan fiction writer, I recommend this swell chronicle of that time-honored craft.

Profile Image for Alessandra.
20 reviews38 followers
April 13, 2009
This probably could have been called "In Defense of Genre Fiction," and I'm glad that someone like Michael Chabon is making such important points in favor of genre fiction. I just wasn't blown away by a lot of the essays--they were smart and well-written, but they were occasionally lacking in depth. (Not all of them, mind you.) For instance, the essay about Sherlock Holmes was really engaging, but then I felt it didn't go anywhere in particular. He mentioned fanfiction at the very end, and then suddenly that was it. It seemed as if he had more to say... Tracing the history of something is always important, but why trace the history if you don't delve into the modern repercussions?

Maybe I'm just being picky, but the book was a little like sitting next to someone super interesting at a very loud dinner party--you're grateful for the encounter, but you lament the fact that you weren't able to talk more/ask more questions.
Profile Image for Rob.
61 reviews14 followers
December 14, 2017
Ainda quero ler a ficção dele, mas isso aqui foi insuportavelmente chato e pretensioso =( E há algo na linguagem, um quê de artificialidade, que faz parecer que Chabon está o tempo todo te perguntando: "e aí? Gostou dessa construção? Achou legal essa palavra?". Bem difícil manter o entusiasmo nessas condições...
Profile Image for Eric.
927 reviews83 followers
June 5, 2012
Chabon waxes poetic on many topics, including -- but not limited to -- the short story, the edges of maps as places of wonder and exploration, Sherlock Holmes, Loki, the His Dark Materials trilogy, comic books, American Flagg!, Volume 1, The Road, and ghost stories. The main theme of most of the essays revolves around the concept of the "borderland" between genre fiction and literary fiction, a topic which Lev Grossman recently touched upon here.

So much so did I appreciate Chabon's point-of-view that I sought out Howard Chaykin's American Flagg!, Volume 1 and M.R. James' Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad.

My only issue with Chabon is that his writing is occasionally obtuse, using unnecessarily complex language where simpler terms will do. For example, was the word colophon really necessary in the following sentence?
Instead travel proceeds on foot, by boat, or by that colophon of alternate-world fiction ... the grand zeppelin liner.
Profile Image for Thomas.
190 reviews1 follower
January 15, 2009
Loved it. Anybody who can name-check conan the barbarian and Blue Duck in a single paragraph is writing straight at me. A collection of essays collected from various sources, but each bearing Chabon's near delirious swirl of language and concept. The essays are gathered around several basic concepts, the core being what is writing, what is fiction what are these lands we explore through stories.

Gripping stuff, and what's more, the most beautiful book I own.
Profile Image for Mattia Ravasi.
Author 5 books3,645 followers
November 9, 2015
A collection of brilliant essays on genre fiction, literary discriminations, Chabon's own writing career, and a few other things. The kind of book that makes your Christmas wishlist grow immense. One or two essays will flow better if you know what the author's talking about (Sherlock Holmes, semi-obscure Comic Books, MR James) and there's one essay that spoils you more or less the entirety of His Dark Materials (seriously, Mike?); that said, this book is a gem.
A must for all Chabon's fans.
Profile Image for Ricki.
1,550 reviews71 followers
March 30, 2017
Chabon's essays on writing - both his and others' - shows a deep fascination with golems and comic books
Profile Image for James.
117 reviews50 followers
May 25, 2008
After reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay some years ago, I promptly became a devoted disciple of Michael Chabon. If I was well read and given to making sweeping generalizations, I would be inclined to declare Chabon the greatest living writer. Such as it is, I avoid committing to sweeping generalizations and still have a lot more reading to do before I declare a Greatest Living Writer. And by then they’ll be dead so I’ll have to keep reading. Alas,

I recommend Kavalier and Clay to anyone who listens (and even to some who don’t). But when recommending Kavalier and Clay, I always recommend a supplementary volume to accompany one’s reading of Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel: a dictionary. You see, Michael Chabon has an extensive vocabulary. Saying that Chabon knows a lot of words would be like saying the ocean has a lot of water molecules in it. The dude’s diction is hot! And don’t get me started on the boy’s syntax. That shit is off the hook, dawg.

Word Choice. It’s kind of what writers are supposed to be good at. But Chabon is better. His sentences and words are just always so damn perfect. As an aspiring writer, Chabon intimidates me to no end because I know I will never be as good as him. If I were a writer, I would want to write like him. But Chabon already writes like Chabon, so what’s the point, right? I read Chabon and find myself muttering slurs to him out of sheer disdain and jealousy.

