Wonder Boys
by Michael Chabon
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
cynics
Wonder Boys
Over Christmas I met a woman named Storm. When she found out I was a writer she became excited and inquisitive. Her therapist, she said, told her she should "reinvent" herself so she signed up for a five-day writer's workshop. She asked me all sorts of questions and I answered truthfully. I told her writing was a great way to find out who you are, and also, a great way to express yourself.
Now I come home and find this book "Wonder Boys" on my bookshelf and it...more
Over Christmas I met a woman named Storm. When she found out I was a writer she became excited and inquisitive. Her therapist, she said, told her she should "reinvent" herself so she signed up for a five-day writer's workshop. She asked me all sorts of questions and I answered truthfully. I told her writing was a great way to find out who you are, and also, a great way to express yourself.
Now I come home and find this book "Wonder Boys" on my bookshelf and it...more
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Read in October, 2007
For a straight man, Chabon is very gay friendly. I know there's been stuff written, possibly by Chabon himself, about early gay liaisons he undertook, but now the man's married with three, four kids. And yet Chabon's smart enough to write this:
"[James] looked over at Crabtree with a smile that was crooked and half grateful. He didn't seem particularly distressed or bewildered, I thought, on awakening to his first morning as a lover of men. While he worked his way up the buttons of my ol...more
"[James] looked over at Crabtree with a smile that was crooked and half grateful. He didn't seem particularly distressed or bewildered, I thought, on awakening to his first morning as a lover of men. While he worked his way up the buttons of my ol...more
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Read in March, 2008
i started this the other day simply because i picked it up and started reading the opening pages...it immediately grabbed me and i wanted to continue...
good sign yes?...
i forced myself to put it down until i finish what i'm currently in the middle of...
this guy can write as though he sold his soul to the devil...
i can't go two paragraphs without shaking my head in amazement...two examples from like the first five pages:
"i had the vague impression that my oldest friend was spea...more
good sign yes?...
i forced myself to put it down until i finish what i'm currently in the middle of...
this guy can write as though he sold his soul to the devil...
i can't go two paragraphs without shaking my head in amazement...two examples from like the first five pages:
"i had the vague impression that my oldest friend was spea...more
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Read in February, 2008
Michael Chabon is my hero and I want to have his baby. Yep, that should pretty much say loud and clear how much I love this man's writing. This is only the third book of his that I've read - after The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, a novel of pure genius, and Summerland, which deserves more attention than it gets in my opinion - but he hasn't yet disappointed me - has, in fact, greatly impressed me.
If you haven't seen the movie (and you should, it's a great adaptation and Michael...more
If you haven't seen the movie (and you should, it's a great adaptation and Michael...more
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one of the nice things about being a stoner is that, since your memory goes to hell, it's possible to re-read books any number of times and still have them feel unexpected and new.
i read this novel the first time while living in the pacific northwest, where the pot-induced fuzziness of my perspective nicely echoed the mossy contours of the roof under which i made my home. years later, in NYC, i vaguely remembered having enjoyed the book (and also, astonishingly, the movie notwithstanding the...more
i read this novel the first time while living in the pacific northwest, where the pot-induced fuzziness of my perspective nicely echoed the mossy contours of the roof under which i made my home. years later, in NYC, i vaguely remembered having enjoyed the book (and also, astonishingly, the movie notwithstanding the...more
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Read in June, 2007
He tried far too hard to be eclectic, over the top, and kitschy. The entire novel came off as insincere. The only likable characters, in my opinion, were Hannah and Sara, because they were the only ones with any kind of grip on the real world. Grady was a slacker and an asshole, Crabtree was a disturbing, self-absorbed douchebag, and James was just pathetic in every way. Actually, I take that back. Emily's parents, the Warshaws, are entirely likable. How can you not love old Jewish parents...more
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While I liked Wonder Boys, I was not as utterly engrossed in it as I was with Cavalier and Clay and The Yiddish Policeman's Union. While Chabon strikes his usual perfect balance between descriptive and straight-forward prose and fills the book with believably improbable characters, the general premise of the book was less interesting to me than the other two novels of his I've read. While I am a great fan of the unlikable narrator, Grady is the sort of protagonist I have a...more
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Read in August, 2006
recommends it for:
Anyone who has taste
I learned that being a pot smoking, washed-up, hippie-like Professor in Pittsburgh isn't all it's cracked up to be.
