Seize Baieti Teribili Crafted By Michael Chabon Format Kindle

all embracing title firstly the title of the novel on which our central character and narrator, the aptly named Grady Tripp, has been working for the past eight years or so.
He is an American academic, stoned much of the time, His life, like the characters in his book, is chaotic and the people he hangs around with in the actual book are too.
But Grady, Crabtree and James qualify as Wonder Boys too, surely

Funny, touching and exquisitely written and a definite reread to pick up on all the stuff I missed.
For a straight man, Chabon is very gay friendly, I know there's been stuff written, possibly by Chabon himself, about early gay liaisons he undertook, but now the man's married with three, four kids.
And yet Chabon's smart enough to write this:

"James looked over at Crabtree with a smile that was crooked and half grateful.
He didn't seem particularly distressed or bewildered, I thought, on awakening to his first morning as a lover of men.
While he worked his way up the buttons of my old flannel shirt, he kept glancing over at Crabtree, not in any mawkish way but with a deliberateness and an air of wonder, as if studying Crabtree, memorizing the geometry of his knees and elbows.
"

Indeed, at every point in the novel where Crabtreethe editor of the novel's narrator, Grady Tripp, who teaches James Leer in his fiction workshopis shown gallivanting with a drag queen or seducing James, his sexuality is taken very much in stride.
He's, sure, a bit of a predator, but he's so in all facets of his personality, The drugs and debauchery he pushes on other characters is far more threatening than his unforced deflowering of Grady's student.


One other thing that rings true and respectable in the novel is this point Grady makes after he realizes Crabtree won't be publishing hispage unfinished novel:

"It's not fashionable, I know, in this unromantic age, for a reasonably straight man to think of finding his destiny in the love of another man, but that was how I'd always thought of Crabtree.
I guess you could say that in a strange sort of way I'd always believed that Crabtree was my man, and I was his.
"

For a while there's been a strange part of me that has tried to argue that it's gay men that make the friendships among men more important or noteworthy somehow, that, like, in introducing the laughable danger of potential oneway attraction, or maybe just the simple idea of men finding it in themselves to devote their lives to other men, the lines between gay and straight are properly blurred, and whatever it means to be a man gets attached to a more full and honorable set of attributes.


I'm not sure I have the rhetorical ammo to fully develop the argument, but Chabon's novel seems to be pointing to something I've felt for a few years now.
If we were to categorize books that have literary merit but are depressingly nonenjoyable in a human sense, "Wonder Boys" would be a front runner.
Michael Chabon can write. I give him that. Michael Chabon also writes the worst books I've ever read, Here you have a story about a writer that's a tough plot to start with that is not in touch with reality the character is even harder to write whom screws everything up because it is much easier to do the wrong thing than to be right all the time.
I know this creates conflict, and Grady Tripp and all his potsmoking shenanigans are supposed to make us sympathetic for the life that he has created for himself, but honestly, I could care less.
The biggest problem with any of this is that a novel about how hard it is to write a novel is a complete waste of time.
In the end, his overall loser mentality makes him insufferable,

But Chabon can write, This is really the only redeeming quality in any of his books I have read, I wanted badly to like "Wonder Boys," and I tried to put my "Tripp is a horrible character" bias aside and go with the flow.
The problem is that there is a Seder supper in the middle of this book, anpage drool of boring, meaningless garbage that really gave me time to.
think about how much I hate the main character and, start really hating him. The Seder supper could be the worst middle section of a novel I have ever slugged through, It lasted forever and there was no real reason for so much emphasis to be placed on this one scene Spoiler: None of the Seder stuff matters in the end.


In the end, if you are curious about this novel at all, watch the movie, Michael Chabon's novel as is all of his novels is saggy, There is just too much excess for it to be enjoyable, For once I can say that the movie cuts out a lot of the worthless garbage and streamlines the story much better than the novel.
I'm done with Chabon books, ”I had lost everything: novel, publisher, wife, lover the admiration of my best student all of the fruit of the last decade of my life.
I had no family, no friends, no car, and probably, after this weekend, no job, I sat back in my chair, and as I did so I heard the unmistakable crinkle of a plastic bag.
I reached into my torn hip pocket of my jacket and passed my hand through the hole, into the lining, where I found my little piece of Humboldt County, warm from the heat of my body.
”

At the very beginning of this novel, Grady Tripp has lost or been on the verge of losing all of the important things he has listed above, but it takes the length of this novel for denial to be replaced by the cold, hard face of reality.


