Books with author Michael Charlton

Virtuoso Chabon takes intense delight in the practice of his art, and never has his joy been more palpable than in this funny and profound tale of exile, love, and magic. In his last novel, The Wonder Boys (1995), Chabon explored the shadow side of literary aspirations. Here he revels in the crass yet inventive and comforting world of comic-book superheroes, those masked men with mysterious powers who were born in the wake of the Great Depression and who carried their fans through the horrors of war with the guarantee that good always triumphs over evil. In a luxuriant narrative that is jubilant and purposeful, graceful and complex, hilarious and enrapturing, Chabon chronicles the fantastic adventures of two Jewish cousins, one American, one Czech. It's 1939 and Brooklynite Sammy Klayman dreams of making it big in the nascent world of comic books. Joseph Kavalier has never seen a comic book, but he is an accomplished artist versed in the "autoliberation" techniques of his hero, Harry Houdini. He effects a great (and surreal) escape from the Nazis, arrives in New York, and joins forces with Sammy. They rapidly create the Escapist, the first of many superheroes emblematic of their temperaments and predicaments, and attain phenomenal success. But Joe, tormented by guilt and grief for his lost family, abruptly joins the navy, abandoning Sammy, their work, and his lover, the marvelous artist and free spirit Rosa, who, unbeknownst to him, is carrying his child. As Chabon--equally adept at atmosphere, action, dialogue, and cultural commentary--whips up wildly imaginative escapades punctuated by schtick that rivals the best of Jewish comedians, he plumbs the depths of the human heart and celebrates the healing properties of escapism and the "genuine magic of art" with exuberance and wisdom.

A collection of essays on books and why they matter by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY and WONDER BOYS.MAPS AND LEGENDS is a love song in sixteen 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 favour 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 towards 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 POLICEMEN’S UNION.

Art Bechstein encounters a dizzying series of people and events during the summer following his college graduation. Many first-time novelists nobly attempt to self-referentially try to capture the confusion and contemplation that inevitably result from giving up innocence for responsibility. Few of them succeed, but Michael Chabon's MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH is an exception. Chabon's depiction of one wild summer in the life of postgraduate Art Bechstein perfectly captures the madness and discovery of a life on the threshold of adulthood. Bechstein, whose life has been dictated and restricted by his gangster father, has a final fling of alcohol, adventure, and romance with a flamboyant cast of enduring characters. He finds his ripening sexuality split by the charming vagabond Arthur Lecomte and a luscious lady named Phlox, but his real reverence is for Cleveland, a renegade philosopher who leaves a trail of dazzled and abandoned admirers in his wake as he enacts his disdain for the rules of society. Chabon's descriptions of the industrial landscape of his hometown of Pittsburgh transform smokestacks and bridges into surreal signposts on the road to realization. The outrageous journey of Art Bechstein seems likely to take him into literary history, as he discovers that the answers we seek through visceral experience are just as likely to be found internally.