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Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, by Michael Chabon
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Michael Chabon's sparkling first book of nonfiction is a love song in 16 parts — a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; procrastination and doubt reveal the way toward Wonder Boys; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into The Yiddish Policeman's Union.
- Sales Rank: #332502 in Books
- Brand: Brand: McSweeney's
- Published on: 2008-05-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.78" h x 1.01" w x 6.52" l, 1.26 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 222 pages
Features
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
You would hardly think, reading Chabon's new book of essays, that he won the Pulitzer Prize for a book about comics. Rather, he is bitter and defensive about his love for genre fiction such as mysteries and comic books. Serious writers, he says, cannot venture into these genres without losing credibility. No self-respecting literary genius... would ever describe him- or herself as primarily an 'entertainer,' Chabon writes. An entertainer is a man in a sequined dinner jacket, singing 'She's a Lady' to a hall filled with women rubber-banding their underwear up onto the stage. Chabon devotes most of the essays to examining specific genres that he admires, from M.R. James's ghost stories to Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic work, The Road. The remaining handful of essays are more memoir-focused, with Chabon explaining how he came to write many of his books. Chabon casts himself as one of the few brave souls willing to face ridicule—from whom isn't entirely clear, though it seems to be academics—to write as he wishes. I write from the place I live: in exile, he says. It's hard to imagine the audience for this book. Chabon seems to want to debate English professors, but surely only his fellow comic-book lovers will be interested in his tirade. (Apr.)
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From Booklist
Chabon declares, “I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain. Period.” But of course there’s much more to his vivid and mischievous literary manifesto in 16 parts than that. A writer of prodigious literary gifts, Chabon brings the velocity, verve, and emotional richness intrinsic to the best of short stories to his exceptionally canny and stirring essays. Musing over the various literary traditions he riffs on in his many-faceted novels, he concludes, “All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.” Chabon zestfully praises the many allures of genre fiction and celebrates writers, among them Vonnegut and Byatt, who infuse their fiction with “the Trickster spirit of genre-bending and stylistic play.” He offers a fresh and affecting take on Arthur Conan Doyle and pays witty and provocative tribute to M. R. James, a seemingly serene British author of superb horror and ghost stories. Norse myths, Will Eisner, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road are all are interpreted with acuity and vigor. And then there are Chabon’s hilarious and puckish personal essays about his early writing misadventures and evolving sense of Jewishness. A writer so versatile he seems to be a master of disguises, Chabon provides invaluable keys to his frolicsome creativity and literary chutzpah in this truly entertaining collection. --Donna Seaman
Review
Michael Chabon is fascinated with life "along the borderlands," those perilous regions between and beyond what we claim to know. In these intriguing essays, he strolls through this netherworld, taking up topics from golems to suburbia.
Sometimes, the topic is literary form, like the ghost story and the epic fantasy. For instance, in "Trickster in a Suit of Lights," an allusion to Lewis Hyde's "Trickster Makes This World," Chabon says the short story has fallen out of favor with readers but can be revived. "Trickster haunts the boundary lines, the margins, the secret shelves between the sections in the bookstore. And that is where, if it wants to renew itself in the way that the novel has done so often in its long history, the short story must, inevitably, go," he writes.
Elsewhere, Chabon examines comic books, writing for example in "The Killer Hook" of Howard Chaykin's "American Flagg!" that it "stands at the glorious midpoint, at that difficult fulcrum between innocence and experience, romance and disillusion, adventure and satire, the unashamedly commercial and the purely aesthetic, between the stoned, rangy funkiness of the Seventies and the digitized cool of the present day, between a time when outrage was a moral position and a time when it has become a way of life. Such balancing acts have always been the greatest feats of American popular art."
Many essays draw on Chabon's personal history, from the books he read as a boy, to his early years as a novelist, to his search as a contemporary Jew for a literal as well as figurative homeland, to his preoccupation with the idea that writers are imperiled by their own creations. In "Ragnarok Boy," for instance, he writes about his childhood love of a book of Norse myths that illuminated for him the tumultuous 1960s, especially through Loki, "the god of my own mind as a child, with its competing impulses of vandalism and vision, of imagining things and smashing them."
Chabon writes, "We all grew up - all of us, from the beginning - in a time of violence and invention, absurdity and Armageddon, prey and witness to the worst and the best in humanity, in a world both ruined and made interesting by Loki. I took comfort, as a kid, in knowing that things had always been as awful and as wonderful as they were now, that the world was always on the edge of total destruction, even if, in Maryland in 1969, as today, it seemed a little more true than usual."
Chabon is an accomplished fiction writer, having won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay." This essay collection is his first. While interesting, many of the 16 pieces can be tedious, largely because of tortured phrasing. Many are also somewhat shallow, skimming whimsically along without probing the ideas they raise. And those ideas are often idiosyncratic. Still, when Chabon shines in "Maps and Legends" he shines brightly, displaying an inquisitive mind at work.
