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Wonder Boys

Michael Chabon

3.93 · Rating details · 31,604 ratings · 1,838 reviews

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

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Paperback, 368 pages

Published January 1996 by Picador USA (first published March 14th 1995)

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Sep 19, 2007 Mandy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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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Dec 07, 2016 Bradley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fanboy-goes-squee, traditional-fiction, writing, 2016-shelf

What the heck have I been doing with my life! Wonder Boys has been one of my favorite movies of all time because it hits all the wonderful buttons of writing and reading and being deliciously messed up and being so HUMAN.

And then somewhere along the line I read The Yiddish Policemen's Union and I still didn't make the connection.

So when I DID finally make the connection that one of favorite movies was really based on a book by an author I already described to myself as "wonderfully inventive and ...more

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Sep 26, 2007 Dusty Myers rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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 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. ...more

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Jan 06, 2008 mark rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: cynics

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

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

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Dec 09, 2012 Robert rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: kindle-deals, robert-s-reads

On the surface, Grady Tripp is probably one of the most loathsome individuals I have ever read about in literature—he’s spent seven years on a 2,611 page monstrosity that has gone absolutely nowhere and like his life meandered everywhere, he’s come to the dissolution of his third marriage, he’s carried on an affair for about five years with the married chancellor who is now carrying his child, he’s smoked an entire football field of weed, and yet he can’t seem to cut himself off, and he harbors ...more

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Jul 20, 2009 Kemper rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: plain-old-fiction

This is the second book I've read recently that involved the main character being an adulterer, impregnating someone other than his wife, and generally being such a screw-up that they wreck the life of anyone who depends on them. But while I hated Rabbit from Rabbit, Run to the point of wishing he was real so I could find him and pummel him with a baseball bat, I actually LIKED Grady Tripp and rooted for him to put down the joint and get his act together.

I'd read Chabon's The Amazing Adventures ...more

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Apr 27, 2014 Cher rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: abandoned-dnf

1 star - I really hated it.

Somewhere around the part where the main character requested a pen to draw faces on his "wiener" (the author's fancy word choice, not mine) as he "pissed" behind a tree, I came to the realization that the remaining 179 pages were probably going to be just as unsatisfactory as the first 209 had been. Immediately after deciding to officially DNF this one, I smiled for the first time since I had chosen to pick it up. For a book that screams, "Look at me! I'm funny. I'm so ...more

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Aug 03, 2017 Edward Lorn rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It's been quite some time since I last laughed out loud while reading/listening to a book. Several scenes in this novel caught me just right, mainly, I feel, because Chabon and I share a certain man-child sense of humor. If you identify as a man-child, maybe pick up this book and give it a read. It's surprisingly short for being so long, which is to say, it's extremely well written, to the point that the words disappear and you're left with a movie playing out on the walls of your mind.

The audi ...more

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Jan 24, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: fans of John Irving, people who liked the movie

Shelves: the-tops, read-in-2012, you-should-read-this, own

Michael Chabon!! Where have you been all my life? What a great book! I loved the film version, but the book is even better. I must admit, it was impossible not to picture Michael Douglas and Toby Maguire as I read, but that's not a bad thing. I love the character Grady Tripp. He's just the type of guy I would have fallen for in my youth: ridiculously intelligent, creative, professorial, and hopelessly, tragically flawed. "As long as she was falling in love with me, I might as well start making h ...more

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May 21, 2007 Casey rated it it was amazing · 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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May 11, 2012 Aaron Mcquiston rated it it was ok

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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Feb 26, 2007 Jake rated it liked it · review of another edition

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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Feb 04, 2019 Mattia Ravasi rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Video review

For writers, and people who always suspected life was kind of a Lovecraft ripoff.

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Nov 20, 2018 Nick Younker rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is one of my favorite novels of all time. Although I didn't particularly like one section that dragged ass with his estranged wife's family, this book has major page turning power and it kept me engaged all the way through. Chabon has talent, and the world should know it.

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Mar 09, 2019 Lyubov rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A funny morbid tale that includes a dead dog, a smashed snake and a tuba.
You can tell that it is an early work of Chabon but you still enjoy the ride.

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Jul 30, 2007 Dolores rated it really liked it · 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 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.

