Trickster in a Suit of Lights: 7.5

Chabon's writing is so good. I grimmaced at the word "solipsistic" on the first page, and then gave in to his whimsy after regarding this chapter for what it is: an essay, a blogpost, and we're allowed to indulge in flamboyant words in those.

He name drops half the relevant authors of the past 150 years to establish how well read he is, and sprinkles in some artsy-fartsy prose to lob his name into the mix in the readers' mind's eye, but he pulls it off.

I appreciate the nuance of the topics it seems like he's trying to circumscribe (that's a Chabon word for you) with these essays. The first one articulates something I hadn't noticed for my own tastes, but rings true IME – that the notion of genre appeals to the lowest common denominator and therefore is the death of entertainment, that the novels I enjoy most are those that seems to transcend, ignore, or thwart the chains of a single genre to which they ostensibly belong. See Terra Ignota, Canticle for Leibowitz, G.E.B., Anathem, Fifth Head of Cerberus, and most recently, Pale Fire.

Moreso than just being "outside the box," though, he also notes how enjoyable and legitimately entertaining those novels that indulge (solipsistically) in the rules of their genre, and achieve play. In this way, an author writing for pleasure delivers pleasure.

Weirdly, though, he comes to the conclusion that because the short-story is the optimal path from to traverse a set of literary constraints to pleasure, it is bad. I think he coulda fleshed this idea out more with less metaphor, especially given the nature of the medium he's presenting the idea within lol, but it was a good read

Maps and Legends: 5.5

Reads like a sweet story for his grand children about "how grandpa came to be from when he was a sprout like you" – cool history about Columbia, MD, but not really relevant to the audience's understanding of literature as much as our understanding of the author. Fair play for introductions, more ethos building, but I sleep :p

Fan Fictions: On Sherlock Holmes: 8

Really good biography on Arthur Conan Doyle and how his own distaste for the success of his most popular work (Holmes) played into the way those novels were written, their own inconsistencies, and his invention of metafiction

I really like how this essay plays on the "blank spots on the map" concept laid out in the previous one.

Also, the diction continues to be exquisite, it's just fun to hear Chabon yap

Still an 7.75

before he becomes impotent.

Ragnarok Boy: 6

More waxing poetic. This time I give Chabon the benefit of the doubt, trusting that the themes presented in his nostalgic characterization of Norse mythology will tie into the subsequent essay(s).

Mostly just describing how, as opposed to Christianic & Grecco-Roman creation stories which ascribe some blame to human nature for "the way thighs are today:tm:", Norse mythology instead starts from the premise of darkness, and the mortal gods who are more similar to man are also just veins of light within the world.

He emphasizes the role that Loki plays in being the source and solution to many problems, the butt and perpetrator of most jokes, and how he finds solace in the fact that it seems like things have always been as tumultuous back then as they are now. Smile & wave and keep carrying on I guess

On Daemon's and Dust: 5

The longest essay yet, which amounts to little more than a book report on the His Dark Materials series. Though he's trying to develop his own lens of criticism about the loss of childlike innocence present in both Pullman's novels as well as C.S. Lewis's Narnia which they reposte, he still falls deeply (25 pages or so) into the object level agenda of the HDM's decidedly anti-church message which, as even Chabon concedes, undermines the plot of the series itself.

Chabon's own criticism is secondary to the plot summary and is lackluster IMO, which makes this low-utility per page

Kids' Stuff: 5.5

A brief discussion about the nature of comic books and how they were at first deemed "the stuff of greasy children," and then matured into gritty "adult" macabres that abandoned their target audience. Chabon suggest a retvrn to tradition of fun, grand stories for tots, about the kinds of things not that we would think they would like, but that we ourselves enjoyed when we were the age of the target audience. He bemoans the lack of grand stories for children about children – and this came out in 2008? I guess Percy Jackson hadn't come out yet, nor Stranger Things, nor really Harry Potter? Jk Harry Potter and literally His Dark Materials were obviously out at this time, though not in the comic medium he's suggesting.

Very narrow criticism, but looking at the next chapter, I think this is a two-parter

The Killer Hook: Chaykin's 'American Flagg!'_: 5

Repetitive praise for the series which pioneered dystopian cyberpunk comics. Having not read the series myself, it reads as repetitive dick-riding / praise for the art of the comic whose panels I have not seen, while simultaneously criticizing sf's doom of predicting things that are bound to go unfulfilled. AF! holds up because of it's gritty depiction of modern life, but simultaneously poisoned the water hole for all the "dark/gritty/edgy" comics like Dark Knight and its variations and the sex and violence and decidedly not-for-kids comics which Chabon himself criticized in the previous essay.

Don't care + contradictory + not as interesting as previous essays

Dark Adventure: On McCarthy's 'The Road': 8

This is the shit that makes these essays worth reading. Perhaps biased because "dark" is my favorite genre-spanning motif, but Chabon's holistic analysis of the theme and the surrounding novels and influences of this work which I also have yet to read seem to bolster, in a way which the previous essays could not, an appreciation for the subject matter.

Notable excerpts incl:

"... to set a skull as a memento mori in the corner of his canvas. No, the skull must have a starring role it ought ... to show evidence of having been scalped."

"Horror is stoicism with a taste for spectacle"

"The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears"

The Other James: 8.5

"James is like some casual, gentleman tinkerer yoking a homemade antigravity drive to the derailleurs of his bicycle because he is tired of being late to church every Sunday." These are the kind of prose that might appear on a substack I'd pay for.

Chabon drills into the essence of what makes a story good, demonstrating some of the qualities in his own analysis. And he doesn't overstay his welcome, it's cutting praise

Landsman of the Lost: 7

"Reading the comics page in 1996, exactly 100 years after the debut of Outcault's Yellow Kid, is, for those who still bother, half melancholy habit and half sentimental, adherence to duty, a daily running up of a discredited flag in a forsaken outpost of an empire that collapsed."

Here he again reminisces on something that I don't think I would appreciate as much as he clearly does. But he extracts an eidetic essence out of what the author of acomic strip was able to capture about profound loneliness, and the fellowship that it is always in tension with pretty well

Diving into the Wreck: 7.5

An important story for any writer to tell, I think. That of giving u. Chabon enjoyed divine inspiration after his stint with failure, begging the question how many would-be novelists don't get to taste the sweet satisfaction of "finishing" and are instead bound to a 1500 page incoherent monstrosity, unable to humble themselves.

Recipe for Life: 9

Makes me want to read the subject matter, demonstrates the quality which he is praising, and also articulates that which I love about the stories that I love but could not find the words for without seeming a sadist, a pervert, or incel.

"The adept handles the rich material, the rank river clay, and diligently intones his alphabetical spells, knowing full-well the history of the Golem: how they break free of their creators, grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled. In the same way, the writer shapes his story, rank like river clay, with the grit of experience and the smell of human life, heedless to the danger to himself, eager to show his powers, to celebrate his mastery, to bring into being a little world that, like God, is a t once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life."

Imaginary Homelands: 7.75

The humorous origins of the spiteful nationality and reverence that is The Yiddish Policeman's Union. A sober take on what it was like to be Jewish in the 90s. Yiddish as a murdered language.

Golems I Have Known: 9

Longest essay by far, and perhaps the best. More heritage, more golems, more autobiographical information all the while demonstrating the tact of navigating the sharp and narrow line, the borderland, between fiction and truth.

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