Robert Braile reviews regularly for the Globe. -- The Boston Globe, August 2008
Michael Chabon is more substantive in MAPS AND LEGENDS: READING AND WRITING ALONG THE BORDERLANDS. Readers just catching up to Chabon's novels--gay Gatsby, groves of academe, superhero graphic, boy's book of pilgrimage, neo-Victorian espionage, sci-fi noir--already know that he is fiercely loyal to the child he was and will enjoy his wind-chiming on genre fiction from Poe to Nabokov; "tricksters" from Loki, Coyote, and Krishna to Borges, Calvino, and Pynchon; horror stories by M. R. James, Sherlock Holmes under Conan Doyle's hood; Norse myths, Philip Pullman, John Milton and epic fantasy; Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and Captain Marvel; Howard Chaykin and Citizen Kane; Ben Katchor and Julius Knipl; Cormac McCarthy, Will Eisner, and other golems. What is so startling is how much more interesting most of these indulgences are to read about in Chabon's pages than they were on their own, in the pulpy original, as if the nostalgic novelist, like the magician-for-hire in his Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, can make paper roses consumed by fire bloom from a pile of ash. -- Harper's, April 2008
Michael Chabon's first collection of nonfiction, makes an inviting case for bridging the gap between popular and literary writing, as he considers the high and the low, from comics to Cormac McCarthy. Like the makers of golems, creatures of Jewish legend, "the writer shapes his story, flecked like river clay wit the grit of experience and rank with the smell of human life." Vital energy and a boundless appetite for risk give these essays their electric charge. -- O, The Oprah Magazine, April 2008
Most helpful customer reviews
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Mapping the world of fiction
By mrliteral
The world of fiction is sometimes depicted as two warring territories. The land of literary fiction is a serious country, emphasizing art over readability, with a seriousness that borders on pretentiousness. The land of genre fiction is filled with mere entertainments such as mysteries, science fiction and horror. It is the nation of fluff, not worthy of serious discussion. To the high-brow literary critic, it is the difference between the ivory tower and the slums or a fine meal and fast food. On the other side, the genre fan finds literary fiction to be tedious and laden with intellectual snobbery.
The reality is that these two territories actually overlap quite a bit. In these borderlands, Michael Chabon has provided some guidance in Maps and Legends, a collection of essays about various pieces of fiction. Chabon may be regarded by many as a literary writer, but his heart is clearly with genre fiction as well. His latest novels clearly show this: The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a cross between mystery and science fiction; Gentlemen of the Road is adventure fiction in the style of Robert E. Howard.
Among the topics of discussion are Sherlock Holmes, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Cormac McCarthy's The Road and comic books. Chabon's affection for genre material is evident most notably in the first essay, "Trickster in a Suit of Light", which laments the decline of the genre short story.
What is the purpose of fiction? As with non-fiction, the purpose will vary with the person, and even with the person, it will vary based on time and mood. All writing can educate, provoke or entertain (solely or in combination). Chabon does all three with Maps and Legends and shows that he can write essays as well as he can write stories.
77 of 88 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Collection
By D. Mahoney
I know a lot of these essays from other sources and have lived with them a while. They're good pieces, and the PW critic *did* phone it in with such a soft-boiled review.
Chabon's defense of genre isn't confined to comics. His right concern is that most genre writers are marginalized to some degree, regardless of their talents and achievements. It takes a Patrick O'Brian or JRR Tolkien longer to garner critical praise simply because they're "merely" writing sea novels or fantasy epics, and however good a sci-fi or western writer might be, chances are his or her book is stuck in a corner at the bookstore. In 1984 and Hound of the Baskervilles and Frankenstein appeared for the first time this year, they might get lost in the genre aisle, and would almost certainly confront dismissive criticism. All of which Chabon elucidates far better than I.
Genre aside, Chabon's essays about his own career are terrific and entertaining. If PW wants to imagine this book's audience, it's people who enjoy reading or writing fiction--literary *or* genre--and those who like Chabon and his books. That's a big readership.
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
A Top-Notch Director's Commentary
By R. Freeman
Chabon (or his editors) cobbled together loose bits of writing previously found in magazines and Chabon's website in a more convenient package. I have no reservations about that, I ache for authors (and other artists) to cater to their fans that would call themselves completists. This collection is certainly for fans of Chabon who have previously read his major works. A few of the essays reveal stories behind writing his first three novels, all that is very interesting to the fan. I'm not sure how someone new to Chabon would appreciate this work (since I am not new). Chabon's writing and storytelling is always engaging and the insights into his work are great but it does feel like director's commentary, but most director's commentaries are pretty narcissistic and boring. This would be a top notch director's commentary.
Chabon's essays on Will Eisner, Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials saga, and Cormac McCarthy's The Road are interesting critiques. I had read Eisner and The Road but not His Dark Materials and so felt a little left out. You might want to skip those essays until you've read the texts beforehand.
The largest theme in the work is Chabon's love for genre fiction and his desire to see it respected in literary circles. Chabon is a much better genre apologist than genre writer. Genre fans love our genre apologists and Chabon is certainly one of the best. However, I've always found his genre work sluggish and unenjoyable.
If one were to pick between this and his other essay collection, Manhood for Amateurs, I would definitely pick the latter. Maps and Legends is always interesting but never particularly essential the way Manhood felt.
My review would probably be more glowing but I wanted those new to Chabon to get a feel for the reservations they should have about reading this first before his major works. To anyone who already enjoys Michael Chabon their enjoyment of this would be a near guarantee.
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