Alas, all good things must come to an end...
Michael must go - but he’s done a marvellous job of answering your questions. Thanks Michael! And thanks to everyone to posted a question.
If you want to join us for the next Reading group, we’re currently asking you to vote for a book on India’s partition. We’ll announce the chosen book next Tuesday!
Hiro_Coaches asks:
In your day-to-day life as a writer, do you feel that you have too little or too much time to think and let those thoughts expand? Or somewhere in-between?
I highly value and desperately long for those stretches of a week or two when I am able to retreat to a borrowed cabin or beach house, or the MacDowell Colony, and sink down deep into a book and my thoughts about it.
Jericho999 asks:
Did you ever hear if President Obama read Telegraph Avenue? And enjoyed appearing in it?
No, I never did. I figured the silence most likely meant that he had not read it, and was probably unaware of his having been fictitiously appropriated, but possibly that he had read and disliked it. Also, he had a lot of better things to do with his time.
lourichardson says:
I loved The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, especially as it’s set over one summer - one of my favourite fiction forms! Did you set out with this time frame in mind, and, if so, would you choose to do it again? Did it shape the story at all?
Yes, I very much did. The two novels that I happened to read immediately before beginning work on MoP were THE GREAT GATSBY and GOODBYE, COLUMBUS. I noticed that both were set over the course of, and structured around, a summer. And away I went.
Ritzcrisps says:
Can you thank Sammy Clay for teaching me how to cook better scrambled eggs? Cheers
I have further refined Sammy's recipe. More slow whisking to begin with (nonstick pan, silicon-coated whisk). LOTS of butter. And, most importantly, VERY low heat. Takes a while.
If you need the original recipe from The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay to refer to, here it is:
Sammy broke a half-dozen eggs into a bowl, splashed them with milk, shook in pepper and salt …. Then he poured the eggs into a pan of foaming butter. Scrambled eggs was his only dish, but he was very good at it. You had to leave them alone; that turned out to be the secret. Most people stood there stirring them, but the way to do it was to let them sit for a minute or two over a low flame and bother them no more than half a dozen times.
We have a remotely-filed question, delivered by samjordison:
My friend Ed has text to ask if I can ask: “Will you ever reattempt Fountain City? Or would it be too painful?”
If I couldn't figure out why I was writing it then, I doubt I would be able to manage the trick now!
SBreth1 says:
I read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh many years ago and really loved it (I can still see the cloud factory), but Phlox frustrated me a little. Would you do anything differently with her if you were writing her today?
'No writing uniform – used to wear a Mr. Rogers cardigan but somebody pinched it'
Kungfulil says:
Back problems. Posture. ipads V PowerBooks. Writing uniforms? I need to know. Thanks, Mike.
I write in an Eames chair, with my feet up. Keyboard/trackpad on a tray on my lap, MacBook Pro on a tray-table at eye level. iPad, in a Clamcase keyboard-case, pretty much exclusively when traveling. No uniform, used to wear a Mr. Rogers cardigan w leather patches on the elbows but somebody pinched it.
suzy043 says:
1) Do you plan to publish one of your novels or a collection of stories as an audiobook read by yourself? I’ve dl three podcasts with you and I love the parts where you’re reading from Kavalier & Clay and Moonglow, respectively.
2) And the really important question, after reading Wonder Boys and re-reading TMOP: Did you live in a house with an elevator in Pittsburgh or later?
The audiobooks of my MANHOOD FOR AMATEURS and SUMMERLAND are read by me. And, no, I have never lived in a house with an elevator!
Michealmack says:
I read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh for this reading group and really enjoyed it. It’s quite the debut novel. I hated Phlox. Liked Arthur. Adored Cleveland. And oscillated Wildely about Art. I was wondering why you named those two characters Arthur? Should we read any significance into it? Especially Art?
I have a name that was for forty years the most popular for boys in the US. I had the continual experience of knowing and befriending Michaels. I thought it would be interesting to have that happen in a book. Originally Art was named Drew, short for Andrew, which is a much more common name than Arthur. So there was Drew and Andrew. Just as I was copyediting the book I suddenly realized that I had a five-year-old half-brother named Andrew who might not care to be memorialized in this way, and so I changed it, fairly impulsively, to Art/Arthur. I did enjoy the implied pun of "art."
