I Have Powers - Wonder Boys

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FACT: Michael Chabon's wWonder Boys is a glorious joke played upon the literati.

Let me back up and contextualize.

Over the course of many years of reflection, I have come to the understanding that in college writing workshops (well, at least the ones I've been subjected to), the professors hold three works above all others:
1. On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.
2. The Dean's December, by Saul Bellow.
3. The "Rabbit" series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered), by John Updike.

All stories must reflect these, to be considered "good." Genre stuff -- any genre, though particular ire is aimed at science fiction, fantasy, and horror -- is right out.

Ultimately, "a good story" needs to be about failure and loss. If it involves a lot of sex and drugs, so much the better. If it involves a mid-life crisis, more good! If it involves a broken down English professor or author, you are moving into prize-winning territory. If it involves adultery, even more awesome (extra credit if the mistress is a student)!

This is my theory. Quoth MC 900ft Jesus: "This is an indisputable fact that has been scientifically proven. / Just as it is useless to wander off on a tangent with a bullwhip in search of a dead horse, / if you do not accept this to be true / then you are insane and will be locked up." (from "Tiptoe Through the Inferno.")

Anyway.

Wonder Boys takes that directive, embraces it, and turns it up to a mocking 11.

It is a ludicrous pastiche of Kerouac, Bellow, Updike (maybe a splash of Richard Fariña and Thomas Pynchon in there as well, and a jigger of Vonnegut) that takes the piss out of each of the source streams.

NOTE: All of the writers and those associated with the writing life in the book are pathetic losers.

NOTE: The protagonist's wife works in the Baxter Building, for Reed, Richards, & Associates.

NOTE: Chabon calls the protagonist's boss "the queer old dean" at one point, and doesn't reference Spooner.

NOTE: The love of genre writers like Albert Vetch/"August Van Zorn" and the mocking yet loving discussion of Lem Walker, Space Surgeon.

NOTE: Chabon, after the success of Wonder Boys with the literati, has done a tremendous amount of genre (or genre-esque) work -- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Summerland, and Gentlemen of the Road, plus his editing work on the McSweeney's pulp stuff. (I really need to pick up The Yiddish Policemen's Union and The Final Solution soon.)

All of this leads me to believe that Wonder Boys was a big old flipping of the bird to the literary establishment -- and they swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.

The book itself is written very well and entertainingly, if you like watching people self-destruct (I usually don't, but Chabon's prose carried me along). There's some interesting discussion of the "midnight disease" common to the writer. It's full of wonderful asides of complexity and humor -- the loss of the protagonist's manuscript is especially funny and simultaneously horrifying.

It's a good book.

I need to watch the movie version again.

Check it out, but if you are allergic to the three source streams I mention above, read it in the context of being an immense joke played on the English departments of American colleges. That's how I read it, and was greatly rewarded.

Tags: books, underkoffler's overviews, writing

	From: mytholder	Date: March 27th, 2008 01:52 am (UTC)		(Link)

I grabbed a copy of the Yiddish Policeman's Union last week. I haven't read it yet, but there's a short story at the back of my copy that appears to revolve around Cthulhu-worshipping clowns.

	From: chadu	Date: March 27th, 2008 02:10 am (UTC)		(Link)

See, THAT'S what I'm talking about.

Chabon has conned his way into the "Fiction" shelves (like Vonnegut), having escaped from the lazaret of the "SF&F" section of the bookstore.

CU

	From: elissa_carey	Date: March 27th, 2008 02:02 am (UTC)		(Link)

I like Kerouac, though there are parts of On the Road I had to skim or fast-forward through because of some of the misogyny. Though thinking about it, Kerouac and his contemporaries were like 20-something Lost Boys, which is part of the appeal for me.

Still: point taken.

	From: chadu	Date: March 27th, 2008 02:13 am (UTC)		(Link)

I myself like bits of On the Road, but there's a stink of "I'm so cool" on it.

I do have to say, though, that I dig Jack for this, if nothing else:

"Belief & Technique for Modern Prose"
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/kerouac-technique.html

CU

	From: elissa_carey	Date: March 27th, 2008 02:20 am (UTC)		(Link)

Yup: It's for things like this, exactly, that I love Kerouac's work. I have an album downloaded from EMusic that's all Kerouac, alternately rapping poetry and doing a little singing, all with a good moody sax-and-piano jazz in the background.

	From: 2h2o	Date: March 27th, 2008 02:03 am (UTC)		(Link)

	From: chadu	Date: March 27th, 2008 02:13 am (UTC)		(Link)

(lo pan) INDEED! (/lo pan)

	From: brand_of_amber	Date: March 27th, 2008 02:20 am (UTC)		(Link)

I think its less flipping the bird and more a gentle mocking.

But yea.

	From: chadu	Date: March 27th, 2008 04:20 am (UTC)		(Link)

Perhaps. I am willing to be argued around to that perspective.

CU

	From: brand_of_amber	Date: March 27th, 2008 04:26 am (UTC)		(Link)

I could see it going either way, but one of the constants about Chabon is his gentle humanity. All of his characters are human, and all are loved in one way or another.