He has a certain level of charm, a certain level of intelligence, but truth be known, his days of being one of the wonder boys of writing are long past.
He is like a high school quarterback who still talks about his days on the playing field long after his football cleats have molded and turned to rust.
He keeps hope alive by continuing to work on an epic novel, his grand masterpiece, a bloated, indulgent, horsechoking size manuscript that he.
. . never wants to finish. He doesnt want anyone to read it for fear that his illusions about the novel will be shattered and the last vestiges of hope of ever publishing another novel will be dashed.
At the same time, he wants someone to read it so he can feel vindicated,

The fear outweighs the desire for exoneration,

So how does a tuba, a dead dog, and three quarters of a boa constrictor end up in the trunk of Gradys “stolen”maroon Ford Galaxie

Ahh yes, the Devil is in the details.


Gradys wife has left him because she found out he was sleeping with his bosss wife, ”I intended to get involved with Sara Gaskell from the moment I saw her, to get involved with her articulate fingers, with the severe engineering of combs and barrettes that prevented her russet hair from falling to her hips, with her conversation that flowed in unnavigable oxbows between opposing shores of tenderness and ironical invective, with the smoke of her interminable cigarettes.
” Sara is also one of those people who has a book with her all the time, She reads while waiting for a movie to start, She reads while her food is microwaving, She reads during any spare minute that life will give her,

As Im sitting here rereading this quote, I keep thinking about the words involved in that sentence and how nice it was to read a book by an author using a higher level of vocabulary.
Ive been very disappointed in recent years with most new adult books reading like theyve been put through a young adult word strainer.
Michael Chabon is a gifted writer, and his love of the language is on constant display throughout the novel,

To make matters worse, Sara is pregnant, We only get to spend a few days with Grady Tripp, but the thing that is readily apparent is that Grady is an allstar at cratering his life.


As if a pregnant mistress and an AWOL wife are not big enough issues for him to deal with, he also has several other chaotic walking disasters waiting to explode in his face.


His favorite student, Hannah Green, is in love with him, and she is just too damn pretty to be resisted.
His most gifted student, James Leer, is suicidal, His best friend and agent, Terry Crabtree, has come to town, dragging along a transvestite with him, to inform Tripp that his career is in jeopardy and his best hope is that Tripp has written the great American novel that will salvage his career and put Grady back among the pantheon of Wonder Boys, or should we say Wonder Elderly

Grady is also smoking WAY too much herb.


“Its always hard for me to tell the difference between denial and what used to be known as hope.
” Chabon scatters sentences like that throughout the novel that had me thinking about what is hope Is denial really the worst thing Isnt denial sometimes the only way we can have any hope Whenever I take a hard, critical look at my life, the easiest thing to do is crush all the hope out of the equation.
Hope is most of the time ethereal and untethered to logic, but without hope how does the magic happen Those magical moments when something goes unexpectedly well, or a major issue in our lives reaches a resolution without our intercession, or a friend, an acquaintance, a stranger out of the blue does something that makes us believe in the basic goodness of humanity again.


Needless to say, the misadventures of Grady Tripp snowball to the point that I did wonder if he needed to just hop in the Galaxie and drive to New Mexico to let the desert sun melt away his indiscretions, his blunders, his failures.
Can Grady grab a branch large enough to hold him as he free falls to the bottom of the deepening crater of his life

Oh, and lets not forget about the dead dog, the three quarters of a boa constrictor, and the tuba in the trunk.
These are mere nuances in the greater scheme of his disastrous life, but they must be dealt with as well.


There is also a movie fromwith Michael Douglas as Grady, Robert Downey Jr, as Crabtree, and Tobey Maguire as James Leer, The movie isnt as good as the book, but it is an enjoyable romp that captures the campus humor of the book.


This is the best book Ive read in a long time, Ive got a copy of Chabons first book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh on the way, I have a feeling it will prove to be an impressive writing debut,

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit sitelink jeffreykeeten. com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at:sitelink facebook.

com/JeffreyKeeten and an Instagram account sitelink instagram. com/jeffreykeeten/.