Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros [Large Print] - Softcover

Chabon, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0062888137 ISBN 13: 9780062888136

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2019

Synopsis

A brilliant, idiosyncratic collection of introductions and afterwords (plus some liner notes) by New York Times bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon―“one of contemporary literature’s most gifted prose stylists” (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times).

In Bookends, Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Chabon offers a compilation of pieces about literature―age-old classics as well as his own―that presents a unique look into his literary origins and influences, the books that shaped his taste and formed his ideas about writing and reading. 

Chabon asks why anyone would write an introduction, or for that matter, read one. His own daughter Rose prefers to skip them. Chabon's answer is simple and simultaneously profound: "a hope of bringing pleasure for the reader." Likewise, afterwords―they are all about shared pleasure, about the "pure love" of a work of art that has inspired, awakened, transformed the reader. Ultimately, this thought-provoking compendium is a series of love letters and thank-you notes, unified by the simple theme of the shared pleasure of discovery, whether it's the boyhood revelation of the most important story in Chabon's life (Ray Bradbury's "The Rocket Man"); a celebration of "the greatest literary cartographer of the planet Mars" (Edgar Rice Burroughs, with his character John Carter); a reintroduction to a forgotten master of ghost stories (M. R. James, ironically "the happiest of men"); the recognition that the worlds of Wes Anderson's films are reassembled scale models of our own broken reality (as is all art); Chabon's own rude awakening from the muse as he writes his debut novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; or a playful parody of lyrical interpretation in the liner notes for Mark Ronson's Uptown Special, the true purpose of which, Chabon insists, is to "spread the gospel of sensible automotive safety and maintenance practices."

Galaxies away from academic or didactic, Bookends celebrates wonder―and like the copy of The Phantom Tollbooth handed to young Michael by a friend of his father he never saw again―it is a treasured gift.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Chabon is the author of two collections of short stories, ‘A Model World' and ‘Werewolves in their Youth', the novels ‘The Mysteries of Pittsburgh', ‘Wonder Boys', ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay', ‘The Yiddish Policemen's Union' and ‘Telegraph Avenue', and the non-fiction books ‘Maps and Legends and Manhood for Amateurs'. ‘Wonder Boys' has been made into a film starring Michael Douglas and Robert Downey Jr. and ‘The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay' won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, GQ, Esquire and Playboy. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and their four children.

From the Back Cover

Chabon asks why anyone would write an introduction or, for that matter, read one. His answer is simple and simultaneously profound: "a hope of bringing pleasure for the reader." Likewise, afterwords--they are all about the "pure love" of a work of art that has inspired, awakened, transformed the reader. Ultimately, as readers make their way through these pages, an argument emerges about the profound interrelation between reading and writing, and the irrelevance of distinctions between high and low, between genre and mainstream, to the power of literature.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0062888137
• ISBN 13: 9780062888136
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240