'The Coen brothers adaptation of The Yiddish Policemen's Union met the same fate as Steve Buscemi's character in Fargo'
Edspin asks the question we’ve all wanted to know the answer to at some point:
Is The Yiddish Policemen’s Union Coen brothers adaptation ever going to happen?
No, I am sorry to report that the Bros. proposed adaptation met the same fate as Steve Buscemi's character in FARGO.
Morristv has some loaded feedback:
I became aware of your work in the late 90’s when for the 1st & only time a woman picked me up in a bar and took me home! She lent me mysteries of Pittsburgh and I was hooked! It is with deep respect and admiration that I ask you to fire your editor! YP Union was just dull in parts & although I knew then Senator Obama was going to appear in Telegraph Avenue, when he did I stopped reading it! I voted for him twice but the trick was beneath your talent and a good editor would have told you that. Again with respect and admiration.
'I'm an American, top to bottom, side to side, inside and out'
cannyman says:
Many Americans I meet in the UK seem to feel a profound shame at how their fellow countrymen behave (and vote), and at their lack of curiosity about the rest of the world. Do you ever feel the urge to reject your country and describe yourself more as a Citizen of the World, which seems a fair description of many of the significant characters in your books?
I'm an American, top to bottom, side to side, inside and out--and that means, to me, a citizen of the world.
Bakelite has a football-related question (there is always one):
Wenger. Stay or go?
As a deeply, even woefully, uninformed, very long-distance Gunners supporter, I have to say that there is something I like about the guy.
goldennuggets says:
Michael, can you say something about why you consider Ada by Nabakov to be such a great book. I completely agree with you, but Martin Amis has always claimed that it’s ‘dead’. He’s wrong, surely, but why?
In a previous reply I alluded to my weathervane opinion of ADA; it seems to turn 180° every decade--or I do. Some of it is unquestionably among the most beautiful stuff the man ever did.
(Here’s what Michael said about Ada earlier on, if you missed it).
'Moonglow is, on one level, Gravity's Rainbow fanfic'
isabelmarlowe is writing her thesis on Moonglow:
I’m particularly interested in the question of muteness and the narrative gaps in history that can be filled by fiction. In some of your essays you’ve said that good works of popular culture, such as fantasy or adventure stories, always provide the possibility open-ended world that transcends the written text. I’ve considered this idea in my analysis of the novel. Your fictional (ok, that’s not the best word) narrator/memoirist rewrites his grandfather’s memories in the form of adventure stories. I also think of the many gaps and questions that remain open in the story of the grandmother. In this sense, what’s your point about the possibilities of life writing? Should auto/biographers aspire to discover the truth or do you think that the really important story lies in the open-endedness of a life, this is, on the possibilities of constant revision and recreation? Thank you!
Wow, thank you, I'm flattered you think the book's worth a thesis!
I love the connection you're drawing between the "open spaces on the map" I've written about with regard to genre fiction and fanfic and the gaps in the narrative of a life... given the fact that MOONGLOW is, on one level, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW fanfic, I think you're on to something!
Our own samjordison has a question:
Towards the end of Moonglow there is the most beautifully cathartic verbal dressing down of a Nazi. Felt like a complete punch the air moment to me - and I couldn’t help wondering how long ago you wrote that - and if you knew when you were writing how current some of the issues in the book were going to be?
Sam, as I was writing about von Braun and the Nazi roots of the American space program, Nazism and its adherents felt like ancient history. Ha.
'Steamrollering my hard-drive would useless because everything's in the Cloud now, too.'
not_only_words says:
Hi Michael, I once had a very brief conversation with you at a reading event in Paris about your very long, unpublished second novel which I think was called Fountain City. I wondered how you used it - the experience of it or even the actual material - in Wonder Boys and also what you think about the whole business of knowing when to abandon a novel. What do you do with all the good bits - a sentence or tree, an image, perhaps a whole section even - that are locked up in that manuscript? Use them somewhere else? Or leave them in case you want to come back to the work later? And if Fountain City remains unpublished, will you order the steam-rollering of your hard drive, Pratchett-style, on your death? Looking forward to the Moonglow paperback.
Once Fountain City was retired, replicant-style, I was able subsequently to make use only of a few bits, here and there. The most significant were a number of passages describing a greenhouse which I was able to lift and bestow on Sara Gaskell in WONDER BOYS.
Steamrollering my hard-drive would useless because everything's in the Cloud now, too. Anyway, once you're dead, what difference can it make to you?
CarrAgger asks:
Would a 10-part HBO adaption of The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay be the best programme ever made?
