Rating: 
Summary: A Wonder
Review: Wonder Boys, by Michael Chabon is an amazing roller coaster tale of a Professor Grady Tripp weekend. The novel is both entertaining and exhilarating yet still retains that Chabon charm that The Mysteries of Pittsburgh left me with. Chabon has a real knack for writing, he creates characters who are both quirky yet somewhat identifiable. Take Grady, a forty something, chronic head, college professor, and one time wonder boy... I felt myself feeling the man's pain. Suddenly I was getting a divorce, losing my job and impregnating my lover. I especially liked James Leer the college student, what a strange little bird! The book is a page-turner that's full of insight. Some may say it is quick read, yet I took my time to savor.
Rating: 
Summary: Memorable, engaging and honest
Review: I don't quite understand many of the negative reviewshere. People describe his writing as adolescent or reminescent of a story from a writer's workshop. I was an English major in college and realize that to go after one's dreams in the literary field is not easy, simply because of the quirky characters you get involved with. Chabon is not trying to mold profound statements even close to the same league as Chekov or even Updike, but otherwise he works in the same atmosphere as early Philip Roth. He simply describes characters so easily and with such fruition (without overembellishing them) that we are hooked. "The Wonder Boys" is truly about the the emotional atmosphere of the literary world. Unlike medical or law school - writer's are encouraged to stay young - Grady's problem is that he's forty years old, holding on to youth is killing him. The Wonder Boys is not a light a read as I've heard many label it so. It's truly about that gray line between youth and maturity - and within that line resides hundreds of English majors. I loved it, read and enjoy - definitely not a book for anyone who thinks Nabakov is the beginning and end of the artistic plane.
Rating:
Summary: A thought provoking and addictive work or literature
Review: In Michael Chabon's best work yet, he demonstrates his remarkable ability to write. This novel, though racy at times is not only entertaining, but relevant and semi-educational. From pot-smoking authors, to pill-popping publishers, to dedicated students, and slightly insane students, with a nice jewish family at the end, this book truly does touch on everything. I would definately reccomend it, even thought it does have a few flaws. Towards the end, a variety of bizaare twists left me confused, and I didnt quite understand the ending. I also feel that the blatant drug use, was a little excessive, seeing as almost every character was intoxicated at some point. This is definately a five-star book.
Rating:
Summary: This is Good Reading
Review: 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.Michael Chabon is a very descriptive writer, as far as feelings, sensations, smells and the like. He focuses mainly on Grady Tripp as narrator here, and a lot on Crabtree and James Leer. He is also more open about Crabtree's sexuality in the book, although it wasn't exactly hidden in the movie. There were also some changes, like the name and breed of the dog, which seemed kind of unnecessary. All in all, I found this book a well-written page turner, with a very interesting protaganist, the confused, dope-smoking, blocked writer, Grady Tripp. There is much more about his estranged wife and family in the book, and the ending isn't quite as uplifting as the film, plus, I would have liked an epilogue of what happened to the characters after the novel was over. Although, the ending of the book is more realistic and ambivalent than the film. I couldn't wait to finish the book, and then view the movie again. It's rare that a film is so accurate to the novel and so well-casted. Especially since the author himself did not adapt the screenplay, it is amazingly like the book in almost every way. I couldn't wait to finish the book, because I was really caught up in the lives of the characters. Michael Chabon is definitely a very good writer, and I want to read his other novels, so that I can read them without the pre-existing condition of having seen the film.
