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Wonder Boys

3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 · rating details · 17,619 ratings · 995 reviews

In his first novel since The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon presents a hilarious and heartbreaking work—the story of the friendship between the eponymous “wonder boys”—Grady, an aging writer who has lost his way, and Tripp, whose relentless debauchery is capsizing his career.

368 pages

Published (first published 1995)

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Oct 01, 2007 Dusty Myers rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 old flannel...more 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 old flannel shirt, he kept glancing over at Crabtree, not in any mawkish way but with a deliberateness and an air of wonder, as if studying Crabtree, memorizing the geometry of his knees and elbows."

Indeed, at every point in the novel where Crabtree—the editor of the novel's narrator, Grady Tripp, who teaches James Leer in his fiction workshop—is shown gallivanting with a drag queen or seducing James, his sexuality is taken very much in stride. He's, sure, a bit of a predator, but he's so in all facets of his personality. The drugs and debauchery he pushes on other characters is far more threatening than his unforced deflowering of Grady's student.

One other thing that rings true and respectable in the novel is this point Grady makes after he realizes Crabtree won't be publishing his 2000-page unfinished novel:

"It's not fashionable, I know, in this unromantic age, for a reasonably straight man to think of finding his destiny in the love of another man, but that was how I'd always thought of Crabtree. I guess you could say that in a strange sort of way I'd always believed that Crabtree was my man, and I was his."

For a while there's been a strange part of me that has tried to argue that it's gay men that make the friendships among men more important or noteworthy somehow, that, like, in introducing the laughable danger of potential one-way attraction, or maybe just the simple idea of men finding it in themselves to devote their lives to other men, the lines between gay and straight are properly blurred, and whatever it means to be a man gets attached to a more full and honorable set of attributes.

I'm not sure I have the rhetorical ammo to fully develop the argument, but Chabon's novel seems to be pointing to something I've felt for a few years now.(less)

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Sep 23, 2007 Mandy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

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 bub...more

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May 29, 2009 mark rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: cynics

Shelves: men-s-fiction, really-bad-books, relationships

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's calling out to me" "Rea...more 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's calling out to me" "Read me!" This novel angered me. I felt it was dishonest and made a mockery of fiction writers and the craft of writing. It is the story of a creative writing professor who can't finish his epic novel. The "Wonder Boys" is a novel about writing the Wonder Boys, and takes place over the course of two days in which the protagonist is constantly stoned and/or drunk as he manages to fuckup his entire life (but comes out living happily ever after): He survives his wife leaving him; has his novel rejected by his editor and 20yr old beautiful female student; loses the manuscrpit; gets bit by a dog; is an accessory to several crimes, gets skulled with a baseball bat; gets fired; and has the self-discovery that he is a fraud. After these events, the baseball-bat-wheeling man's wife (who the hero has gotten pregnant) decides to marry him, support him, and get him a new job.

How's that for reality? Ironic because a point the author, Michael Chabon, makes is that fiction should reveal truths. I agree with that. If the life of writers is like what Chabon depicts ... well, no wonder the world is so fucked up. This is presented as a comedy. (It was made into a movie.) I didn't laugh once in reading it. I didn't cry once. I found myself only getting aggitated by its stupidity. The author makes a point of being critical of the protagonist's novel because it goes off point and rambles on and on with irrelevant discriptions. I often skipped pages of this novel for that very thing. The same can be said for the characters ... I didn't identify, or like, any of them. There was not a scene in the novel that I felt was authentic.

How's this for humor: The editor/publisher is the protagonist's best friend, and gay. He is on the backside of forty. He takes a twenty year old, suicidal, male student (who is the child of his grandfather, who raped his mother) and drugs him; and then uses him for sexual gratification. Then he rewards him by publishing HIS iffy novel and dumps the protagonist's.

One reviewer said that this novel was about "... the only things that really matter." I guess what matters is getting published and laid; and that it does NOT matter how one gets to that end, or who gets hurt in the process.(less)

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Jun 20, 2007 Jake rated it 3 of 5 stars

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?

The e...more

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Jul 09, 2007 Casey rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: the hydra

Shelves: to-re-read

chabon's adaptation of the famous tenacious d song.

