X marks the spot for ‘Maps and Legends’
By Nick Knittel, Staff Writer
June 20, 2008 | noon
“Maps and Legends” marks Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon’s first book of nonfiction, a group of 16 essays that bounce between literary critique and a backyard memoir to wondrous effect.
Genre is the staple of “Maps and Legends” (full title: "Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands"). From the opening chapter on the loss of the modern short story and straight through to the genesis of his own novels, Chabon revels in the nostalgia of literature, speaking of mystery, science fiction, and horror, genres on which he subsisted through his youth, as the basis for good storytelling He is enamored, hopelessly lost within his own admiration and glee, and it is hard not to be infected as he passionately defends these works and their meaning to him.
“Defend” is maybe too strong of a word, but there is some sense of hurt when Chabon speaks of the authors that affected him and how little they have been read or how misunderstood they have become. Mostly, he dwells on the idea that the best writers work in between genres, what he calls the “boderlands,” those that take their ideas “through peculiar commingling of mockery and tribute, invocation and analysis, considered rejection and passionate embrace.” Indeed, it is almost as though Chabon is defending himself, as many of his best novels draw heavily from the same “no man’s land” of cross-genre literature that he spends too much time describing. That is not to say the book is narcissistic in tone-- Chabon is such a naturally great writer that it feels more like an examination than anything, a trip through the attic of one’s personality and a reaction to what is later found.
The first portion of “Maps and Legends” contains essays where he picks apart modern stories such as Philip Pullman’s “The Golden Compass” and Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road,” examines the entire works of Sherlock Holmes and provides many, many insights on comic books and their various visionary authors. What is most interesting, perhaps, are the later essays, where Chabon describes the innocent beginnings to many of his novels, among them “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize and much critical acclaim), “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” and “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” all works heavily invested in their pop culture and genre-tinted origins for which he holds so much debt. It is in these that the whole volume really comes together, feeling like a carefully considered and strategically placed volume of work and not just random essays cobbled together.
Chabon proves himself to be an insatiable and knowledgeable reader, name-dropping and book-listing without end. The man is like an encyclopedia of literary knowledge, and while sometimes it is hard to keep up, it never feels like he is condescending to the reader. It feels natural, like he is caught up in the giddiness, and that is where the special goodness of the book lies. Chabon digs deep into that nook of collective nostalgia and makes us all want to believe in the joy of the short story once again.
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