Michael Chabon is a storyteller on a mission. He is a man who
has brought literary respectability to subjects as varied as
bisexuality, baseball, pot-smoking professors and comic books. Name
it. He’s got it.
At 8 p.m. on March 2, Chabon, the 39-year-old father of three
and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Amazing Adventures
of Kavalier and Clay,” will be doing a question-and-answer
followed by a book-signing at Royce Hall. On the agenda: childhood
creativity, the culture of comics and the vanishing sense of
adventure he laments in the lives of American children today.
None of these topics stray far from his recent writing,
including the 500-page young-adult novel,
“Summerland.”
“The idea for “˜Summerland’ is an idea I had
when I was a kid, and I never forgot that idea, I just revived
it,” Chabon said in a recent phone interview from his home in
Berkeley, Calif.
“Summerland” tells the story of an uninspired little
leaguer, Ethan Feld, drafted to save the world from the devilish
Coyote. The novel’s title comes from the one sunny area of
Ethan’s home on Clam Island. Along the way, Ethan and his
sidekicks encounter several characters from America’s tall
tales.
This novel’s integration of baseball with both traditional
American folklore and figures from Native American tales, reflects
Chabon’s dedication to his keen interest in restructuring
American myth.
“There was an era where American history was an unexamined
idea, and part of that imposed, shared understanding of American
history included folklore like Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill,”
he said. “I think we have a more fragmented and hopefully
more nuanced view of history and folklore that both pushes those
figures a little more to the margin of things, but also makes room
for figures like La Llorona (the weeping banshee from Southwestern
folklore).”
This type of complexity, woven neatly into something as
seemingly basic as a children’s tale, is the backbone of
Chabon’s style. In “Kavalier and Clay,” a book
which took four years to research, much of which was carried out at
UCLA’s College Library, he successfully mixed Superman and
Jewish mysticism, while his comic book writing heroes rewrote
history.
Yet, the failure of many writers and readers to appreciate the
importance of combining style and storytelling is something that
frustrates Chabon.
“I think part of the problem is the idea that writing
stories that really tell stories has been tarnished with the notion
that it’s somehow inseparable from writing badly,” he
said.
It was for this reason that Chabon recently acted as guest
editor of the most current issue of author Dave Eggers’
literary journal, McSweeney’s. Although the special pulp
format recalls Chabon’s own influences, he insists he was
more invested in gathering the cast of contributors (from Stephen
King and Michael Crichton to Nick Hornby and Chabon himself).
“The pulp was the most visually familiar way to
communicate the kind of fiction that I was trying to revive,”
he said. “I was more interested in the idea of the short
stories that have plots, that come out of different genres that
pre-existed pulps.”
Chabon is not one to preach without practice. He has been wildly
successful with his own ability to tell exciting stories without
forsaking style, and his McSweeney’s effort, “The
Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance” continues in the same
vein.
Chabon’s previous novels have all been both critical and
financial successes, and he is a hit in Hollywood, as well. His
novel, “Wonder Boys,” was also an award-winning film
starring Michael Douglas, and featured the Grammy-winning Bob Dylan
tune, “Things Have Changed.” Most recently he completed
the script for “Kavalier and Clay.”
“There’s been a lot of talk about getting Jude Law
to play the Joe Kavalier part. If that happens, that would be
wonderful,” he said.
While the Hollywood-types figure out how to translate
Chabon’s vision onto the screen, the author is already at
work on another novel, suggestively taking up history at the end of
World War II where the comic boys left off. Inspired by FDR’s
idea to grant a part of Alaska to the displaced Jewish peoples of
Europe, “Hatzeplatz,” a thriller set in a
Yiddish-speaking Jewish state in Alaska, continues Chabon’s
attempt to recompose 20th-century history.
Where does he get this uncanny knack to make the fragments of
yesterday the myths of today? His kids, of course.
“The whole idea of sampling is the overarching metaphor
for pretty much everything. My kids are samplers,” he said.
“They make these weird hybrids in their own imagination out
of bits and pieces of my childhood, and their own childhood, and
the backs of cereal boxes, and who knows what.”
Michael Chabon will speak at Royce Hall, 8 p.m. on Sunday, March
2. Tickets are available for $35, $30 and $25. There will be Q
& A and a book signing following the event.