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Sep 10, 2007 Dolores rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this book after I saw the movie, so I am judging it a bit backwards. I read with a vision in my head of the way the characters were portrayed in the film, and tried to envision them the way Michael Chabon wrote them. For example, in the book, Grady Tripp is a large, imposing man, and his friend and editor, Terry Crabtree, is the same age as he is, and they have been friends since college. Of course, in the film, the slender Michael Douglas plays Grady, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Crabtre...more I read this book after I saw the movie, so I am judging it a bit backwards. I read with a vision in my head of the way the characters were portrayed in the film, and tried to envision them the way Michael Chabon wrote them. For example, in the book, Grady Tripp is a large, imposing man, and his friend and editor, Terry Crabtree, is the same age as he is, and they have been friends since college. Of course, in the film, the slender Michael Douglas plays Grady, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Crabtree, making him about 20 years younger. But, things always change when books are adapted to film. I think the screenwriter did a fine job adapting this novel to the screen, and keeping it fairly faithful to the book.
Michael Chabon is a very descriptive writer, as far as feelings, sensations, smells and the like. He focuses mainly on Grady Tripp as narrator here, and a lot on Crabtree and James Leer. He is also more open about Crabtree's sexuality in the book, although it wasn't exactly hidden in the movie. There were also some changes, like the name and breed of the dog, which seemed kind of unnecessary.

All in all, I found this book a well-written page turner, with a very interesting protaganist, the confused, dope-smoking, blocked writer, Grady Tripp. There is much more about his estranged wife and family in the book, and the ending isn't quite as uplifting as the film, plus, I would have liked an epilogue of what happened to the characters after the novel was over. Although, the ending of the book is more realistic and ambivalent than the film.

I couldn't wait to finish the book, and then view the movie again. It's rare that a film is so accurate to the novel and so well-casted. Especially since the author himself did not adapt the screenplay, it is amazingly like the book in almost every way. I couldn't wait to finish the book, because I was really caught up in the lives of the characters. Michael Chabon is definitely a very good writer, and I want to read his other novels, so that I can read them without the pre-existing condition of having seen the film.

(less)

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Apr 08, 2009 Christina Stind rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, fiction

What does a boa constrictor, a tuba, a transvestite, Marilyn Monroe's jacket, a man called Crabtree, a lot of pot, a car with buttprints and a blind dog have in common? They all crosses Grady Tripp's path in the course of two days where Tripp's wife finds out that he has a mistress and that she is pregnant...
So this is no ordinary weekend and Tripp finds himself in one awkward situation after the others. Towards the end, you as the reader finds yourself thinking "figures!" every time something n...more What does a boa constrictor, a tuba, a transvestite, Marilyn Monroe's jacket, a man called Crabtree, a lot of pot, a car with buttprints and a blind dog have in common? They all crosses Grady Tripp's path in the course of two days where Tripp's wife finds out that he has a mistress and that she is pregnant...
So this is no ordinary weekend and Tripp finds himself in one awkward situation after the others. Towards the end, you as the reader finds yourself thinking "figures!" every time something new and weird happens to him. So much bad happens that you are really not surprised anymore - he's just having a really bad weekend.
On top of all this he's trying to finish his 2000+ pages next novel called Wonder Boys and that is really not happening either - so not much is looking up for Tripp.

This book reminded me of Man gone Down by Michael Thomas in that they both takes place over a few days and our narrator is out of luck and trying to get his life back together. But the narrator in this book experiences rather more weird events than in Thomas's book - maybe in part because he's stoned out for most of the book and therefore can't be said to really make any good decisions at all - throughout the book! And that's what makes this book fun to read.

Or fun - well, it's not laugh out loud, slapping your knees fun - but it's amusing - and the last 80 pages or so was amazing. I really liked the book all the way through but the last pages were just so good in tying it all together. Only thing that prevented it from getting a five star rating is that sometimes the language gets in the way. Chabon writes it so well - but a few times I found myself stopping out and re-reading a sentence because it was just so heavy, beautifully written, but heavy. I found myself doing this with Gabriel Marcia Marquez as well but with him it was because it was so beautiful that I had to stop and enjoy it. Here, the language itself stopped me - and didn't further my reading at those points.

