Wonder Boys

For me Wonder Boys is Michael Chabon's greatest book, and it sits near the top of the list of my all time favourite books. This book feels much more authentic than his Pulitzer prize winning Kavalier and Clay (K&C). Where K&C feels unreal, set in the Golden Age of Comics with extraordinary characters and an overly melodramatic plot, Wonder Boys feels firmly rooted in the real world. Although the absurd events described occur over one weekend during a liberal arts college town's book festival, the narrow focus and believable characterisations actually make it a far more entertaining ride than the much praised K&C.

Many of the episodes and much of the plot in Wonder Boys feels like it has come from Chabon's own experiences and observations of life around him in a setting he knows well. The protagonist, Trip Grady, is a believable flawed character who gains sympathy despite his mixture of arrogance and self loathing. His journey over that weekend as he grapples with the fall out of his own infidelity, his failures as a husband, teacher, writer and partner, and his failing health is actually entertaining and uplifting. This is a funny and a times absurd story, but at it's heart it's about a middle aged child finally growing up.

Where Kavalier and Clay feels like it was written as an attempt at a grandiose "Great American novel" (and has won the plaudits from the literary world for trying so hard to grasp that epithet that seems so oddly prized by American writers), Wonder Boys is a far more successful book focusing on humour and people in a part of America that feels like it might actually exist. I love this book - beautifully written, sharply observed and most of all an uplifting read; Wonder Boys really is a great book.

Every other Michael Chabon novel that I have read has started out so slow that I've abandoned it for months at a time, but ultimately has been profound and moving and made me feel like I have a place in the universe. Wonder Boys did the opposite. Despite it's easy readability, Wonder Boys made me feel hated, like the world for which it's written or is found funny is a world that is antithetical to people like me.

About a quarter of the way through, I realized that I'd seen and hated the movie. That added to the feel of the novel, to be honest -- this is a novel about people using drugs and alcohol to self-medicate the sort of depression that comes not from any sort of psychopathology, but rather the reasonable self-loathing if you're the sort of dick to do idiotic things while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Not surprisingly, this becomes a downward spiral of totally unsympathetic assholes continuing to do idiotic things then self-medicate further, then become more of a self-absorbed asshole who does even more idiotic things. I read the book with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach, anticipating how things could possibly get even worse. Knowing the specific form the devolution takes from watching the movie added to the ambiance, so to speak.

So why two stars? The second star comes entirely from a Passover seder scene that is laugh-out-loud funny. Fights over what to put in the second seder plate space for bitter herbs (or even how to pronounce "Chazeret") are reminiscent to every Jewish home and also to what I love about most Chabon novels. It was like a breath of fresh air (before that, too, became another drug-using, drunk-driving, pet-killing rampage)