Chabon has been a bit prolific as of late. Following Kavalier and Clay, there was Final Solution. Then The Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Then Gentlemen of the Road. And now Maps and Legends, his first work of non-fiction. And with Maps and Legends, Chabon has not relented with his impressive vocabulary. There are words like arriviste, appurtenances, pasquinade, asymptotically, punctilio, priggish, peregrinations, bathyspheric, aetataureate, and empyrean. But some words are even too obscure for Chabon, so he defines them. Which he does upon using anagnorisis (moment of recognition). His definitions sometimes serve a point, as they do when he reminds us that excoriated literally means “to have one’s skin removed.”

At one point Chabon uses the phrase “baby murder.” This usage struck me as odd. Why didn’t he use “infanticide?” “Infanticide” is a perfectly fine word. But upon further counsel and thought, I decided that “baby murder” was a far superior choice of words. “Baby murder” captures a sentiment in the reader that “infanticide” would not. And that is Chabon’s great skill. He knows all the words and he knows how to use them and when to use them and when to use their definitions.

Published by McSweeney’s, Maps and Legends is a simply beautiful book. McSweeney’s seems to be settling on a cohesive aesthetic because the cover of Maps and Legends carries striking similarities to Bowl of Cherries with its partial dust jacket that reveals the actual book cover. Which I’m a fan of. I hate dust jackets. They’re so stupid. Why do we need them? That’s why What is the What is so great. Besides being a fantastic book, it has no dust jacket. Just a small band on the back cover for blurbs.

Throughout the essays that comprise Maps and Legends, Chabon champions “genre fiction” in general and ghost stories, science fiction, graphic novels, short stories, and comics in particular. The very first essay is a true winner with Chabon analyzing the modern short story, the entertainment industry and encouraging all of us to be better readers and critics. He provides some analysis of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, and even weighs in on the recent spate of fibbing memoirists with a story of his own that acknowledges his vocation as a “professional liar.” Chabon describes this particular essay’s subject as “the interrelationship between truth and lies, memory and invention, history and story, memoir and fiction, the sources of narrative and the storytelling impulse; the inevitable fate of liars to be swallowed up or crushed by their lies; and the risks inherent both in discounting the power of outright fiction to reveal the truths of a life, and in taking at face value the fictions that writers of memoir present as fact.”

Get Michael Chabon on Oprah. James Frey wishes he was this articulate and eloquent.
Profile Image for Jamie.
1,297 reviews504 followers
August 10, 2010
In the essay “Kids’ Stuff,” Chabon gives the following entreaty to those who think the younger generation is too modern, too sophisticated for the traditional rites of good old fashioned storytelling:

“Let’s blow their little minds. A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. Those are all good things; but a mind is blown when something that you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge.”

He’s mourning the fact that we’ve forgotten how to write for kids, that comic books are no longer the collective language of childhood, but by the standards he sets forth we’ve largely forgotten how to write for anyone. Hell, by those standards, we’ve forgotten how to live. “Anybody who thinks that kids get bored by hearing the same story over and over again has never spent time telling stories to kids.” And anybody who discounts the power of the same old “kids’ stuff,” the elemental magic, the basic human need to lay claim to the same old stories with their endless variations and derivations, has forgotten what it’s like when the impossible turns out to be true.

In the earlier essay “Fan Fictions”— making the wildly lovable assertion that all literature, highbrow or low, from The Aeneid onward, is fan fiction— Chabon notes the particular joy and pleasure of the “magical gaps,” the blank spaces on the map. “All enduring popular literature,” he writes, “has this open-ended quality, and extends this invitation to the reader to continue, on his or her own, with the adventure.” It’s the infinite horizon of play, he says, the endless game board, that spawns, without trying, that contemporary fandom that has become indistinguishable from contemporary popular art.

And this theory I love, because— seriously, try me sometime in my defense of plot holes, I’ll have to write an essay elsewhere before I write one here— it could digress right into my argument that any entertainment worth enduring devotion or of lasting value has to, at least to one degree or another, collapse under its own weight enough to write you into the story.* Leave gaps, leave coughs and hiccoughs and messes— like Chabon notes of Arthur Conan Doyle, whether by artlessness or by design— and you’ve left instead the secret passageways, the keys and clues and sanction to endlessly tell and retell a thousand-fold stories. It’s nothing less than the personal invitation to that lucky realm where to love something is to never let it go.

