Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands

From Strand Bookstore

The essays in Michael Chabon's first collection of nonfiction illuminate the mental and physical landscapes out of which his extraordinary fictions emerge. This lithe collection - sixteen loosely connected essays, speeches and remembrances - becomes an unobstructed tour of Chabon's art and inner life, his own deftly constructed looking-glass anthology. 210p.

From the Publisher

A series of linked essays about the enriching prospects of reading and writing argues for the importance of enjoying a diverse range of options rather than limiting oneself to studious or serious literature, in an anthology that also explores the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's own writings from a perspective of personal history. Reprint.

More about the book

Michael Chabon has become literature's fiercest advocate for the value and vitality of genre fiction, comic books, and so-called lowbrow fiction. This aesthetic can be seen reflected in his own works: his serialized swashbuckling tale that became GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD ;his parallel reality detective tale, THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION; and of course the heroes of his Pulitzer-Prize-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY were comic book writers. MAPS AND LEGENDS, a collection of his essays, further articulates Chabon's aesthetic stance: he writes passionately about Sherlock Holmes, nautical tales, distant lands, and the power of golems. Chabon is particularly skilled at showing how the themes of genre fiction regularly permeate the borders of so-called literary fiction, as he deftly shows in his analysis of Cormac McCarthy's THE ROAD, a perfect example of high art meeting boyish adventure.