Wonder Boys: Michael Chabon. 1995
A picture says a thousand words...
I realise this is the last thing one is supposed to say about the Pullitzer Prize, genre supporting, American Academy of Arts and Sciences member, but I wasn't that taken with Wonder Boys. Two reasons basically:
1. I couldn't give a damn about what happens to the main characters
2. The 'Vidal Arthur Miller problem'.
1. All the blokes are complete wankers, all the women are angels. The young writer James Leer is a completely selfish, self-centered c**t who needs good kick up the backside. The hero Grady Tripp is selflessly kindly, but so incompetent as to lose all sympathy. Despite actually caring about his students, it is evident he is no benefit to them and in several cases is probably detrimental. What is Tripp for? Why does he exist? Why would I care? The perils of the story are Tripp could lose his job (well, he deserves to) and in the end does, and so what? It doesn't matter to him. Despite his best intentions he is obviously a leech on women and one pities Sara, his final conquest/ victim. Nothing matters: he can take drugs -- it doesn't matter, he can prevaricate about revealing the news of deaths and theft to the police -- it doesn't matter, his wife leaves him -- it doesn't matter.
I suppose we are to see this as semi-subconscious self-destruction. A necessary introduction of chaos to feed the writer's imagination. I suppose we are to take this a the writer's excuse for bad behaviour. Or it's both. Or, yawn...
Really, you just want the subprime mortgage crisis to foreclose their homes and put them all out in the street. But of course it won't, as they are all established rentier class. What are these leeches for?
2 The other problem is Tripp's mysterious attractiveness. Women -- including a young, sexy student -- throw themselves at him. It's hard to see why. It reminded me of Gore Vidal's criticism of a Henry Miller novel: if it was all so true, why don't we come across the passage where somebody says "Henry, you're full of bullshit." Why not "Grady, you're a wanker: just fuck off"?
The book is meant to be funny but really isn't for the first 200 pages, and after that only sporadically. Probably this is because I couldn't get over points 1 and 2. Perhaps I'm in a grumpy mood? Maybe the recession is killing comedy? Or more likely, comedy of a certain kind.
The Warshaw family are charming, funny, complex and delightful. Alas, they are a minor part. (They are the Wonder Boys that Tripp is trying to invent, I guess.)
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