So yes, this is one great collection of essays, by someone who gets that to love a story is to live in it. Also, to anyone looking for added inducements, I should mention that the McSweeney’s hardcover edition of this book may very well be one of the most beautiful books on my shelf.

*An argument that inevitably and happily devolves into me citing The X-Files at length. But then again (and to further underscore all points being made here) any argument pretty much devolves into me happily citing The X-Files.
Profile Image for Trin.
1,922 reviews607 followers
December 19, 2009
Like a lot of Chabon’s writing, I found this alternately fascinating and annoyingly pretentious. It’s weird: I really enjoy a lot of Chabon’s work, but at the same time he sort of bugs me. It may be that we like a lot of the same things (Sherlock Holmes, mythology, genre fiction, Philip Pullman) and so I’m irritated when he presents as AMAZING REVELATIONS things that are really bloody obvious to me. Like his “In Defense of Genre Fiction” essay—I mean, I’m glad that he’s talking about this, but I felt he didn’t go as far or as deep as he could, and then seemed really pleased to have only scraped the surface.

Still, some of the pieces about writing are neat, and this book encouraged me to track down the D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths, for which I am grateful. So that’s nice.
Profile Image for Carolyn.
455 reviews3 followers
April 2, 2023
I had no particular idea what I was getting into, but this was an excellent and inviting cover. I love maps and borderlands.

Chabon is a literary writer, a type I generally have little to do with, BUT he is that rare breed: a literary writer who likes a lot of the same books I do—call it 40% overlap! He writes movingly of the need for wonder and the injustice of banning genre fiction from literary novels.

This was a salad of essays and short fiction-ish memoirs. I only skimmed a couple in the middle. And I learned so much about kabbalah golems.
Profile Image for Kara Babcock.
1,980 reviews1,421 followers
June 29, 2010
I began this book as a sometime reader of Michael Chabon. I klepped The Yiddish Policemen's Union from my dad's shelf, and I've also read Wonder Boys and Summerland at some point. (I actually liked the movie of the former better than Cabon's book, oddly enough.) Chabon is one of those writers who is at the periphery of my awareness, someone whose books I respect even though I only accord them a lukewarm enthusiasm when it comes to the prospect of reading one. He has a way with words, a talent for tone and diction, that I much admire.

This skill is apparent in Maps and Legends. The book itself is something of a cipher at first—as a product of McSweeney's, it is bound in a format simultaneously advertising and obscuring the content of the book. The jacket of this edition is alone worth a paragraph. Although the multiple layers can be annoying to handle, they create a beautiful effect that shows a love for the physical form of a book itself, parallel Chabon's tribute to literature and storytelling found between the covers.

Often collections of essays make me ambivalent, and Chabon's is no exception. My praise of Chabon's style holds true. He has mastered that heavy, didactic, descriptive method of discourse that makes me unabashedly jealous. Such writing can also be pedantic and quickly outstay its welcome, of course, and Chabon is guilty at times of overindulging his allusive abilities. If his passion for this subject were not so evident from his essays, I pass harsher judgement. As it is, I think it is a matter of taste. Some will endure—and even enjoy—the book; others will cast it aside with a vague sense of distaste or a definite feeling of dismay. Chabon's writing is not for everyone, and this book is no exception.

For those who choose to remain, all of Chabon's essays are interesting, but not all are created equal. In particular, I enjoyed: "Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story", "Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes", "Ragnarok Boy", "My Back Pages," and "Diving into the Wreck". In the first essay, Chabon discusses his fascination with transgressing the boundaries defined by genre, likening himself and other authors to the Trickster gods of many mythologies. Likewise, "Ragnarok Boy," celebrates the richness of Norse mythology, a subject on which I have been ruminating since reading Norse Code .

I loved "Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes" for its exploration of Conan Doyle's motives behind writing Holmes stories—money—and the enduring effect of Holmesian mysteries on the "genre" of mystery and on literature in general. This essay is a true gem of the collection. It sparked in me a desire to re-read Holmes, something that any analysis of a work should do. More than passion, Chabon's sense of wonder is infectious and amplifying. He feels like I do: that we are ridiculously, wonderfully gifted with this ability to preserve stories in written form; that a well-stocked library or a cozy, stuffed bookshelf is a treasure trove of adventures just waiting to be read. When I buy or borrow books, I feel like I'm getting away with a crime—this amazing experience cannot be legal! But it is, and I love nothing more.