MythicalMagpie says:
I’d like to ask Michael Chabon something about The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I know it was submitted as his thesis for a Master of Fine Arts degree, so I was wondering what was in the intro to the submission. What was his aim in writing the novel?
I was just trying to complete the requirements of the degree program, which included a novel or book-length collection of short stories.
Chrishale has a question about Michael’s involvement with a collection of essays about Israel and the occupied territories, called Kingdom of Olives and Ash:
Why did you lead the investigation of the occupied territories? Can Israel recover its status morally?
I went to see for myself what I had until then only heard about, with all kinds of distortions, from others. And yes, I believe that it absolutely can.
unclearleo asks:
Have you ever, during a meeting with a publisher, thrown a manuscript against the wall with the words “You can’t handle the truth”?
I am neither a thrower nor an angry expostulator. In public, at any rate.
(By the way, if you haven’t read Michael’s amazing piece about his son Abe, you can read it here).
asiaminor says:
Michael, much as I love your novels, I absolutely adored your GQ piece on your son at the Paris fashion show. He is such a star. Are you/do you plan on writing a collection of long essays on various things? Please say yes. Best wishes from a fan in India (who met you in Singapore some years ago).
Hello, again!
Thanks! If you're looking for essays, you might check out my books MANHOOD FOR AMATEURS and MAPS AND LEGENDS. Also I'm going to bring out a small collection of previously uncollected pieces on fatherhood next June, with the GQ piece as the anchor, to be called POPS.
WebberExpat says:
I’ve got a question. It’s depressing having to ask this... I enjoyed Telegraph Avenue, and I liked how the race issue was handled. The characters most who seem to have been most deeply involved in the African-American culture often were not the African-American characters. They, instead, seemed far more ambivalent about their racial identity. Given the utter s%&*!storm that seems to have once again descended upon the states, could you write the same novel? Would Telegraph Avenue still be so inter-mingled and hopeful and cognisant of playing with racial stereotypes? Is this simply the inevitable blow-back that occurs every time racial parity takes a step or two forward?
If I were writing that book now, I would approach the question of writing black characters in the same way--84% humility, 16% chutzpah--but I think the book might have even more of a wistful tone than it already does.
'I have pondered writing a sequel to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay'
Troublems says:
Hi Michael - I love your work, and I look forward to every new novel and story with great anticipation. Thank you for your continuing brilliance!
I expect that you’ve been asked this a bunch of times, but I was wondering if you’ve ever thought about doing sequels/prequels to your early works, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh or Wonder Boys? I love both books, and they are both perfectly crafted and self-contained tales. However, I often wonder what may have become of Art, Phlox, Grady, Crabtree etc. in the intervening years, and how they would feel about subsequent changes in America etc. Alternatively, hearing first hand a young Grady’s adventures with Crabtree/his wilderness wild man years could be fun...
I have pondered writing a sequel to THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY. Also someday I would like to write another story about Amram and Zelikman, the heroes of GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD.
'Do I wince at my younger self? Yes – and yet there is a certain pitying fondness'
MosquitoDragon says:
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is the first of your novels I have read (so far), so I can ask this question without reference to any of your later novels. At the time TMOP was published, the news of such a young writer breaking through into mass publication caused quite a stir, but I think most people can agree now on how remarkably well-formed and mature the work was for a 23 year old. So, as you have continued to write acclaimed novels, to the point where TMOP is one of your least known, how do you feel when you look back at it? Do you wince at your younger self (as so many of us do) or do you think it stands up to the rest of your catalog? Do you spend much time thinking about your past works, or is there no time for that with more novels to write?
Wince, wince, wince, wince, wince. And yet there is a certain pitying fondness. It is very much, if not exactly, like looking at a photograph of myself from the same period. That haircut! The cigarette affectation! The profound and smug ignorance of all the grief and disorder to come!
'I love Pynchon, and Pynchon's character names (most of the time).'
Conor Smith has two questions:
1. I’ve only just started Pittsburgh but so far it’s a lot of fun and some sentences I have felt very deeply. Having recently read your essay about Finnegans Wake, I was wondering if you thought establishing a connection with the reader is more important than challenging the reader or offering them confrontation in literature.