...more

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Jul 14, 2009 John rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: no one

Recommended to John by: no one

Trifling. After I put this down that's the only thing I could think of that would accurately convey what I was feeling after burning precious brain cells and wasting God-given minutes I'll never get back. But maybe I was wrong? After all when Chabon first appeared on the scene along with Ethan Canin, they were the "boy wonders" of literature - talented, handsome, smart, with big book deals to boot. They'd set the publishing world on fire; who was I to try and put out the flame?

So, one day I was ...more

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Jul 04, 2017 Jeremy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great read, much to think about, in terms of the creative process, life, marriage, academia, addiction, youth, aging, suicide...it's also a tour de force of tiny bursts of comic commentary. Some sentences just ripple with arch satire, sarcasm, and deft instantaneous comic portrayals of characters and situations, where truth is hilarious and hilarity rings true.
I saw the movie first, loved it, and hesitated for a long time to read the book, thinking either that there would be nothing to add, or t ...more

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Jun 12, 2017 Stef Smulders rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish

I was not expecting to ever quit a book by Chabon but this one turned out not to be to my taste. Characters not knowing where to go and what to do, a story that has no direction either. And all the detailed descriptions (do I really need to know the way even the minor characters are dressed, what they look like, how they smell?) slow down the pace even more. I could appreciate the humor and most of the writing, although even here the author is exaggerating in all his metaphores, many of which ar ...more

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Dec 15, 2016 Ms.pegasus rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: anyone looking for a book about writers

Shelves: fiction

Even chaos can become predictable. Marijuana, alcohol, three marriages, an ongoing infidelity with his department head's wife, a peripatetic silver-tongued agent who pops drugs like tic-tacs, and a seven year publishing dry spell have been shepherding the hapless main character, author Grady Tripp, to the fateful weekend chronicled in this novel. It's a weekend that will arouse atomized glimpses of self-awareness in Tripp.

Chabon has stashed a cache of writerly tics in his character. Grady's maid ...more

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Aug 13, 2010 Ken rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: finished-in-2010, contemporary

Unfortunately, there's a long history of books set in academia where the protagonist a.) is a professor, b.) is an alcoholic or substance abuser, c.) is having trouble getting it up (it = his writing muse), and d.) is tempted by or tempting to the tender vittles we know and love as co-eds. Given how cliche all of this is, you would think that authors would consider this formula strictly where angels fear to tread, but no.

Welcome to WONDER BOYS, Michael Chabon's novel about a washed-up writer sla Unfortunately, there's a long history of books set in academia where the protagonist a.) is a professor, b.) is an alcoholic or substance abuser, c.) is having trouble getting it up (it = his writing muse), and d.) is tempted by or tempting to the tender vittles we know and love as co-eds. Given how cliche all of this is, you would think that authors would consider this formula strictly where angels fear to tread, but no.

Welcome to WONDER BOYS, Michael Chabon's novel about a washed-up writer slash professor with a weed habit, a book he cannot finish, a bevy of babes (some young enough to be his daughter) to choose from, and a penchant for disaster. The title comes from the behemoth of a novel Grady Tripp cannot finish, but you needn't Wonder why when you see the lifestyle he lives.

Of all the books I've read of this ilk, the only one to pull it off with aplomb is Thomas Williams' THE HAIR OF HAROLD ROUX -- also named after the professor slash alcoholic's book-in-progress. Only, happily, Williams devoted whole swaths of his book to the novel-within-a-novel, which Chabon does little if any of.

It wasn't until a hundred pages in that I realized what Chabon was up to. Yes, this was a comic novel. The problem was in timing. As I read, I kept saying how yes, this could be funny, but only in a movie. In book form, the rather ponderous narrative kept slowing the punchlines down, but the visuals -- blessed with the right actors -- could do wonders with this work. I looked it up and found that it was made into a movie with Michael Douglas and Robert Downey, Jr., as Crabapple, Tripp's gay and diabolical editor who is out to seduce one of Tripp's vulnerable students, a wannabe (what else?) writer named James (played by Tobey Macguire in the film I have yet to see).