But putting aside those few places, this was a book I really enjoyed and I'm looking forward to reading more by Michael Chabon.(less)

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Feb 21, 2009 Jodi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009-read

I really wanted to dislike Wonder Boys. I even tried to dislike it. I mean, here it was a book about writers (barf) by Michael Chabon (barf) who kind of gives me the willies (I think it’s the hair). Despite all that, Wonder Boys still crawled into my heart.

So we’ve got pot-smoking, wife-cheating, never-ending-novel writing Grady Tripp and the weekend from hell. His editor comes into town for writerpalooza or something and brings along a drag queen. Grady’s wife has also chosen that day to leave...more

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Jan 21, 2013 Ann rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can't believe I waited so long to read this; I love the 2000 movie, and think Chabon is a marvelous writer!

This novel demonstrates that he is himself a 'wonder boy' a young writer bursting with the ambition and the talent to make an early mark on the literary scene. "Wonder Boys" is a marvelous showcase for Chabon's lovely prose, and his ability to veer from laugh-out-loud funny to poignant within a few sentences.

The novel concerns the well-named Grady Tripp who, when he isn't under the influe...more

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Feb 08, 2012 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: humor, literature, non-kids-books, novels, read-since-high-school, reviewed, all-time-favorites, to-understand-myself, good-stories

This is a flawed, imperfect book and yet I give it five stars. It earns the stars partly because its own imperfections are consistent with the celebration of humanly flaws throughout the novel, and partly because its digressions, occasionally odd word choice, flailing subplots, and third-act inconsistencies don't detract from the strong, original voice and full-bodied characters. It's also remarkably hilarious. And "true".

Fundamentally, what most impacted me about this book was how powerfully it...more

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Dec 17, 2012 Jason added it

Shelves: read-2010

One of the few books about writers that doesn't make me want to throw it across the room. The writers in this group are all kinds, from Grady, our narrator, who is constantly stoned and is unable to sort the wheat from the chaff in his over 2,000 page long novel (oh how many massive novels needed such an assessment!) to his student James who is a habitual liar and thief who writes with verve and intensity if not greatness (and is amusingly the type of novel that will sell) to the guest lecturer...more One of the few books about writers that doesn't make me want to throw it across the room. The writers in this group are all kinds, from Grady, our narrator, who is constantly stoned and is unable to sort the wheat from the chaff in his over 2,000 page long novel (oh how many massive novels needed such an assessment!) to his student James who is a habitual liar and thief who writes with verve and intensity if not greatness (and is amusingly the type of novel that will sell) to the guest lecturer who semi-believes his tendency to screw up so he can write about it to Grady's other student, Hannah, who is clean living and hard working, published young (not many 20 year olds have published with The Paris Review) and who's only real fault is a schoolgirl crush on Grady.

In the course of things Grady's wife leaves him, his mistress is pregnant, he attends a half-korean passover, kills multiple animals and uses their corpses in disturbing/amusing ways and a not-too small number of thefts and bashing occur. What is surprising is how un-sitcom like the events happen to unfold. They are nearly all terrible decisions, but they are arrived at in an understandable series of poor judgment. For the zanyness of things, the people are understandable and their tragedy is deserved but you still want them to crawl out from under it. When in the end, Grady is served pleasant ending, it isn't a triumphant one, really, it is a broken one and it is the one that makes real sense.

What makes this book is that it is not a book about a writer, per se (though the main protagonist is, in fact, a writer) and while it is peppered with observations about different types of writers and has some thoughts about the process of writing, it is about very flawed people with their obsessions and indiscretions and many mistakes. That it relegated fiction to the telling of lies without making novelists into people that merely give the events of their lives different names (which far far far too many books do) is also quite a relief.(less)

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Aug 12, 2010 R. rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ce roman se déroule dans le milieu universitaire, département littérature. Il aurait pu être écrit par un David Lodge sous cocaïne ou un Bret Easton Ellis sous Valium. Du coup, il est un peu en demi teinte et ne transmet ni le charme et la drôlerie d'un Changement de décor ni le côté complètement déjanté d'un Moins que zéro. L'histoire est racontée par le personnage principal d'un seul jet sans chapitrage ni pause dans la narration. Cette technique, comme le tournage caméra à l'épaule au cinéma,...more

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Jan 25, 2009 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fifty-states-reading-challenge

Last year in my A to Z Reading Challenge I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, written by Hunter S. Thomson . I loathed that book, which was a gratuitous orgy of abuse of drugs, alcohol, and women . There was no redeeming value. Michael Chabon, in writing Wonder Boys,
has told the tale of another author also caught in a personal struggle with the "midnight disease."