As a reader, Maps and Legends affirmed my feeling that stories are magical. As a writer, it reminded me of the responsibilities I have as a practitioner of this magic. An unwritten story is something with infinite potential; a writer must craft it carefully, honing every plane and edge with only the mind's glimpse of an end product as a guide. The journey is non-trivial, but when done right, the rewards for both the reader and the writer are proportionally spectacular.

Chabon claims to loathe the phrase "guilty pleasures", and while I understand his reasoning, I have to disagree. It is true that "guilty pleasure" can refer to something one fears censure over enjoying (much as I enjoy reading young adult fiction targeted toward socially-obsessed adolescent girls). But a "guilty pleasure" can also be something like that extra scoop of ice cream, something so flagrantly self-indulgent that we look both ways before allowing ourselves the moment.

Maps and Legends is the latter type of guilty pleasure. At least it was for me, and I think it was for Michael Chabon as well, no matter how much he protests. Sometimes he lays it on thick, but I'm inclined to forgive his exuberance as the self-conscious fanaticism of his inner boy, who can't quite believe he actually achieved his dream. Maps and Legends a self-referential, meta-aware celebration of literature and its role in one's life, from formative childhood through rocky adolescence all the way to adulthood. Because some of us, though we grow taller, do not grow up. Our sense of wonder remains firmly intact, persistently in place, ever guiding us to explore those uncharted places.

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Profile Image for Kris.
1,416 reviews203 followers
March 5, 2021
This has nothing to do with maps and legends. It's mostly about his writing and others' writing. There's a bit about golems and some memoir-ish sections (which is all apparently fake?). Not worth it.
Profile Image for Terence.
1,188 reviews427 followers
September 1, 2008
This is a collection of essays tracing the influences on Chabon's writing and some of the reasons he writes. All of them are interesting to varying degrees. The following notes are about the essays that aroused my particular interest but the entire volume is recommended for Chabon fans (of whom I'm not really one) and anyone interested in that genre of authorial self-examination (of whom I am one).

The first essay, "Trickster in a Suit of Lights" takes up the argument that the short story needs to push or even cross genre boundaries in order to renew itself.

In another essay, "Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes," Chabon indulges in a Freudian analysis of Conan Doyle and the origins of his greatest, if self-avowedly least loved, character, Sherlock Holmes. He also explores the consequences when Doyle blurs the line between fact and fiction by presenting the stories as taken from the notes kept by Dr. Watson. The concluding paragraph is my favorite: "Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that were told before us and that we have come of age loving...have left for us, hoping to pass on to our own readers...some of the pleasure that we ourselves have taken in the stuff we love; to get in on the game. All novels are sequels; influence is bliss." (p. 57)

In "Kids' Stuff," Chabon pleads for a return to comic books written for kids (not that he hates the "graphic novel"; other essays heap praises on some of its most noted authors) and suggests four principles to follow to make them competitive with all the other media bombarding children today:

1. We should tell stories that we would have liked to hear or read as kids.

2. Build stories that build up an intricate mythology that is accessible and comprehensible at any point of entry. Every story should be a self-contained thread in a tapestry. The thread can be intricate and beautiful all on its own but is also part of a larger picture that could enrich the understanding of the viewer.

3. Cultivate a readiness to retell the same stories with endless embellishment -- repetition with variation.

4. "Let's blow their little minds" -- and not just with over-the-top action sequences. Let's shake up their world and show how much vaster and marvelous it can be. (pp. 92-94)

In "Dark Adventure: On Cormac McCarthy's The Road," Chabon argues "the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader." (p. 120)
Profile Image for Joseph.
610 reviews20 followers
August 29, 2008
Not all of this was new to me, but I've got somewhat of a soft spot for Chabon's ruminations on genre fiction. The man makes a good argument about how foolish it is that some writing can be considered Literature, while other writing is condemned to be thought of as little more than a childish diversion, merely because of the subject matter.

Nevertheless, he feels a bit like a mad prophet shouting in the desert. Capital-L Literature ain't going nowhere.

As the book proceeds, the essays become more and more personal, as Chabon comments on his own writing, fears, hopes, and dreams. At times, this seems to stretch the boundaries of his self-defined "Maps and Legends" framework (intentionally, perhaps?), but it also renders the book more effective and affecting.

