4.01/5
Author: Michael Chabon
Publication Date: Apr 29, 2008
Formats: PDF,Paperback,Kindle,Hardcover,MP3 CD,Audible Audiobook
Rating: 4.01/5 out of 32832
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Sep 19, 2007
Second only to Catcher in the Rye in my all-time favorite list of books. If you are a writer, if you've taken a creative writing class, if you've verged on totally and completely fucking up your life with sweet redemption held just at your fingertips, but which you chose to thumb your nose at for just a teensy bit longer....god, read this book. If you love prose, good prose, jubillant, wild, ecstatic indulgent prose, read Chabon. I just want to roll around in his words and bathe in it like a Second only to Catcher in the Rye in my all-time favorite list of books. If you are a writer, if you've taken a creative writing class, if you've verged on totally and completely fucking up your life with sweet redemption held just at your fingertips, but which you chose to thumb your nose at for just a teensy bit longer....god, read this book. If you love prose, good prose, jubillant, wild, ecstatic indulgent prose, read Chabon. I just want to roll around in his words and bathe in it like a bubble bath and candlelight and a glass of champagne. I love this book, messy, huge, overwrought, comedic, tragic, careening towards a great big crash at the end -- I love it all. It's what I love about life, it's what I love about literature -- I like it big and messy and joyous. Did I mention I love this book? And Grady -- he's my second favorite literary character of all time -- second only to Holden Caulfield. ...moreDec 07, 2016
What the heck have I been doing with my life! Wonder Boys has been one of my favorite movies of all time because it hits all the wonderful buttons of writing and reading and being deliciously messed up and being so HUMAN.Sep 26, 2007
For a straight man, Chabon is very gay friendly. I know there's been stuff written, possibly by Chabon himself, about early gay liaisons he undertook, but now the man's married with three, four kids. And yet Chabon's smart enough to write this:Jan 06, 2008
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Wonder BoysDec 09, 2012
On the surface, Grady Tripp is probably one of the most loathsome individuals I have ever read about in literature—he’s spent seven years on a 2,611 page monstrosity that has gone absolutely nowhere and like his life meandered everywhere, he’s come to the dissolution of his third marriage, he’s carried on an affair for about five years with the married chancellor who is now carrying his child, he’s smoked an entire football field of weed, and yet he can’t seem to cut himself off, and he harbors On the surface, Grady Tripp is probably one of the most loathsome individuals I have ever read about in literature—he’s spent seven years on a 2,611 page monstrosity that has gone absolutely nowhere and like his life meandered everywhere, he’s come to the dissolution of his third marriage, he’s carried on an affair for about five years with the married chancellor who is now carrying his child, he’s smoked an entire football field of weed, and yet he can’t seem to cut himself off, and he harbors a certain amount of jealousy for James Leer, a student of his who has managed to finish his novel, while he has not—and yet I liked him anyway, and I couldn’t wait to see what crisis he would manage to find himself in the middle of next. He’s a train wreck, but he’s a somewhat loveable train wreck all the same, because he recognizes that he’s a complete and utter mess, and he has little, if any, hope for redemption.Jul 20, 2009
This is the second book I've read recently that involved the main character being an adulterer, impregnating someone other than his wife, and generally being such a screw-up that they wreck the life of anyone who depends on them. But while I hated Rabbit from Rabbit, Run to the point of wishing he was real so I could find him and pummel him with a baseball bat, I actually LIKED Grady Tripp and rooted for him to put down the joint and get his act together.Apr 27, 2014
1 star - I really hated it.Aug 03, 2017
It's been quite some time since I last laughed out loud while reading/listening to a book. Several scenes in this novel caught me just right, mainly, I feel, because Chabon and I share a certain man-child sense of humor. If you identify as a man-child, maybe pick up this book and give it a read. It's surprisingly short for being so long, which is to say, it's extremely well written, to the point that the words disappear and you're left with a movie playing out on the walls of your mind.Jul 31, 2019