The book lumbers along with set scenes at a seder (Tripp's estranged wife's family) for Passover out in the country and at bars, his pregnant girlfriend's house, and the various buildings of the campus. It would help to like Grady Tripp more, but it's hard to do. Is there anything more pitiful, after all, than a middle-aged man still doing weed? And he's filled with so much self-loathing that you can't help but give him an assist after awhile (with the loathing, I mean).

In the end, all's well that ends well, as Chabon chooses the Shakespearean comedy route for his denouement. Again, the violins swell as moviedom tries to sweep the book away. Did he write it with Hollywood in mind? Odd, considering it is a book purportedly "about writers."

Not bad, but unsatisfying in the end. To me, the freshman outing called The Mysteries of Pittsburgh remains Chabon's best. ...more

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Mar 07, 2014 Darwin8u rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

A strong, early Chabon. It has all the things that I love about Michael Chabon: the quirky characters, the beautiful filigreed prose, the androgenous and ambiguous lovers. But, it also contains more warmth and crazy energy than some of his later books. And I appreciate that. I appreciate the feeling that this book ran past Chabon's careful editing. Its kinetic narrative isn't about to be slowed by careful massaging. To Hell with all that. In someways it feels a bit like the Pastoral Wanderings o ...more

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Apr 07, 2013 Will Mego rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nearby-library-has, already-own, read-in-2018

Being far too depressed to attempt any sort of cogent "review" of this book, all I can say is that it's terrific, and one of only a few books to ever make me laugh audibly. Perhaps that's a sad statistic to cite, but while I've found many books funny, few have actually made me genuinely laugh, as several scenes here did.

I came into this book with both unreasonably high expectations after enjoying The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay as well as an unreasonable expectation of disappointm ...more

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Dec 24, 2012 Marieke rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: e-book, 2012, fiction, united-states, i-saw-the-film-first, 2013

I liked it. I didn't love it...unlike many of my friends. oh well. and although i could say i "really liked" parts of it, i did not "really like" all of it. i scribbled down some notes, so hopefully i'll be back shortly, maybe even tomorrow, to clarify what i did and what i did not like (so much). This was my first Chabon novel that i completed. I started one once but got distracted (oops), but do intend to read his others. Even (perhaps especially) the one that got accidentally left behind.

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Mar 20, 2009 Christina rated it really liked it · 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 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. ...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Raymond Rose rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It’s funny when I think about how much it took for me to read this book. I was basically prodded and yelled at and asked repeatedly to read this book for the better part of a year before I did. A friend of mine was like, “You’re a writer! It’s about writers! You have to read it!” Eventually, I broke down and did. And man, were they right!

I read the book right on the heels of Richard Russo’s Straight Man (which, interestingly enough, the two books make wonderful book ends to each other and should ...more

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Nov 02, 2012 Bruce Roderick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Each of the several times I've gone back to re-read Wonder Boys I've taken something different from it. While I still remain in awe of Chabon's magnificent prose and expansive vocabulary its still the protagonist that keeps me coming back for more.

Having studied English Literature and taken writing courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and now teaching these at university level, I confess I have a biased connection and perspective to this novel. While every character is masterfu ...more

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Mar 30, 2008 Margaret rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I remember being surprised at how much I liked this book that seemed so silly and focused on characters about whom I cared so little, especially the main character, Grady Tripp, who is a real jerk. But Chabon is talented and the book has real charm. The movie, while good, doesn't quite do it justice.

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Feb 21, 2017 Shawn Mooney marked it as did-not-finish · review of another edition

Shelves: did-not-finish-2017

Wonderful writing: not at all my kind of story. Bailed a third of the way in.

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Mar 03, 2013 Bob Wake rated it it was amazing

[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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Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Madison Mega-Mara...: #16 Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon	1	3	Jan 30, 2016 03:35PM
New Book with Careless Protagonist	1	13	Nov 17, 2014 11:37AM
Goodreads Librari...: Please add cover?	9	28	Aug 22, 2013 03:02AM
The Bookworms of RVA: Meeting April 7 Sunday 6pm: Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon	1	12	Mar 22, 2013 10:26AM
Goodreads Librari...: Wonder Boys - wrong isbn? reused isbn?	3	38	Apr 28, 2012 04:08PM
one of my favorite books and movies!!!!	1	67	Jun 23, 2007 01:59PM

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About Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon

6,268 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 mad ...more