I also learned that it's one of the things I aspire to be most, although maybe not in Pittsburgh. But somewhere.
Read it, you won't be disappointed. Chabon does an incredible job telling the story of the above described Grady Tripp...especially for an author who's been so consisently good in the past. Upon further reading, it's apparently about an old Professor that Chabon h...more
I also learned that it's one of the things I aspire to be most, although maybe not in Pittsburgh. But somewhere.
Read it, you won't be disappointed. Chabon does an incredible job telling the story of the above described Grady Tripp...especially for an author who's been so consisently good in the past. Upon further reading, it's apparently about an old Professor that Chabon h...more
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Read in January, 2006
recommends it for:
everyone!
My favorite book written by my favorite author, Michael Chabon. Professor Grady Tripp is a former best-selling author whose latest book has become a 2,000 page unfinishable monkey on his back. His editor is under pressure from the publisher to obtain what should be a great sophomore effort. His wife has left him and his mistress is pregnant. He smokes too much pot and blacks out occasionally. He is driftless and directionless. All the while he somehow become attached to one of his students, ...more
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Read in January, 2007
I borrowed this book a few months ago and literally stopped at page 20. I thought it was slow-going and a little overblown. But I loved Chabon's writing style--he seems to be infatuated with language. There were several times I wanted to do the unspeakable and dog-ear pages because the passages were that good...after only a chapter.
Once I made myself read beyond the first twenty pages, I was engrossed. Maybe because I was so disturbed and depressed from reading. I didn't much like Grady, cou...more
Once I made myself read beyond the first twenty pages, I was engrossed. Maybe because I was so disturbed and depressed from reading. I didn't much like Grady, cou...more
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Read in June, 2000
Movie was amazingly close to the book, except for the soon-to-be ex-wife part, and some of teh editor/new boy relationship. Grady Tripp's life is much more fully. . . well, developed isn't the right term, actually it's almost the complete opposite. It unravels quickly throughout the book. He is completely unable to control his life. He is merely reacting. Like a kid sitting in the back seat of a car rolling backwards down the hill, he has no control and makes no real attempt to gain control...more
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Read in September, 2007
Second only to Catcher in the Rye in my all-time favorite list of books. If you are a writer, if you've taken a creative writing class, if you've verged on totally and completely fucking up your life with sweet redemption held just at your fingertips, but which you chose to thumb your nose at for just a teensy bit longer....god, read this book. If you love prose, good prose, jubillant, wild, ecstatic indulgent prose, read Chabon. I just want to roll around in his words and bathe in it like a ...more
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recommends it for:
struggling writers, struggling dope smokers
Tame. Competent. Nearly every chapter ends with a quip. Chabon sums up these chapters every so often, as if he's worried we've forgotten what's happened. His characters are always looking or giving looks. Eyes are often widened. And people are preternaturally perceptive in this novel. Here's a typical example:
She affected not to be surprised to have come upon me thus but I could tell by the way that she held her mouth so perfectly straight, and by a certain telltale dilation of her nostrils, that she had been panicking for hours and might be panicking still....more
She affected not to be surprised to have come upon me thus but I could tell by the way that she held her mouth so perfectly straight, and by a certain telltale dilation of her nostrils, that she had been panicking for hours and might be panicking still....more
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Read in April, 2008
Grady Tripp: "I'd spent my whole life waiting to awake on an ordinary morning in the town that was destined to be my home, in the arms of the woman I was destined to love, knowing the people and doing the work that would make up the changing but essentially invariable landscape of my particular destiny. Instead, here I was, forty-one years old, having left behind dozens of houses, spent a lot of money on vanished possessions and momentary entertainments, fallen desperately in and abruptly ...more
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Read in March, 2003
recommends it for:
narcs and narcotics
My memory of this book is hopelessly intermingled with the movie. I cannot stop imagining Michael Douglas, Frances McDormand, Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey, Jr.
