The 3 best books by the admirable Michael Chabon

When an author can be worthy of awards as "disparate" as the Pulitzer, of a general nature, and the Hugo or Nebula of Science FictionWithout a doubt, we have to recognize that we are dealing with a multidisciplinary author, succeeding in his eclectic nature to convince readers located in very different positions of the reading range.

This is the case of Michael Chabon who, in addition, to achieve that undeniable creative excellence had to face periods of creative drought, perhaps because he did not yet know which waters to move on or, probably because his dissociative capacity of very different plots was still a capacity to explore in greater depth.

The point is that the creative facet of this author does not emerge as something spontaneous since his training was already oriented to the Fine Arts and specifically in a less naturalized branch in the academic field, since the art of verbal expression, either in poetry or prose , may or may not arise from the academic or under the most absolute self-taught.

With his degree in creative writing, Michael Chabon was one of those writers who followed the official steps of the trade (worth the braying) to finally break with stereotypes and formulas and write in a rapturous way about the genres that he feels like at all times.

Michael is always surprising and in his narrations we can find criticism and reflection on many aspects, but what surprises me the most about this writer is that between his books a breeze of hope seeps through pessimism, a wisp of positive detachment in his varied literature .

Top 3 best books by Michael Chabon

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Many works of fiction have been written about Nazism, its ideology, its implementation and its ominous consequences that accompany the gloomy reality of the facts.

And in some novels or movies it is about looking for that point of color that can somehow sublimate the monstrosity and tragedy of human madness. Cases like the novella The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne, or Life is Beautiful manage to raise morale among the ruins of our civilization, with the human brilliance of the anecdotal. Something similar happens with this novel.

From the distant city of New York in the XNUMXs, Sam and Joe, two young Jews invent a comic book character who fights against Hitler. The Escapist is a being capable of recapitulating the genocide.

In a scene moved to the frenetic rhythm of a comic book adventure, we will advance together with the boys, discovering a city saturated with the color filter of the imaginary of an irreverent and magical author.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

The Yiddish Police Union

If literary training is of any use as an idea of ​​configuring the writer (I am more of those who believe that the writer is born more than he is made), the question is whether value can be given to the academic study of literature in order to project To the budding writer, this novel is undoubtedly the most brilliant result.

I say this because it is a novel that won the most prestigious fantasy and science fiction awards without being a truly genre novel.

Only a writer trained for it can end up sneaking a work as a whole that can be read from the most enjoyable genre of each. Because ... certainly I would say that it is a crime novel with surrealist overtones.

More than anything because the great protagonist in this cosmos of characters for me is Meyer Landsman, the typical detective back from everything and loaded with so many guilt that he needs to find answers in the bottoms of the bottles.

The small town of Sitka, lost in deep Alaska, acquires a special meaning as it is home to colonies of Jews from whom they hoped to return to their homeland one day.

Launching a murder case from there could take on sociological overtones. And yet what Chabon does is launch us into a frenetic delirium between the dreamlike, the fantastic and the grotesque feeling of what it is to be human with their ideologies and beliefs.

The Yiddish Police Union

Prodigious boys

Writing a novel about a writer should be one of the most rewarding arguments for an author. From Dostoievski but also Stephen King, to Borges o Coetzee Or until Joel dicker o Dante Alighieri… Many have been the writers who at some point have been compelled to propose a plot in which a writer, with his blockages and inspirational delusions, assumes a relevant role.

Michael Chabon did it this time, for this novel. Meeting Grady Tripp, the stereotype of a writer who knows himself better than his acknowledgments indicate, suffers a creative jam that leads him in a narrative and vital loop, where everything seems weighed down by the same misfortune, by the abandonment of the muses.

Returning to the essence of the writer who knows himself better than his acknowledgments indicate, everything that happens to Grady has to do with that destiny that in one way or another has to wait for him.

His life is a literary brown where the glimmer of glory is glimpsed in the admiration of a single reader, but where responsibilities end up hitting him. Maybe good old Grady only has one last chance at the Feast of Words, and he hopes he doesn't miss it ...

Prodigious boys
5/5 - (5 votes)

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