|
"He's
writing his name in water...It was the half-regretful term --- borrowed
from the headstone of John Keats --- that Crabtree used to describe
his own and others' failures to express a literary gift through
any actual writing on paper. Some of them, he said, just told lies;
others wove plots out of the gnarls and elf knots of their lives
and then followed them through to resolution."
Like movies about the people who make movies, books about the writing
of books shouldn't really succeed. However, WONDER BOYS does with
flying colors. And Hollywood clearly has no ideas of its own, because
every book ever published is being made into a film. With its recent
opening as a Michael Douglas-starring flick of the same name, those
crazy dreammakers on the West Coast have really picked a winner.
Michael Chabon's wonderful WONDER BOYS is a book chock full of eccentric
humor, an actual plot, vivid and hilarious characters, and a touching
and heartfelt paean to the artist who chooses to live in the real
world along with the rest of us. WONDER BOYS will surely be a good
film, but it is a truly wondrous and satisfying read.
Professor Grady Tripp has spent seven years trying to write the
follow-up to his enormously successful first novel. "Wonder
Boys" is now over two thousand pages long with no end in sight.
Add to this an eccentric gay agent who comes to visit with drag
queen in tow; a wife who has left; a mistress who is pregnant (and
the chancellor of the college where Grady teaches); a suicidal but
artistically promising young protege; a dead dog; and the winsome
girl-next-door who shares Grady's house, and you have a hallucinogenic
tome that employs both comedic and dramatic tones in the best possible
ways.
The action takes place over the course of a single weekend, and
Chabon is smart in keeping the time period short: so much happens
that, like a homecoming weekend or the weekend you got married,
you can hardly get to the next thing fast enough and, when it's
all over, you have to take a deep breath before realizing that the
fact that you're tired means that you had a good time. Chabon never
dazzles us unnecessarily with his punchy but elegant style, never
throws too much of a plot hook into the goings-on, doesn't philosophize
without reason. His is a remarkably efficient yet windy and complex
story. Unlike his first book THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH (which
I found to be pretty boring and not very rich), WONDER BOYS is like
a good Robert Altman film --- every character has an arc that we
can follow and, even when we think we're confused, we're not. The
plot unfolds slowly but purposefully and we love, in equal measure,
each of the characters we meet. Sure, this is mostly Grady's story,
but everyone else is so canny and present that we can't keep our
eyes or minds off any of them. And the way in which they all end
up being connected is truly original and prescient of even greater
potential to come from this young author.
WONDER BOYS is sure to delight those who appreciate the wonderful
wacky worlds of John Irving or T.C. Boyle, and, being a huge fan
of both of those authors, I can think of no greater praise to heap
on Mr. Chabon than that. Write on, Michael! Can't wait for the next
book! Just don't get too "Grady" about it all and make
us wait a decade!
--- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano
© Copyright 1996-2009, Bookreporter.com. All rights reserved.
|
