posted on 28 Dec 2015

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon

This is an out-of-control, bob-sleigh ride of a book that’s a blast from beginning to end. This was Chabon’s second novel and it has all the hallmarks of a young man revelling in building big plots and larger-than-life characters. Of course it has its flaws but don’t go looking for them and you’ll spend 350 pages being delighted and massively entertained.

It’s the weekend of the annual WordFest in Pittsburgh and lecturer, novelist and terminal pothead, Grady Tripp is in trouble. He is expecting his publisher who wants his latest manuscript but despite its 1200 pages it remains unfinished (and almost certainly unreadable); his third marriage is breaking down; his mistress (and his boss) has just discovered she is pregnant; he’s having drug induced blackouts; his basement tenant and student is falling in love with him; and, to top everything off, he is dealing with a student who may be a genius or a desperate fantasist. Oh, yes, and he’s got a car boot full of dead dog and half a snake.

Things aren’t shaping up too well for his publisher and life-long friend, Terry Crabree, either. He’s about to lose his job unless Tripp comes up with another blockbuster; he’s developed an unhealthy fascination for a male transvestite and he’s falling for James Leer, the student fantasist mentioned earlier who has the name of Frank Capra carved into the back of his hand.

Over the course of the weekend events spiral out of control – dogs get shot, snakes get run over, Marilyn Monroe’s jacket gets stolen and industrial amounts of drink and drugs get consumed. I’m not going to outline any more of the plot because the fun of this book is discovering how it all plays out. However, what is not a spoiler is the fact that Grady Tripp’s book sits at the heart of the events and becomes a metaphor for the disintegration of a writer’s life and reputation.

When you get to enjoy a buccaneering book like this one, it feels a bit pusillanimous to turn a critical eye on it. However, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reading something that was like taking a tour of a theme park based on the writing styles of some of the most notable US novelists of the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book starts off as if we’re in early Philip Roth territory before this gets supplemented by a generous dollop of John Irving and, as the book goes on, we begin to slide irresistibly towards Elmore Leonard by way of Carl Hiaasen. Not that any of that is a bad thing – there’s plenty of entertainment to be had in this kind of cocktail and Chabon does it very well indeed.

The book was made into quite a successful movie several years after it was published and it’s quite easy to see why this looked like such a juicy prospect for a film director. The writing is very cinematic and the drawing of the characters is poised somewhere between cartoon and stereotype and this makes casting very easy – Michael Douglas, Robert Downey Jnr., Tobey Maguire and Frances MacDormand were clearly always meant to play the central figures.

Having said all this, the book really is great fun -  although I don’t think it’s anywhere near as good as some of his later work. It’s well worth a read however because I’m sure you won’t want to put the book down once you’ve allowed yourself to engage with the crazy logic that brings you into contact with such a cast of wild, whirling but essentially fascinating and eccentric reprobates.

 

Terry Potter

December 2015