Grady Tripp is a professor of creative writing at an unnamed university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (the movie of the same name was...more

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Aug 10, 2009 Katie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's funny, but every time someone tells Grady his novel's a bust, I'm not sure if they mean his Wonder Boys, or the one in my hands.

Because oi, what a bust.

First off, Chabon's a great writer. He globs the exposition thick, but his simile and characterization are so spot-on that I let it pass. As for story....

The big beefs:
1. Great first one-hundred pages. Then we're ripped out of Philadelphia and all central plot lines (the finishing of the novel, the stolen jacket, the pregnant lover), and...more

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Jun 20, 2007 Andy rated it 4 of 5 stars 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 had in und...more

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Feb 14, 2009 Justin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 10-best-books-read-in-2009

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 13, 2013 Evin Hughes rated it 5 of 5 stars

After first viewing the film based on the book last June, I was hungry to read the book; starving as I was for more information about the midnight disease, I purchased the book from the Strand bookstore on a returning, sight-seeing trip to NYC. I learned that the intriguing and sad character professor Grady Tripp first encountered the idea when he was a child: A writer by the name of Albert Vetch—who, explained on the first page of the novel, wrote under the name of August Van Zorn—lived in the...more After first viewing the film based on the book last June, I was hungry to read the book; starving as I was for more information about the midnight disease, I purchased the book from the Strand bookstore on a returning, sight-seeing trip to NYC. I learned that the intriguing and sad character professor Grady Tripp first encountered the idea when he was a child: A writer by the name of Albert Vetch—who, explained on the first page of the novel, wrote under the name of August Van Zorn—lived in the hotel that Grady’s grandmother owned. Vetch, saddened by the death of a lover, eventually killed himself. Chabon describes the midnight disease as “a kind of emotional insomnia; at every conscious moment its victim—even if he or she writes at dawn, or in the middle of the afternoon—feels like a person lying in a sweltering bedroom, with the window thrown up, looking up at a sky filled with stars and airplanes, listening to the narrative of a rattling blind, an ambulance, fly trapped in a Coke bottle, while all around him the neighbors soundly sleep” (p. 20).

Another author in Wonder Boys, Q., had written a book about a man whose Doppelgänger was ruining his life. Tripp thinks this idea is a lot like the nature of he midnight disease— “[it] started out as a simple feeling of disconnection from other people, an inability to “fit in” by no means unique to writers, a sense of envy and of unbridgeable distance like that felt by someone tossing on a restless pillow in a world full of sleepers. Very quickly, though, what happened with the midnight disease was that you began actually to crave this feeling of apartness, to cultivate and even flourish within it. You pushed yourself farther and farther apart until one black day you woke to discover that you yourself had become the chief object of your own hostile gaze” (p. 76). At the risk of over-explaining—and boring you all with long passages from the book—there is one more place that the midnight disease was mentioned in the book: “I looked up at the dark window and thought of how it was said that acute insomniacs often experienced a kind of queasy blurring of the lines between dreams and wakefulness, their waking lives taking on some of the surprising tedium of a nightmare. Maybe the midnight disease was like that, too. After a while you lost the ability to distinguish between your fictional and actual worlds; you confused yourself with your characters, and the random happenings of your life with the machinations of a plot” (p. 233).