The movie is more polished and mature than the book. The book has long derivations into Passover meals, adopted Jews, small soul singers and bars - wild escapades that don't quite hold water, because they've been trucked in to ground characters' camraderie.
Also, in the book, Frances McDormand's character is chunky and frumpy - Fran...more
The movie is more polished and mature than the book. The book has long derivations into Passover meals, adopted Jews, small soul singers and bars - wild escapades that don't quite hold water, because they've been trucked in to ground characters' camraderie.
Also, in the book, Frances McDormand's character is chunky and frumpy - Fran...more
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one of the few novels that I like less than the movie made from it. the movie actually follows the book pretty closely, except that it cuts out a couple of long scenes that, frankly, the book really doesn't need. I'm possibly being a little bit unfair, though, because I read the book after seeing the movie, and the movie was so brilliantly cast that every time a physical detail in the novel differed from tobey maguire's or michael douglas' performance, I was a bit distracted.
and in gener...more
and in gener...more
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Read in August, 2007
I absolutely adore the movie adaptation, so I was both biased in favor of the book and concerned that Chabon would somehow "screw up" the story that was his in the first place. He didn't, but I still like the movie better. The film is zanier—more of a comedy, while the novel is a drama with some great one liners (and yeah, a dent in the hood of a car shaped like a butt). I enjoyed the backstory about Grady's wife's family and their passover dinner; it certainly made Grady's ch...more
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Read in September, 2006
recommends it for:
people who liked High Fidelity
This reads like a much better version of High Fidelity. I mean, High Fidelity wasn't bad, but Chabon is a better writer and the Wonder Boys has a lot more depth. I saw the movie and have a kind of vague but pleasant memory of it (not entirely the movies' fault, this is the way my memory works with most movies). Anyway, the characters are so specific and wonderfully drawn in the book I can't quite believe that anyone could have gotten them right, by which I mean the way I grew to see them in m...more
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
Alex, Phil
It felt cinematic, and that's probably why it translated into a good movie (so I hear).
It's such a crapshoot to read stories that writers write about their writing, but I think Chabon does a good job of making an interesting story that allows for plenty of self-analysis without seeming too forced. Some of the symbolic items in Grady's car (the tuba, the carcasses, and briefly his book) and the car itself were way too symbolic. I got a little annoyed deciphering the signals. It was like that ...more
It's such a crapshoot to read stories that writers write about their writing, but I think Chabon does a good job of making an interesting story that allows for plenty of self-analysis without seeming too forced. Some of the symbolic items in Grady's car (the tuba, the carcasses, and briefly his book) and the car itself were way too symbolic. I got a little annoyed deciphering the signals. It was like that ...more
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Read in January, 2000
recommends it for:
Anyone
As a reader before movie-goer, what I'm about to write seems sacrilegious, but...
I actually liked the movie version of this better than the book - because the organization was tighter and the characters more vivid. I was slightly disappointed with the book - though it was still a good read.
I loved the characters, the town, the festival of literati and so and so forth. Definitely worth reading, but you must make a pledge to yourself to watch the film once you're done.
Edit: I just read o...more
I actually liked the movie version of this better than the book - because the organization was tighter and the characters more vivid. I was slightly disappointed with the book - though it was still a good read.
I loved the characters, the town, the festival of literati and so and so forth. Definitely worth reading, but you must make a pledge to yourself to watch the film once you're done.
Edit: I just read o...more
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.98 (3136 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 4.00 (2248 ratings) number of reviews: 227popular shelves
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quote
"I knew that I shouldn’t have, but I did it all the same; and there you have my epitaph, or one of them, because my grave is going to require a monument inscribed on all four sides with rueful mottoes, in small characters, set close together.
"
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