Wonder Boys (1995)

An immediately engaging and funny book following the trials of a ageing writer struggling (and failing) to finish his lon-awaited-for fourth novel over the course of a single weekend. The dramatis personae assembled for this farce include dead dog, a squished snake, Vietnamese Jews, the jacket Marilyn Monroe wore on the day she married Joe Dimaggio, a tuba, a sad transvestite and an endless assortment of oddballs.

Here's the synopsis from Wikipedia: Pittsburgh professor and author Grady Tripp is working on an unwieldy 2,611 page manuscript that is meant to be the follow-up to his successful, award-winning novel The Land Downstairs, that was published seven years earlier. On the eve of a college-sponsored writers and publishers weekend called WordFest, two monumental things happen to Tripp: his wife walks out on him, and he learns that his mistress, who is also the chancellor of the college, Sara Gaskell, is pregnant with his child. To top it all off, Tripp finds himself involved in a bizarre crime involving one of his students, an alienated young writer named James Leer. During a party, Leer shoots and kills the chancellor's dog and steals her husband's prized Marilyn Monroe collectible: the jacket worn by the starlet on her wedding day to Joe DiMaggio.

The book also includes what I find one of the more memorable names populating the fiction I've recently read: August Van Horn is the tragic writer of sci-fi novels who is revealed to have found some postumous popularity among at least three of the book's characters - functioning as a kind of Shibboleth actually. Dunno why such a hokey name has stuck with me (maybe it's actually got more to do with the narrative than the actual name).

Here's a fairly incisive passage from the New York Times review: Mr. Chabon is that rare thing, an intelligent lyrical writer. Because his comedy always reins in his romantic impulses, his work seems to reflect a nature that is at once passionate and satirical. The result is a tone of graceful melancholy punctuated by a gentle and humane good humor. Mr. Chabon's characters are certainly confused, but he never condescends to them. Grady Tripp is presented as a mass of contradictions, but Mr. Chabon doesn't think he's hapless and neither do we. Mr. Chabon is also wise enough to send himself up.

It was interesting to read this after reading The Yiddish Policeman's Union as there are many similarities, predominanty between the two lead characters. TYPU is a little (okay, a lot) more bleak though, I guess.

I love reading Chabon, while I'm reading him, but I'm never thrilled by the prospect of reading a new one. weird.