A writer/professor, Grady Tripp, has been in the process of writing his fourth novel for seven years, with no end in sight, though he tells anyone that asks he is “almost finished.†At Tripp’s invitation, his friend and editor, Terry Crabtree, shows up to attend the college’s annual writer’s conference. Crabtree hopes to obtain the long-awaited novel from Tripp, as he needs it to save his job. Tripp’s personal life is in turmoil due to his adultery. He is using so much marijuana that it is A writer/professor, Grady Tripp, has been in the process of writing his fourth novel for seven years, with no end in sight, though he tells anyone that asks he is “almost finished.†At Tripp’s invitation, his friend and editor, Terry Crabtree, shows up to attend the college’s annual writer’s conference. Crabtree hopes to obtain the long-awaited novel from Tripp, as he needs it to save his job. Tripp’s personal life is in turmoil due to his adultery. He is using so much marijuana that it is affecting his judgment and is not helping him finish his 2600-page (and counting) tome. Tripp is conflict-avoidant and has trouble making choices, but people are drawn to his congenial nature. He keeps procrastinating until decisions are made for him by default. Before the weekend is over, he will lose and gain relationships, influences impressionable students (not always in a good way), experience close encounters with an unruly dog and a boa constrictor, search for an expensive piece of a memorabilia collection, attend a Passover Seder with a Jewish family, several native Koreans, and a few lapsed Christians, and store a tuba and an assortment of unlikely items in the trunk of his car.May 11, 2012
If we were to categorize books that have literary merit but are depressingly non-enjoyable in a human sense, "Wonder Boys" would be a front runner. Michael Chabon can write. I give him that. Michael Chabon also writes the worst books I've ever read. Here you have a story about a writer (that's a tough plot to start with) that is not in touch with reality (the character is even harder to write) whom screws everything up because it is much easier to do the wrong thing than to be right all the If we were to categorize books that have literary merit but are depressingly non-enjoyable in a human sense, "Wonder Boys" would be a front runner. Michael Chabon can write. I give him that. Michael Chabon also writes the worst books I've ever read. Here you have a story about a writer (that's a tough plot to start with) that is not in touch with reality (the character is even harder to write) whom screws everything up because it is much easier to do the wrong thing than to be right all the time. I know this creates conflict, and Grady Tripp and all his pot-smoking shenanigans are supposed to make us sympathetic for the life that he has created for himself, but honestly, I could care less. The biggest problem with any of this is that a novel about how hard it is to write a novel is a complete waste of time. In the end, his overall loser mentality makes him insufferable.Feb 04, 2019
Video reviewJan 24, 2012
Michael Chabon!! Where have you been all my life? What a great book! I loved the film version, but the book is even better. I must admit, it was impossible not to picture Michael Douglas and Toby Maguire as I read, but that's not a bad thing. I love the character Grady Tripp. He's just the type of guy I would have fallen for in my youth: ridiculously intelligent, creative, professorial, and hopelessly, tragically flawed. "As long as she was falling in love with me, I might as well start making Michael Chabon!! Where have you been all my life? What a great book! I loved the film version, but the book is even better. I must admit, it was impossible not to picture Michael Douglas and Toby Maguire as I read, but that's not a bad thing. I love the character Grady Tripp. He's just the type of guy I would have fallen for in my youth: ridiculously intelligent, creative, professorial, and hopelessly, tragically flawed. "As long as she was falling in love with me, I might as well start making her promises I didn't intend to keep." Ah, Grady, you would have totally done me in.Feb 26, 2007
He tried far too hard to be eclectic, over the top, and kitschy. The entire novel came off as insincere. The only likable characters, in my opinion, were Hannah and Sara, because they were the only ones with any kind of grip on the real world. Grady was a slacker and an asshole, Crabtree was a disturbing, self-absorbed douchebag, and James was just pathetic in every way. Actually, I take that back. Emily's parents, the Warshaws, are entirely likable. How can you not love old Jewish parents?Nov 20, 2018
This is one of my favorite novels of all time. Although I didn't particularly like one section that dragged ass with his estranged wife's family, this book has major page turning power and it kept me engaged all the way through. Chabon has talent, and the world should know it.Nov 30, 2019
Loved it. A real hoot. 5 stars. Straight to my 2019 favourites shelf and will probably add it to my all-time favourites too. I have a vague recollection of reading a few pages of Moonglow by this author and not being particularly motivated to continue reading it, so I was a little apprehensive when recently given Wonder Boys as a present. It was therefore an unexpected delight how much I enjoyed this book.Mar 09, 2019
A funny morbid tale that includes a dead dog, a smashed snake and a tuba.Jul 30, 2007
I read this book after I saw the movie, so I am judging it a bit backwards. I read with a vision in my head of the way the characters were portrayed in the film, and tried to envision them the way Michael Chabon wrote them. For example, in the book, Grady Tripp is a large, imposing man, and his friend and editor, Terry Crabtree, is the same age as he is, and they have been friends since college. Of course, in the film, the slender Michael Douglas plays Grady, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays I read this book after I saw the movie, so I am judging it a bit backwards. I read with a vision in my head of the way the characters were portrayed in the film, and tried to envision them the way Michael Chabon wrote them. For example, in the book, Grady Tripp is a large, imposing man, and his friend and editor, Terry Crabtree, is the same age as he is, and they have been friends since college. Of course, in the film, the slender Michael Douglas plays Grady, and Robert Downey, Jr. plays Crabtree, making him about 20 years younger. But, things always change when books are adapted to film. I think the screenwriter did a fine job adapting this novel to the screen, and keeping it fairly faithful to the book.Jul 14, 2009
