Michael Chabon, Genre and Literary Criticism

READERS of this blog probably need no urging on what a fine novelist michael chabon is -- and i direct anyone who doubts over to "kavalier and clay" or a number of his other excellent works of fiction.

but literary criticism, even by as esteemed a talent as mr. chabon, tends to fly under the radar, and that's why it gives me great pleasure to highlight his essay/criticism collection "maps and legends" -- note the nod to great/overlooked early REM song -- which collects pieces from the new york review of books and other pubs. the book recently came out in paperback.

some of the essays provide the background to his life and fiction -- fascinating essay on columbia, md. (about 20 minutes from your humble blogger's hometown), yiddish and jewish identity, golems, etc.

but my favorite work in the book are his pieces of criticism -- on philip pullman ("his dark materials"), cormac mccarthy's "the road," comics god howard chaykin, the sherlock holmes stories/novels of arthur conan doyle, and why norse myth is better than the greek and roman variety. (yeah!)

here is an interview i did with MC on the book and its argument. (and here is the interview i did with him around the time of "the yiddish policeman's union.")

the collection's guiding idea is that the literary and cultural gatekeepers have been wrong about what matters and what endures. chabon's preferred metaphor is what tolkien called the "cauldron of story," in which folkloric materials can transform into "literary" and pop work and back again. it's all bubbling in the same pot.

my only regret is that now it will be harder to find the original mcsweeney's hardback -- with a cover by jordan crane that may be the most beautiful jacket of any book last year.

Photo credit: Flickr user 34

Fresh view of Narnia

As a kid, i loved the first few books of c.s. lewis's narnia series... until i realized that they were actually christian propaganda. (my religious education was slight enough that it took me a while to even figure out the whole aslan-christ symbol part.)  

it was years before i forgave lewis, and my sense of those books never entirely recovered. i was drawn mightily into tolkien, "dune," vonnegut and others, and didnt much look back until the film of "the lion, the witch and the wardrobe" reminded me what an evocative writer lewis was. (let me recommend his book on the finite universe of the medieval worldview, "the discarded image.")

turns out i wasnt alone in feeling cheated, and laura miller -- who serious readers know as an erudite and beautifully clear literary critic whose work appears in salon.com -- addresses the issue in her wonderful new "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia."

the book, a kind of combined work of literary criticism, author biography and memoir, will be intriguing even to those who dont share my childhood atheism: miller gets into why we read, why children love animals, the bond between reader and writer, british masculinity, the friendship between lewis and tolkien, the moral of slasher films, her discussions with neil gaiman,  and so on.

her book, then, is an intellectual journey of the best kind. and it's driving me back to lewis's series, which has recently -- with fox planning to film "voyage of the dawn treader" -- gotten a new lease on its cinematic life.

Photo credit: Little, Brown and Flickr user 18