The essays are all pretty short, which does offer the advantage of keeping the author from belaboring his points overmuch, but at the same time, I would have liked him to comment in more detail on some of his thoughts.
Profile Image for Jim.
2,857 reviews66 followers
March 22, 2016
Basically a memoir, intertwined with literary criticism, that comments both on various aspects of his life, the process of writing (in general and specifically his novels), Jewishness, and fantasy (or perhaps imagination). He is a scholarly writer, and I was impressed with some of the material, especially commentary on Sherlock Holmes, Chaykin, comics, Cormac McCarthy, and many other topics. The literary criticism was not too burdensome. And anyone with more than a passing interest in Chabon's life will profit from a reading.
Profile Image for Stephanie.
1,046 reviews45 followers
January 19, 2016
   An interesting read, this was. It seemed that half of the essays were more self-reflective/inclined towards being parts of a memoir, while the other half was more literary analysis, but a heightened level of vocabulary was a constant throughout. The ones that stuck out to me the most and were the most interesting – for being relatable, being familiar – were the ones about fairy tales/mythology, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, comic books, and His Dark Materials. (Admittedly, “On Daemons and Dust” was also largely a review of a select portion of the over-arching theme/plot of the trilogy more so than an analysis, which was welcome to me as it has been probably a good fifteen years since I last read the series.) I wish I had known about those comic book essays back in college when I was writing a thesis on comic convention subculture in the US and France!

   There are 16 essays in this 222 page book, and as such they are all relatively short. Generally speaking, the brevity of each essay works in its favor, as some of the longer ones (“On Daemons and Dust”, “The Other James”, “Golems I Have Known…”) almost lose some of themselves, some of their focus, in their length. That is not to say that they were less interesting, not necessarily, but they meandered along the borderlands of a tight structure in favor of much name- and title-dropping – many names and titles of which were not familiar to me, and probably are not very familiar to many in my generation (unless you were lucky enough to have parents who had those books still and read them to you growing up). Though that did mean I had some more books to look up and add to my want-to-read list here on Goodreads!

Quotes and a couple comments:

   […]I was thinking that it might be possible to argue that in the world of the contemporary short story the “naturalistic” writers come from the tribe of the community-based lore-retellers, while the writers of fantasy, horror, and sf are the sailors of distant seas, and that our finest and most consistently interesting contemporary writers are those whose work seems to originate from both traditions. – page 23

   Childhood, at its best, is a perpetual adventure, in the truest sense of that overtaxed word: a setting-forth into trackless lands that might have come into existence the instant before you first laid eyes on them. – page 33

   To succeed as a narrative diagnostician, or a novelist, or a detective […]: you needed the feeling for story, both for the “history” to be inferred from the signs and symptoms and for the way that story could be reconstructed, in therapeutic terms, for the benefit of the patient. – page 43

   Writers and storytellers had been nesting their narratives for centuries, of course, in an effort to approximate the networks of story that ramify and complicate our experience of everyday life. But not until Conan Doyle, no one had ever hit on a way, or even seen the need, to ensure that the gears of each nested story were fully engaged with those it contained and were in turn contained by. Conan Doyle, in other words, invented a way to tell stories about the construction of stories without the traditional recourse to digression, indirection, or the overtly self-referential. It was a radical step, and it has been paying off for him, and for us, ever since. – page 48-49

   The pleasure to be derived from pretending to take fiction as fact was also one of the necessary conditions for the rise of Sherlockians. – page 53

   […P]opular media have been in the hands of people who grew up as passionate, if not insanely passionate, fans of those media [films, tv, comics, etc.]: by amateurs, in the original sense of the word. – page 56

   I was drawn to that darkness [in the Norse mythology]. I was repelled by it, too, but as the stories were presented I knew that I was supposed to be only repelled by the darkness and also, somehow, to blame myself for it. Doom and decay, crime and folly, sin and punishment, the imperative to work and sweat and struggle and suffer the Furies, these had entered the world with humankind: we brought them on ourselves. – page 60

   Yet epic fantasies […] get sequestered in their own section of the bookstore or library […] Thus do we consign to the borderlands our most audacious retellings of what is arguably one of the two or three primal human stories: the narrative of Innocence, Experience, and, straddling the margin between them, the Fall. – page 68