Trifling. After I put this down that's the only thing I could think of that would accurately convey what I was feeling after burning precious brain cells and wasting God-given minutes I'll never get back. But maybe I was wrong? After all when Chabon first appeared on the scene along with Ethan Canin, they were the "boy wonders" of literature - talented, handsome, smart, with big book deals to boot. They'd set the publishing world on fire; who was I to try and put out the flame?Jun 12, 2017
I was not expecting to ever quit a book by Chabon but this one turned out not to be to my taste. Characters not knowing where to go and what to do, a story that has no direction either. And all the detailed descriptions (do I really need to know the way even the minor characters are dressed, what they look like, how they smell?) slow down the pace even more. I could appreciate the humor and most of the writing, although even here the author is exaggerating in all his metaphores, many of which I was not expecting to ever quit a book by Chabon but this one turned out not to be to my taste. Characters not knowing where to go and what to do, a story that has no direction either. And all the detailed descriptions (do I really need to know the way even the minor characters are dressed, what they look like, how they smell?) slow down the pace even more. I could appreciate the humor and most of the writing, although even here the author is exaggerating in all his metaphores, many of which are sharp but quite a few make little sense. In summary: this book is over the top. ...moreDec 15, 2016
Even chaos can become predictable. Marijuana, alcohol, three marriages, an ongoing infidelity with his department head's wife, a peripatetic silver-tongued agent who pops drugs like tic-tacs, and a seven year publishing dry spell have been shepherding the hapless main character, author Grady Tripp, to the fateful weekend chronicled in this novel. It's a weekend that will arouse atomized glimpses of self-awareness in Tripp.Mar 07, 2014
A strong, early Chabon. It has all the things that I love about Michael Chabon: the quirky characters, the beautiful filigreed prose, the androgenous and ambiguous lovers. But, it also contains more warmth and crazy energy than some of his later books. And I appreciate that. I appreciate the feeling that this book ran past Chabon's careful editing. Its kinetic narrative isn't about to be slowed by careful massaging. To Hell with all that. In someways it feels a bit like the Pastoral Wanderings A strong, early Chabon. It has all the things that I love about Michael Chabon: the quirky characters, the beautiful filigreed prose, the androgenous and ambiguous lovers. But, it also contains more warmth and crazy energy than some of his later books. And I appreciate that. I appreciate the feeling that this book ran past Chabon's careful editing. Its kinetic narrative isn't about to be slowed by careful massaging. To Hell with all that. In someways it feels a bit like the Pastoral Wanderings of Don Quixote (just replace Rocinante and Sancho Panza with a dead dog and a tuba). IT also at times feels like a Greek New Comedy with the chorus singing through the vortex ring of Afghan Indica pot smoke. So yeah, I liked it good enough.Jul 04, 2017
Great read, much to think about, in terms of the creative process, life, marriage, academia, addiction, youth, aging, suicide...it's also a tour de force of tiny bursts of comic commentary. Some sentences just ripple with arch satire, sarcasm, and deft instantaneous comic portrayals of characters and situations, where truth is hilarious and hilarity rings true.Mar 30, 2008
I remember being surprised at how much I liked this book that seemed so silly and focused on characters about whom I cared so little, especially the main character, Grady Tripp, who is a real jerk. But Chabon is talented and the book has real charm. The movie, while good, doesn't quite do it justice.Aug 13, 2010
Unfortunately, there's a long history of books set in academia where the protagonist a.) is a professor, b.) is an alcoholic or substance abuser, c.) is having trouble getting it up (it = his writing muse), and d.) is tempted by or tempting to the tender vittles we know and love as co-eds. Given how cliche all of this is, you would think that authors would consider this formula strictly where angels fear to tread, but no.Apr 07, 2013
Being far too depressed to attempt any sort of cogent "review" of this book, all I can say is that it's terrific, and one of only a few books to ever make me laugh audibly. Perhaps that's a sad statistic to cite, but while I've found many books funny, few have actually made me genuinely laugh, as several scenes here did.Take your time and choose the perfect book.
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