The movie does a good job of following the book aside from a large portion of the middle. In the book, Grady—and James Leer, a student of his—goes to his wife’s parent’s house and spends passover with them. And, not that this really matters in the way of plot, but I don’t remember his wife being Korean in the film though she is in the book. In the movie, if my memory is correct, the Marilyn-Monroe-coat that James stole from Walter’s bedroom was never given back to him, but in the book it was. Also in the book there was an amazing scene in which Walter, having finally been told that Grady was having an affair with his wife Sara, confronts Grady—I don’t want to ruin it for you but there is a Joe-DiMaggio-baseball-bat used for retribution.(less)

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Mar 08, 2013 Vincent rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 03, 2013 Bob Wake rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

[Reviewed in 2000]

Michael Chabon’s luminous 1988 coming-of-age novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, is one of the auspicious literary debuts of the last dozen or so years. Written in an assured and full-throated lyrical voice, the book began life as an MFA thesis and was published to critical acclaim and bestsellerdom when Chabon was only 24 years old. He then spent the next five years assiduously working on an epic second novel titled Fountain City. After completing some 1,500 pages, he came to...more

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Feb 10, 2013 Linsey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Very well-written prose in most parts of the book, and then there will be a page where the book takes the easy way out of exploring debauchery by just delving into crass. I think the book would have stood more ground without the f-bombs and other descriptive terms. Not that I am against that in a novel, it just didn't seem to fit into this novel and it sort of shook me personally out of the rhythm of the book. I love books about people writing books. And there were several well phrased lines in...more

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Dec 20, 2012 Kevan Manwaring rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A hilarious campus novel - wayward Grady Tripp is an American cousin of Kingsley Amis' Jim Dixon (the feckless academic from 'Lucky Jim'). His drug-enhanced misadventures through small town America and big-headed academia are an amusing jumble of David Lodge mixed with 'Withnail and I' and 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'. Tripp is a great comic character - a pot-bellied, pot-smoking professor of creative writing, whose 2000-page unfinished magnum opus he carries albatross-like around the doldru...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Erik rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: has-good-review

Considering that Michael Chabon is one of my favorite authors, I have to say that this was something of a disappointment. The writing didn't quite have the same snap, crackle, pop that Kavalier & Clay or Yiddish Policeman Union's had. I never felt, in those two books, that the author was purposefully trying to show-off with his writing. There were, however, quite a few instances of that here in Wonderboys. But beyond that, it was just a little... wearying.

One of my uncles once said that he c...more

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Oct 26, 2012 Edmole rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'd always put off reading this because, although I love Chabon with all my glitchy old heart, the premise of a middle aged writer trying to avoid submitting a book to his publishers sounded awful. But then I saw a chewed up copy in the charity shop with that brilliant, busy cover and thought, why not? All his other books are a writer writing about writing, why not a writer writing about writers writing? Even if it's a write-off, it's only a pound. (Love you, Dalston Oxfam).

So, it was well worth...more I'd always put off reading this because, although I love Chabon with all my glitchy old heart, the premise of a middle aged writer trying to avoid submitting a book to his publishers sounded awful. But then I saw a chewed up copy in the charity shop with that brilliant, busy cover and thought, why not? All his other books are a writer writing about writing, why not a writer writing about writers writing? Even if it's a write-off, it's only a pound. (Love you, Dalston Oxfam).

So, it was well worth six hours and a hundred pence. As I edge toward middle-age feeling like I've missed a meeting somewhere along the way, it's a relief to read about a bigger fool than I. A smart guy who's an idiot, a writer who writes too much, lucky in love despite not deserving the time of day, and stumbling through a fug of craved for weed smoke. It made me feel a little better, if not a little worse. He pals up with a young writer who he teaches at university, and they have various aimless adventures all of which are designed to avoid getting anything done. (See, the premise sounds awful.)

I spent nine tenths of the book wondering if the book was going anywhere, which I think is sort of the point, although a sort of resolution does come. This is a sympathetic portrait of an unsympathetic narrator, and the reason it works is because we all feel like flailing bums a lot of the time, and because Chabon is just a deeply brilliant, happy, human writer. Even in what could be a mundane subject - men find out the extent of their failures through continual failure - he finds an endless parade of rich ideas, feelings and things to explicate.

The book has a little bit of a downer on male friendships. As in real life, relationships between men are flimsy, built on shared pleasures and denials, and not as meaningful or yearned for as relationships with women.

'"I guess it's probably better if you don't come with me."

"I guess it is." I said.

