Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands
Books / Hardcover
Books › Literary Collections › Essays
ISBN: 1932416897 / Publisher: McSweeney's, May 2008
A series of linked essays analyzes works of literature important to the author, argues for the importance of enjoying a diverse range of reading options, and explores the author's own writings from a perspective of personal history.
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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.
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