   [Philip Pullman] is also, in the great tradition of unabashed concocters of stories, a highly self-conscious storyteller. By the end of The Amber Spyglass, one has come to see Pullman’s world-calving imagination, to see Imagination itself, as the ordering principle, if not of the universe itself, then of our ability to comprehend, to wander, and above all to love it. – page 73

   Plot is fate, and fate is always, by definition, inhuman. – page 83

   An excess of the desire to appear grown up is one of the defining characteristics of adolescence. But these follies [made by the comic book genre] were the inevitable missteps and overreaching in the course of a campaign [to appeal to adult readers] that was, in the end, successful. – page 88

   Children did not abandon comics; comics, in their drive to attain respect and artistic accomplishments, abandoned children. – page 91

   Let’s blow [the children’s] little minds. A mind is not blown, in spite of whatever Hollywood seems to teach, merely by action sequences, things exploding, thrilling planetscapes, wild bursts of speed. Those are all good things; but a mind is blown when something that you always feared but knew to be impossible turns out to be true; when the world turns out to be far vaster, far more marvelous or malevolent than you ever dreamed; when you get proof that everything is connected to everything else, that everything you know is wrong, that you are both the center of the universe and a tiny speck sailing off its nethermost edge. – page 93-94

   The past is another planet; anyone ought to wonder, as we do, at any traces of it that turn up on this one. – page 136

   [Maybe I would find a way to say] something that great American poets of summertime like Ray Bradbury and Bruce Springsteen would have understood. – page 153 – I bet he’s referring to Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine here – because that is definitely a book “about summer”.

   The hardest part of writing a novel is the contemplation of the distance to the end [….] – page 161

   Enchantment, of course, is the work of language; of spell and spiel. A golem is brought to live by means of magic formulas, one word at a time. – page 164

   Since reading [Gershom Scholem’s] “The Idea of the Golem,” I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but a virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing is possible, of the power of my work: as a sign that I am on the right track, that I am following the recipe correctly, speaking the proper spells. Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth when the truth matters most is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn’t give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn’t court disapproval, reproach, and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth. The adept handles the rich material, the rank river clay, and diligently intones his alphabetical spells, knowing full well the history of golems: how they break free of their creators, grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled. In the same way, the writer shapes his story, flecked like river clay with the grit of experience and rank with the smell of human life, heedless of the danger to himself, eager to show his powers, to celebrate his mastery, to bring into being a little world that, like God’s, is at once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life. – page 167-168 – (emphasis added)

   […] walking through the door marked to gauge my approximate height in case I decide to hold the place up. – page 171 – Now I want to check out the doorway at a nearby 7-Eleven to see if it is marked too!

   When I left [Israel], I felt that I would like to visit again, and that I would continue to take an interest, even an intense interest, in the history and the look and the weather and the fate of the place. And then I would return to the theme park in my brain. – page 174-175

   Another phenomenon that is far from rare, of course, is that of a Jew – hell, of any human being – longing for a home that feels irretrievable yet never ceases, age after age, to beckon. – page 187

   Since this is a memoir, though, I will be truthful and say I don’t know how I managed the trick [of diverting my parents’ attention so I could sneak into my uncle’s basement workspace]. – page 194

   I was beginning to learn the bitter truth about golems. A golem, like a lie, is the expression of a wish: a wish for peace and security; a wish for strength and control; a wish to know, in a tiny, human way, a thousandth of a millionth of the joy and power of the Greater Creation. – page 199

   The work of typing [“The Revenge of Captain Nemo,” my first sustained work of fiction] alone had nearly killed me. But more precious to me than praise or completion was the intense pleasure I had derived from attempting to impersonate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from putting on his accent, following his verbal trail. It was the pleasure that a liar takes in his lie as it enters the world wearing the accent and raiment of the truth, sounding so right and plausible that—if he is any kind of liar at all—he begins, himself, to believe it. – page 203

   I haven’t received another [golem tablet] since, though I’m still looking out for it in the mail. I’m still listening to my father, too, and wishing as he wished—as we all wish, Jews and non-Jews alike—to be part of something ancient and honorable and greater than myself. And, naturally, I’m still telling lies. – page 217

   It is along the knife-narrow borderland between those two kingdoms, between the Empire of Lies and the Republic of Truth, more than along any other frontier on the map of existence, that Trickster makes his wandering way, and either comes to grief or finds his supper, his treasure, his fate. – page 222
Profile Image for Mark Schlatter.
1,189 reviews15 followers
February 28, 2019
One: everytime I read Chabon, I feel like I need a dictionary nearby. (Arrant? Lambency?)