It hurt me to have to say it. All male friendships are essentially quixotic: they last only so long as each man is willing to polish the shaving bowl helmet, climb on his donkey, and ride off after the other in pursuit of illusive glory and questionable adventure.'(less)

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Aug 08, 2012 sologdin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary

Saw the movie when it came out, just now catching up to the novel--so it's difficult to avoid thinking of this as a fin de siecle mixer for Son of Spartacus, Wayne Gale, the second-to-last kid who played Spiderman, the girl from Dawson's Creek, John Boy, the cop from Fargo, the boss from Men in Black, and Wash from Firefly.

Lotsa fun, for what it is, which is an academic's apologia for writing novels while admitting in novel form the impossibility of the novel. (That the 2000+ page unpublishable...more

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May 11, 2012 Aaron Mcquiston rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If we were to categorize books that have literary merit but are depressingly non-enjoyable in a human sense, "Wonder Boys" would be a front runner. Michael Chabon can write. I give him that. Michael Chabon also writes the worst books I've ever read. Here you have a story about a writer (that's a tough plot to start with) that is not in touch with reality (the character is even harder to write) whom screws everything up because it is much easier to do the wrong thing than to be right all the time...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Mark Harding rated it 3 of 5 stars

Just look at that cover illustration. Sometimes a picture says a thousand words…

I realise this is the last thing one is supposed to say about the Pullitzer Prize, genre supporting, American Academy of Arts and Sciences member, but I wasn’t that taken with Wonder Boys. Two reasons basically:

1. I couldn’t give a damn about what happens to the main characters
2. The ‘Vidal Arthur Miller problem’.
1. All the blokes are complete wankers, all the women are angels. The young writer James Leer is a compl...more Just look at that cover illustration. Sometimes a picture says a thousand words…

I realise this is the last thing one is supposed to say about the Pullitzer Prize, genre supporting, American Academy of Arts and Sciences member, but I wasn’t that taken with Wonder Boys. Two reasons basically:

1. I couldn’t give a damn about what happens to the main characters
2. The ‘Vidal Arthur Miller problem’.
1. All the blokes are complete wankers, all the women are angels. The young writer James Leer is a completely selfish, self-centered c**t who needs good kick up the backside. The hero Grady Tripp is selflessly kindly, but so incompetent as to lose all sympathy. Despite actually caring about his students, it is evident he is no benefit to them and in several cases is probably detrimental. What is Tripp for? Why does he exist? Why would I care? The perils of the story are Tripp could lose his job (well, he deserves to) and in the end does, and so what? It doesn’t matter to him. Despite his best intentions he is obviously a leech on women and one pities Sara, his final conquest/ victim. Nothing matters: he can take drugs — it doesn’t matter, he can prevaricate about revealing the news of deaths and theft to the police — it doesn’t matter, his wife leaves him — it doesn’t matter.

I suppose we are to see this as semi-subconscious self-destruction. A necessary introduction of chaos to feed the writer’s imagination. I suppose we are to take this a the writer’s excuse for bad behaviour. Or it’s both. Or, yawn…

Really, you just want the subprime mortgage crisis to foreclose their homes and put them all out in the street. But of course it won’t, as they are all established rentier class. What are these leeches for?

2 The other problem is Tripp’s mysterious attractiveness. Women — including a young, sexy student — throw themselves at him. It’s hard to see why. It reminded me of Gore Vidal’s criticism of a Henry Miller novel: if it was all so true, why don’t we come across the passage where somebody says “Henry, you’re full of bullshit.” Why not “Grady, you’re a wanker: just fuck off”?

The book is meant to be funny but really isn’t for the first 200 pages, and after that only sporadically. Probably this is because I couldn’t get over points 1 and 2. Perhaps I’m in a grumpy mood? Maybe the recession is killing comedy? Or more likely, comedy of a certain kind.

