AUTHOR: Michael Chabon
It's not easy making a dysfunctional, self-sabotaging pot addict with poor impulse control someone you want to like, let alone root for, but Michael Chabon has that skill. Grady Tripp, a novelist and college writing professor working on his third failing marriage and having an affair with the married college chancellor narrates with a self-awareness that could come only with the perspective of time.
The story, one of Chabon's earlier books, takes place over a single weekend, revolving around a literature conference being held at the college. The book's title comes from the novel Grady has been writing for the past seven years and the end is nowhere in sight. Stress is pushing on Grady from all sides: his editor and friend, Terry Crabtree, is attending the conference and eager to read Tripp's manuscript; his wife has apparently left him; his lover is pregnant; and one of his students, James Leer, is obsessed with Hollywood and might be suicidal. Throw in a dead dog, an increasingly tense Passover seder, a stolen item of Hollywood memorabilia, and a tuba, burdens that are physical and metaphorical, push Grady to the breaking point.
The book works as exploration of the writerly life as well as a mid-life crisis for someone who managed to read middle-age without fully growing up. The story was hard for me to get into at first, but Chabon's prose pulled me along until Grady was able to win me over. The more absurd things got, the more I cared. I'm going to miss him.
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