A satire on the literary life, Wonder Boys is an enjoyable if somewhat cumbersome read. Great characters, all of them on a quest for self-acceptance, but Chabon gets bogged down by his obvious affection for literary description, which, while startingly good, distracts from the action at hand and puts too much space between the character and the reader. The book reads like a series of run-on scenes, rather than a flowing novel, which is probably why it made for a good film.

The relationship between Tripp, the main character, and James, one of his students, is a focal point of the novel. Tripp inadvertedly helps James kill a dog, and then spends the weekend running around with it in his trunk, trying at various times to dispose of it. But the relationship is deeper than its lighthearted treatment. The two of them end up palling around together all weekend, getting drunk and stoned, and finding themselves in over the top situations, which includes scenes with Crabtree, Tripp's wife who has just left him, his wife's very Jewish family, Tripp's lover who is pregnant, a stolen jacket onced owned by Marilyn Monroe, a stolen car, a drag queen, and on and on.

At times I marveled at Chabon's prose and his penchant for description -- that he loves his characters and respects them for who they are is evident, that he can be simultaneously playful and serious, that he can write circles around a good many of today's writers is also true. However, while the book is light in spirit, it is often not light on the printed page, and you sometimes have a difficult time getting pulled into the hilarity and absurdity of the action.

The book follows the travails of Grady Tripp, an overweight, aging college English professor who wrote the great American novel--and who has been totally unable to finish his follow-up book, which amounts to over 2 thousand pages at the beginning of the novel.

But, as the reader shortly finds out, this is just the beginning of Grady's problems. In the space of one long weekend during his college's WordFest writer's festival, he loses his wife, learns that his lover is pregnant, copes with his sexually ambiguous and troubled editor, and learns the truth about the life and talent of one of his students.

The novel is briskly paced and plotted, and the minute events in Grady's life are alternately funny and pathetic. You see Grady growing in sincerity and realization throughout the novel, and it's a pleasure to watch this dissolute but essentially good-hearted man fall and then rise again due to his change in priorities.

This is a funny, touching, expert piece of writing. Chabon just won the Pulitzer for his most recent novel, and this book clearly demonstrates his talent. I highly recommend it.