The Warshaw family are charming, funny, complex and delightful. Alas, they are a minor part. (They are the Wonder Boys that Tripp is trying to invent, I guess.)(less)

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Jan 20, 2012 Jennifer rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: A die-hard Michael Chabon fan

Shelves: read-in-2012

(spoilers) I really wanted to like this book. I had read a different Chabon book and enjoyed it, and I've heard great things about Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Bob Dylan even won an Oscar for a song inspired by this/written for the soundtrack of this movie. Yet, as I was reading it, I found the prose got very tiresome, perhaps much like Grady's hulking novel he couldn't finish. I didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them. I didn't care that Grady's wife left him. I did...more

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Dec 28, 2011 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: library

"Sara would read anything you handed her--Jean Rhys, Jean Shepherd, Jean Genet--at a steady rate of sixty-five pages an hour, grimly and unsparingly and without apparent pleasure. She read upon waking, sitting on the toilet, stretched out in the backseat of the car. When she went to the movies she took a book with her, to read before the show began, and it was not unusual to find her standing in front of the microwave, with a book in one hand and a fork in the other, heating a cup of noodle soup...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Ryan Williams added it

When I decided to read Wonder boys by Michael Chabon, I did not expect much. However, this is just like how I go in to all books. I do not expect much until I actually read it and I take it from there. So when I started reading Wonder Boys, I realized that I had made a great decision on the book I had chosen. This book was one of those that was extremely hard to put down. I stayed up late at nights reading it, I used my breaks at work to read a chapter or two, and I carried it around with me whe...more When I decided to read Wonder boys by Michael Chabon, I did not expect much. However, this is just like how I go in to all books. I do not expect much until I actually read it and I take it from there. So when I started reading Wonder Boys, I realized that I had made a great decision on the book I had chosen. This book was one of those that was extremely hard to put down. I stayed up late at nights reading it, I used my breaks at work to read a chapter or two, and I carried it around with me where ever I went, just in case I had the opportunity to find time to read any of it at all. Chabon’s writing style is impeccable in this book. I have not read any other of his works (though I plan on it), so I can not relate it to them. However, I can tell you, from what I have read, that he could potentially become one of the writers that I refer to everyone else who is looking for a good book to read. Chabon incorporated so many different scenarios in to his book that all eventually pieced together. A writer that does this already has my respect. There were times when I mouth would drop because of what had happened in the book and other times when I would actually laugh out loud. This, along with Catcher and The Rye and Catch-22, is one of the only few books that has actually been able to make me laugh out loud. However, Chabon is just that type of writer and I encourage who ever is reading this review to simply read the first chapter. I assure you, that after that, you will want to keep reading. I must warn you though, that after this, it will be very hard to put the book down, on account of it is extremely interesting and well written. Another thing about the writing style of Michael Chabon in The Wonder Boys that I would like to point out is his ability to make it seem like what is about to happen, is not actually about to happen. To be more clear, there will be times when you think everything in the story is alright, but a drastic change occurs and you find yourself perplexed by what had just happened because you did not see it coming. This happened many times in the book and though it would seem as if I should have been used to it, I never did. Michael Chabon is just that kind of writer and even the dialogue, which I usually hate when there is a lot in books, interested me. He just writes well enough so that descriptions and explanations catch your attention. The most usual mundane things a book can offer is what Michael Chabon glorifies in his books and he is wonderful for doing it. I strongly recommend that you read this book!(less)

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Oct 30, 2011 Ian Drew Forsyth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: writing

It's a book about writing and writers. A washed out stoned professor is trying to keep the strands of his life together as they unwind over a fateful weekend. I like when Tripp feels that escape impulse, like when he tells Leer they're leaving town and they must get supplies. The only downside of the book is the dinner with his relatives, which I thought dragged a bit, even though the characters were rounded enough individually.
There is a certain ambitious impatience throughout the book, which...more

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The Bookworms of RVA: Meeting April 7 Sunday 6pm: Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon	1	9	Mar 22, 2013 10:26am
one of my favorite books and movies!!!!	2	58	Oct 12, 2012 04:43am
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About Michael Chabon

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 mad...more

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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure

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Quotes from Wonder Boys

“There's nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.” — 103 people liked it

“The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had too much to write:

too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming,

too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within,

too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again,

too many divorces to grant,

heirs to disinherit,

trysts to arrange,

letters to misdirect into evil hands,

innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever,

women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless,

men to drive to adultery and theft,

fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses. ” — 87 people liked it

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