Two: the borderlands in the subtitle refer often to writing between and along the dividing line of literary fiction and genre fiction. There's discussion of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Ben Katchor's comics, and Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials books. I liked, but wasn't overwhelmed by, Chabon's takes on the dangers of becoming a genre writer and the need to reclaim the idea of literary entertainment.

Three: the essay that connects the rise of Sherlockania with the current prevalence of fan fiction is top notch and gave me more insights into both than I've had in a long time. (The essay on Norse mythology is also quite good.)

Four: the essays at the end are more about Chabon's history as a writer and the influences on some of his novels. These I loved sheerly for the "behind the scenes" feel. The last essay (taken from an performance he repeated several times) speaks directly to the themes of Moonglow (although at the time the essay was written, I'm not even sure he had started that novel).

An uneven but fruitful read and probably of most interest to those who are Chabon fans already.
Profile Image for Robert Jr..
Author 11 books3 followers
August 22, 2018

I came to this book thinking there would be a little more analysis, there was none. He starts with the reason we read, listen to music, watch movies, and tell stories: for entertainment. Entertainment that is a necessary and inescapable part of the human condition even if it is masked with ironic enjoyment. The fences that separate high brow, low brow, and even pop simply don't exist. It is all entertainment and someone can find joy in it if not any kind of meaning, deep or otherwise.

Most of the essays read as ‘I like this’ and goes on unanalytically about how he first experienced it and what he has since gleaned from the experience since but in a very well-written and entertaining way. He also talked about how sometimes his entertainments (comics, YA books, etc.) and stories told to him tied into his work as a writer on occasion.

I did enjoy the book. It was a smooth read all the way through with the last essay being my favorite, Golems I have Known. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone with a passing interest in comics, short and pulp fiction, and golems or for just the sheer entertainment value.

Profile Image for Max Ostrovsky.
570 reviews60 followers
December 19, 2018
I had no idea this was non-fiction when I picked it up. All I saw was the author's, Chabon, and I knew I'd like it.
I wasn't wrong.
But that's not to say it was perfect. The first chapter was slow going; however, that could just be me adjusting my mindset from expecting a story to navigating the maps of story-telling tropes.
Once I got past that slow start, it was just an absolute pleasure to read. And I have no shame of admitting that ego plays a huge part in my enjoyment of the book. Aside from his collection of short stories (including one of the best Lovecraftian stories I've ever read), which was lukewarm, I have loved Chabon's writing. His very style speaks specifically to me. When he sits down to write a story, he must ponder for hours how he will specifically impress me with a story.
Well, at least it feels that way.
And this book of non-fiction, exploring the tropes of storytelling and what makes those tropes so successful in both reading and writing, I found myself more and more amazed at how much Chabon and I are aligned in what we've read and enjoyed. All but two stories that he discusses in his book, I've read. In a way, the book was a history of my own enjoyment of stories.
So my love for this book is based primarily on my own inflated ego - and it was this book that inflated it even more.
31 reviews3 followers
September 2, 2017
This collection of essays revolves around a central thesis--the false dichotomy between "entertainment" and "literary fiction"--which I agree with entirely. But even more enjoyably, these essays speak to why readers gravitate toward certain stories or traditions of storytelling- why we engage with them as extensively as we do, using them--through criticism, fan fiction, or plain enjoyment--as a framework with which to try and make sense of our lives.

"Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that were told before us and that we have come of age loving--amateurs--we proceed, seeking out the blank places in the map that our favorite writers, in their greatness and negligence, have left for us, hoping to pass on to our own readers--should we be lucky enough to find any--some of the pleasure that we ourselves have taken in the stuff we love."
Profile Image for Margery Bayne.
Author 10 books8 followers
October 31, 2017
As a reader and writer, there were many moments in this book of essays about reading and writing that were very poignant to me, that mapped similar journeys and thoughts on the process of creating and interpreting stories, as well as ideas that pushed me into new areas of exploration. Admitingly, I have actually never read any of Mr. Chabon's novels, although his name has been on the periphery of my to-read list for a few years now (my to-read list is always overgrowing and overflowing). I imagine a person who is a fan of this author would appreciate reading about his influences and experiences. However, I can also recommend this to those would like to think deeply about the processes of reading and writing (like I do), and I will definitely be bumping up a Chabon novel to a higher priority spot in my to-read list.
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