ŷ������

”I had lost everything: novel, publisher, wife, lover; the admiration of my best student; all of the fruit of the last decade of my life. I had no family, no friends, no car, and probably, after this weekend, no job. I sat back in my chair, and as I did so I heard the unmistakable crinkle of a plastic bag. I reached into my torn hip pocket of my jacket and passed my hand through the hole, into the lining, where I found my little piece of Humboldt County, warm from the heat of my body.��

At the very beginning of this novel, Grady Tripp has lost or been on the verge of losing all of the important things he has listed above, but it takes the length of this novel for denial to be replaced by the cold, hard face of reality.

He has a certain level of charm, a certain level of intelligence, but truth be known, his days of being one of the wonder boys of writing are long past. He is like a high school quarterback who still talks about his days on the playing field long after his football cleats have molded and turned to rust. He keeps hope alive by continuing to work on an epic novel, his grand masterpiece, a bloated, indulgent, horse-choking size manuscript that he...never...wants...to...finish. He doesn’t want anyone to read it for fear that his illusions about the novel will be shattered and the last vestiges of hope of ever publishing another novel will be dashed. At the same time, he wants someone to read it so he can feel vindicated.

The fear outweighs the desire for exoneration.

So how does a tuba, a dead dog, and three quarters of a boa constrictor end up in the trunk of Grady’s “stolen�� 1966 maroon Ford Galaxie?

Ahh yes, the Devil is in the details.

Grady’s wife has left him because she found out he was sleeping with his boss’s wife. ”I intended to get involved with Sara Gaskell from the moment I saw her, to get involved with her articulate fingers, with the severe engineering of combs and barrettes that prevented her russet hair from falling to her hips, with her conversation that flowed in unnavigable oxbows between opposing shores of tenderness and ironical invective, with the smoke of her interminable cigarettes.�� Sara is also one of those people who has a book with her all the time. She reads while waiting for a movie to start. She reads while her food is microwaving. She reads during any spare minute that life will give her.

As I’m sitting here rereading this quote, I keep thinking about the words involved in that sentence and how nice it was to read a book by an author using a higher level of vocabulary. I’ve been very disappointed in recent years with most new adult books reading like they’ve been put through a young adult word strainer. Michael Chabon is a gifted writer, and his love of the language is on constant display throughout the novel.

To make matters worse, Sara is pregnant. We only get to spend a few days with Grady Tripp, but the thing that is readily apparent is that Grady is an all-star at cratering his life.

As if a pregnant mistress and an AWOL wife are not big enough issues for him to deal with, he also has several other chaotic walking disasters waiting to explode in his face.

His favorite student, Hannah Green, is in love with him, and she is just too damn pretty to be resisted. His most gifted student, James Leer, is suicidal. His best friend and agent, Terry Crabtree, has come to town, dragging along a transvestite with him, to inform Tripp that his career is in jeopardy and his best hope is that Tripp has written the great American novel that will salvage his career and put Grady back among the pantheon of Wonder Boys, or should we say Wonder Elderly?

Grady is also smoking WAY too much herb.

“It’s always hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.�� Chabon scatters sentences like that throughout the novel that had me thinking about what is hope? Is denial really the worst thing? Isn’t denial sometimes the only way we can have any hope? Whenever I take a hard, critical look at my life, the easiest thing to do is crush all the hope out of the equation. Hope is most of the time ethereal and untethered to logic, but without hope how does the magic happen? Those magical moments when something goes unexpectedly well, or a major issue in our lives reaches a resolution without our intercession, or a friend, an acquaintance, a stranger out of the blue does something that makes us believe in the basic goodness of humanity again.

Needless to say, the misadventures of Grady Tripp snowball to the point that I did wonder if he needed to just hop in the Galaxie and drive to New Mexico to let the desert sun melt away his indiscretions, his blunders, his failures. Can Grady grab a branch large enough to hold him as he free falls to the bottom of the deepening crater of his life?

Oh, and let’s not forget about the dead dog, the three quarters of a boa constrictor, and the tuba in the trunk. These are mere nuances in the greater scheme of his disastrous life, but they must be dealt with as well.

There is also a movie from 2000 with Michael Douglas as Grady, Robert Downey Jr. as Crabtree, and Tobey Maguire as James Leer. The movie isn’t as good as the book, but it is an enjoyable romp that captures the campus humor of the book.

This is the best book I’ve read in a long time. I’ve got a copy of Chabon’s first book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh on the way. I have a feeling it will prove to be an impressive writing debut.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: and an Instagram account