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A review by palomapepper
Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands by Michael Chabon
5.0
I especially enjoyed:
Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story - In defense of “genre” fiction, and not keeping it so wholly separate from “literary”, intellectual fiction
Ragnarok Boy - An ode to the wildness of Norse mythology and of trickster gods, who rule the “borderlands” where the most interesting stories are born
Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes - Sherlock Holmes as metafiction and adventure fiction, situated within and transgressing Victorian taxonomies of order
On Daemons and Dust - An in-depth look into Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which Chabon suggests is centered fundamentally on the “ways in which adults betray children"
The Recipe for Life - How writing fiction is like creating a golem: gathering raw materials from the “rich material” of life, assembling your work, and then waiting for your creation to break free, “grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled"
Imaginary Homelands - a series of thoughts about being a Jewish American: a sensation of living in exile; of not experiencing a visit to Israel as a homecoming; of giddy disbelief at finding an impractical Yiddish phrase book, suited to visiting no place at all.
I skimmed or skipped:
- Most discussions of comic books (despite having read and enjoyed a few comics recently, I don’t share his childhood nostalgia for the comics of old).
- The final autobiographical essays, which I found less interesting.
Trickster in a Suit of Lights: Thoughts on the Modern Short Story - In defense of “genre” fiction, and not keeping it so wholly separate from “literary”, intellectual fiction
Ragnarok Boy - An ode to the wildness of Norse mythology and of trickster gods, who rule the “borderlands” where the most interesting stories are born
Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes - Sherlock Holmes as metafiction and adventure fiction, situated within and transgressing Victorian taxonomies of order
On Daemons and Dust - An in-depth look into Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which Chabon suggests is centered fundamentally on the “ways in which adults betray children"
The Recipe for Life - How writing fiction is like creating a golem: gathering raw materials from the “rich material” of life, assembling your work, and then waiting for your creation to break free, “grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled"
Imaginary Homelands - a series of thoughts about being a Jewish American: a sensation of living in exile; of not experiencing a visit to Israel as a homecoming; of giddy disbelief at finding an impractical Yiddish phrase book, suited to visiting no place at all.
I skimmed or skipped:
- Most discussions of comic books (despite having read and enjoyed a few comics recently, I don’t share his childhood nostalgia for the comics of old).
- The final autobiographical essays, which I found less interesting.