Rating:
Summary: Fully Realized Characters
Review: It is unfortunate to discover a fine novel after seeing it as a fine film. I did not know about Michael Chabon until after seeing Curtis Hanson's film adaptation of Wonder Boys (robbed of a Best Picture nomination), and did not read Wonder Boys until much later, coming across several other Chabon works first. That said, it is hard to know how I would have reacted to Wonder Boys if I did not know the story in advance. Unlike the broader Kavalier and Clay, which is in all a better book, Chabon does not slip into occasional caricature here. Yes, the "doped-up novelist with writer's block" and the "spooky, haunted young genius" are archetypes, but Chabon's Grady Tripp and James Leer come off as original inventions due to Chabon's skill with subtlety. While revealing characters through a road trip is hackneyed, it comes off better in the novel than on the screen. Chabon's uniqueness lies in his combination of the mundane and the bizarre -- well-crafted characters wandering through a strange landscape. Wonder Boys is not the choice for a reader who wants just one Chabon experience -- Mysteries of Pittsburgh is odder and funnier, and Kavalier and Clay is bigger and better. But for a Chabon fan, Wonder Boys is an excellent diversion.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful "Boys"
Review: Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon deftly avoided the sophomore slump with "Wonder Boys," a followup to the unique "Mysteries of Pittsburgh." A wickedly funny and weirdly satirical novel, this is the story of a writer's frenetic midlife crisis, and the looming whale of a book that overshadows everything he does. Grady Tripp (a "wonder boy") is a onetime-lauded author who is slowly being sucked down into the quicsand of his 2000-plus-page book "Wonder Boys." The middle-aged professor is standing in the wrecks of two marriages, a stagnant career, and a pregnant married mistress. Amid his rapidly deteriorating life, he befriends a morbid young student, James Leer. Not to mention his endangered agent Crabtree, who hopes that "Wonder Boys" will salvage his career. Things go rapidly awry when James and Grady are looking at a jacket that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe. Suddenly a blind dog attacks Grady, and James shoots the dog. Grady sneaks the dead dog out of the house, unable to tell his girlfriend the truth. The sudden disappearance of the jacket, the death of the dog, and the sudden deterioration of Grady's personal life all mesh together... Chabon litters "Wonder Boys" with references to pop culture and high culture, the literati and Marilyn Monroe in the same breath. The result is even smarter than either alone would be. And despite the label of a "cool" writer, Chabon's elegant prose proves that he's more than just a wonder boy. Grady may be suffering from a hideous case of writer's block (although the result is that he actually writes too much), but Chabon clearly wasn't. He manages to grab hold what could have been a horrendously silly caper, and turns it into a wry work of art. His writing is sharp, bright and full of little points like a pinecone. Grady is not a likable guy -- he's a coward, a philanderer, and he's in the throes of a very ugly midlife crisis. But he seems real, and somehow appealing. The flamboyant gay editor Crabtree and the death-obsessed James are nice supporting characters -- Crabtree and Grady are the "wonder boys" of the past, and James is the wonder boy of tomorrow. The supporting cast -- including a perpetually sozzled author, a sultry transvestite, and a sultry boarder -- add plenty of extra flavor. Clever and incisive, "Wonder Boys" is a vivid look at aging, writing and the academic life. In his second fantastic novel, Chabon proves that he's no wonder boy -- he's just a wonder.
Rating:
Summary: Tripp's trippy trip through Pittsburgh's academic underworld
Review: Grady Tripp--professor, pothead, philanderer--is not all that likable; the type of egotistical pretender who rarely examines his own feelings, "an activity never far removed from looking for a dead rat in a spidery crawl space under the house." But, then again, none of the cast of characters who comprise his limited universe and massage his enormous ego are all that admirable: his underperforming and pliable editor, his suicidal and mendacious star student, his two-faced and newly pregnant mistress, his credulous and demoralized Jewish Korean American wife, his bubbly and flirtatious boarder. What makes Chabon's novel so wonderful is not that you'll meet characters you'll admire or like or identify with--you won't, one hopes--but that, even though it's a satire of academic life, this horde of misfits is so thoroughly believable. And it's one of the funniest books I've read: a protracted comedy of errors and pure boneheadedness. Several years late with his fourth novel, Tripp plays host to his editor, who has arrived for a college symposium on writing and who hopes that Tripp, against all odds, has completed his long-promised magnum opus. With the help of their wayward companions, the undynamic duo collect in Tripp's 1966 emerald green Ford Galaxie 500 convertible: a dead blind dog, a tuba, a rather hefty bag of marijuana, a boa constrictor, a jacket once worn by Marilyn Monroe, 2,611 manuscript pages of an unfinished (and unfinishable) novel, an assortment of pharmaceuticals--all of which are pursued through Pittsburgh by a street tough packing a German nine millimeter. It's a Peter Bogdanovich farce for the literary set. On top of its ludicrous yet somehow plausible plot, Chabon flaunts an enviable ability to construct perfectly crafted sentences and drolly concise depictions, sprinkled liberally with references to highbrow and lowbrow culture from the last century. About a voracious reader: "Once I had come upon the spectacle of Sara, finished with a volume of C. P. Snow while only partway through one of the long baths she took for her bad back, desperately scanning the label on a bottle of Listerine." About a free-spirited sister-in-law: "...it would certainly be typical of Deborah to decide that the best possible way of preparing for a family Seder was to drink Manischewitz and lie around half naked reading 'Betty and Veronica.'" Chabon is a writer's writer whose prose can distract critics and colleagues to a begrudgingly awed full stop. Fortunately for readers, however, he aims his novels at a much broader audience.