Like, when you read the stories in Werewolves In Their Youth, you get a whole gaggle of really fucked up people. But he makes them all people, kinda points out their weaknesses but without mocking or deriding, holding it up that we all have them, and maybe we should all judge less.

So when I read Wonderboys I read not a bitter mocking, but a loving sense of taking the piss out of it. Not destroying, but deflating. He's less saying "All you believe is crap" and more saying "come on guys, we're all folks, and lets just look at it all as us all being folks. We aren't actually grand and terrible wizards in a tower."

	From: chadu	Date: March 27th, 2008 04:33 am (UTC)		(Link)

So when I read Wonderboys I read not a bitter mocking, but a loving sense of taking the piss out of it.

For the most part, and for the major characters especially, I agree with you.

However, there are a number of minor characters (Q, Crabtree, the dean, Deborah, the Leers, Peterson Walker) who are a lot more one-sided and apparently held up for mockery.

Interestingly, most of these are antagonists in some wise to Grady or James -- even Crabtree, to an extent.

CU

	From: brand_of_amber	Date: March 27th, 2008 06:52 pm (UTC)		(Link)

Hmm.

Yea, you know, I think you may be right on that. Also, interestingly, some of those characters have aspects of themselves that kind of keep them from being fully human. Like, their image of themselves is so complete and constructed that it keeps them from actually being themself.

	From: artbroken	Date: March 27th, 2008 03:10 am (UTC)		(Link)

Like Brand, I think it's gentle mockery by someone with a great deal of affection for both literary and genre fiction, and who's comfortable mixing them together a little. Jonathan Lethem's another author in that boat; his recent work had happily mixed genre concepts with real-world literary concepts and writing.

For my own part, I really enjoyed Wonder Boys on its own merits. I also think your dislike or disdain for the 'literati' is misplaced, and that it's entirely possible to simply like good writing regardless of genre or subject.

I know I tend to enjoy literary fiction more than genre fiction these days, because I think too much genre fiction is poorly written and lacking in intellectual or emotional depth, but that doesn't lead me to discard all genre writing or genre reading out of hand. I don't think "us vs. them" attitudes about subject matter or approach is worthwhile from either direction; all that matters, and all that ever mattered, is the strength and honesty of the writing. Looking for hidden anti-establishment polemics is getting away from that just as surely as rejecting all genre fiction out of hand.

	From: chadu	Date: March 27th, 2008 04:26 am (UTC)		(Link)

Like Brand, I think it's gentle mockery by someone with a great deal of affection for both literary and genre fiction, and who's comfortable mixing them together a little.

Indeed (see my response elsethread).

I also think your dislike or disdain for the 'literati' is misplaced,

Perhaps. I've been in a mood for the past several weeks.

and that it's entirely possible to simply like good writing regardless of genre or subject.

I do, generally.

I know I tend to enjoy literary fiction more than genre fiction these days, because I think too much genre fiction is poorly written and lacking in intellectual or emotional depth, but that doesn't lead me to discard all genre writing or genre reading out of hand.

I think this is just because of the vast availability of fiction now,and what individuals run across, that I could reverse your sentence for my own tastes: "I know I tend to enjoy genre fiction more than literary fiction these days, because I think too much literary fiction is poorly written and lacking in intellectual or emotional depth..."

But that is, I think, a function of the genre and literary fictions we've both been running across.

I don't think "us vs. them" attitudes about subject matter or approach is worthwhile from either direction; all that matters, and all that ever mattered, is the strength and honesty of the writing.

Agreed. Again, by way of explanation: I've been in a mood.

Looking for hidden anti-establishment polemics is getting away from that just as surely as rejecting all genre fiction out of hand.

Still, I didn't go looking -- it rose up out of the text and bit me.

But good points, all.

Thank you.

CU

	From: dlganger	Date: March 28th, 2008 12:29 am (UTC)		(Link)

Interesting. I didn't see your initial piece as "looking for hidden anti-establishment polemics" so much as a, "Hey, cool, look at how this work that looks like it fits in category X is really not, and along the way points out how silly all of the people who revere books that are category X for the sake of category X are being!"

That, and I admit freely that I giggled like a schoolgirl when you pointed out the Baxter reference.

	From: whswhs	Date: March 27th, 2008 03:14 am (UTC)		(Link)

Never having looked at any of the claimed sources, I can't imagine that I would get anything out of the joke.

	From: chadu	Date: March 27th, 2008 04:28 am (UTC)		(Link)

As Patrick says upthread, Wonder Boys is worthy on its own merits.

Still, Bill -- I am fascinated that you've never read On the Road. (The other two sources, I dig why you wouldn't necessarily see them.)

CU

	From: whswhs	Date: March 27th, 2008 05:55 am (UTC)		(Link)

I'm not really sure what you think would have made me want to read Kerouac. I know very little about him. I mostly read fiction with fantastic content; it's fairly chancy whether I'll be attracted to a writer of nonfantastic fiction.

	From: chadu	Date: March 27th, 2008 12:15 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I'm not really sure what you think would have made me want to read Kerouac.

Mostly just the "this is one of those books that many people read" idea.

CU