2. When I read the name Phlox I thought it could’ve been a name out of a Pynchon story. But in the book, Art says, ‘Her name is Phlox? There are girls named Phlox?’ So the name is unusual in the world of the novel too. I was wondering what your fidelity to reality was (if conscious) when writing this because you have the father character who’s a gangster but so far he feels very real. Were there any decisions you made to stay closer to realism or stray further?
1. It's all about connection; that said, challenging, even confronting a reader, can be a powerful vector of connection.
2. I started writing the book during the summer of 1985, which I spent here in Berkeley, California. I rented a room in a house on Josephine Street; the landlady had a garden and there were some seed packets lying around and one of them was for phlox. Immediately I had the thought "The girl in this book should have an 'X' in her name."
I love Pynchon, and Pynchon's character names (most of the time). The ones that work the best for me are those that approach believability yet retain their oddity, like, say, Herbert Stencil. For my own characters, especially the main ones, I try to find names that "fit" them somehow, like Grady Tripp (who is on a journey)(and has a bit of a substance problem) and Sam Clay (who is both a solid, "down to earth" person and the co-creator of a kind of golem).
julesoh says:
I read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh earlier this year because it was on a random list of books to read before you turn 30 - yes, I am now 30, and no, I didn’t manage to get through the list. I absolutely loved the novel, but I have two questions:
1. Do you think that novels have an ideal age group? I didn’t particularly think I needed to read Pittsburgh before I turned 30 - by which I mean, I would enjoy it at any age, though I’m very pleased it was on that list! Are there any novels you wish you’d read earlier/later in life?
2. Is Art okay now? I really want him to be happy.
1. There are some novels that I read and passionately loved when I was 20 (such as Robert Penn Warren's ALL THE KING'S MEN) that I have never since managed to re-read or even stomach at all, others (Bellow's HERZOG) that required greater age, experience and familiarity with disappointment and failure before I could appreciate them, and others (Nabokov's ADA) that I have read and loved at 20, re-read and absolutely hated at 35, and then come, with time, to a place of cautious adoration. And then there are the inexhaustible ones, Le Guin's LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS, the stories of Poe.
2. Art owns a vintage midcentury modern furniture store in Austin, TX.
Steff Clarke, asking the big questions:
Michael, why do dogs walk around in circles before lying down?
Agnes Waldman-Chabon, a 15-month-old labradoodle, just walks over to her cushion and flops, like a sack of onions.
hemingway62 starts us off:
Hi Michael,
I am a great fan of your work and enjoyed reading TMOP again this month. Our reading group was asked to select a novel about gay life to mark the 50th anniversary of the decimalisation in the UK. What book would you have chosen, and why?
Thank you! I think I probably would have gone with THE LINE OF BEAUTY. A really beautiful book and, also, British!
And we're live!
Michael Chabon is with us now. His book The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was our reading group pick this month.
Hello, everyone! I'm very honored to have had my book selected, and grateful to have been invited to join you for this discussion.
Michael Chabon is joining us for a webchat on Wednesday 30 August
I’m very pleased to announce that Michael Chabon is going to join us for a live online question-and-answer session on Wednesday 30 August at 5.30pm BST.
Chabon is the author of The Mysteries Of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Final Solution, Gentlemen Of The Road, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Telegraph Avenue and, most recently, Moonglow (coming out in paperback in September). His books span many forms of genre, theme and voice – but they are all wonderful. That their author will be joining us is an honour and delight.
But, of course, Chabon has picked up plenty of author distinctions since he was first published in 1988. He has won numerous awards and honours, including a Pulitzer prize and induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has written a large body of top-quality non-fiction for the New York Review Of Books, McSweeney’s and other outlets. He has also campaigned for Barack Obama, spoken up against Amazon in their 2014 dispute with publisher Hachette, and more recently, with his wife Ayelet Waldman, co-authored an urgent open letter about Donald Trump and the Nazi outrages in Charlottesville.
That last letter is an eloquent lesson in political fire, but Chabon is also notable for the gentle generosity with which he talks about his work and his fellow writers. If you’re looking for ideas for interesting topics, or just want to spend a stimulating couple of hours in brilliant company, I can recommend listening to this podcast from The University Of Pittsburgh and this one from the New York Public Library. We’re very lucky that he will be joining us, too.
Michael Chabon will be online to answer your questions from 5.30pm BST on Wednesday 30 August – but do get yours in early below.
Updated
Thank you, everyone, for the sprightly and entertaining and thoughtful questions! I really enjoyed being here with you, and I hope the answers didn't disappoint. Live long and prosper.