Rating:
Summary: D.A.R.E.
Review: So, first things first: Chabon is, right now, simply the world's best living writer of English prose. The only really fair question to ask given this fact is how _Wonder Boys_ stacks up against his other work. Answer: it lacks the sheer jaw-dropping magnificence of _Kavalier and Klay_, but it's a step forward from both _The Mysteries of Pittsburgh_ and the short stories. There are at least three dozen chokingly funny one-liners, the plot is an utterly ingenious picaresque, and the hero, Grady Tripp, is totally believable. I've had friends who were similarly gifted but who used just enough pot or booze to cause their lives to spin that little extra bit beyond their control, and Chabon shows this happening with surgical and unsentimental precision, without ever sacrificing the novel's lightness of tone. I saw the movie first, and think this was a mistake, although it does have many charms. There's a lovely pair of performances by Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey Jr. Also there's a wonderful scene near the end, involving a retired boxer and a jacket that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe, that's not in the book at all - surprising, given how sweet and apt it seemed to me to be in the film. But one only gets to witness the slow disintegration of Tripp's literary talent from the inside (so to speak) in the novel, and Tripp's drug use is also treated as being just a cuddly and insignificant eccentricity in the film, in that way that Hollywood people foolishly prefer to think of such things. The novel is much more of a cautionary tale, and a far superior work of art as the result.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful, and so is the movie
Review: Oh, what's not to love about this book about a middle-aged author and professor in a fading marriage, suffering a prolonged bout of writer's block, living in a large house with students crashing in every other spare corner - and one young man full of promise and angst and confusion and coming from a difficult and privileged background. Some terrific set pieces, such as the transporting of the dead dog, the header over the balcony, the manuscript blowing, blowing, blowing away.
Wonderful. No wonder he went on to win the Pulitzer for Kavallier and Clay.
Rating: 
Summary: An Interesting Tripp
Review: I'm one of the club members who believe that novels are just about almost always much better than their film adaptations. However, I found the movie was stronger than the novel. I watched the movie before I read the book, and don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the book, but the movie inspired me more.
I'm not going to go through the plot, but I will state that this was my first time reading Chabon, and he has quickly become one of my favorite writers. James Leer and Terry Crabtree were my favorite characters and there were moments I found myself laughing out loud in the quietest section of my school library.
The novel did drag on a bit for me whenever Tripp went to visit his ex-wifes family for the Passover Seder, but other than that, the story flowed pretty well.
I loved these characters and became attached to them pretty quickly. Chabon has the ability to make you care for certain characters, even if you know you would never be able to get along with them if they truly did exist. With this novel, he created a simple story about ones man situation which would, at moments, get worse than it was before but everything eventually works itself, even if it's through publishing bribery as was one instance.
While this isn't Chabon's best work, I am actually considering re-reading it if I ever get the copy I loaned out to a friend of mine back.
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