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Wonder Boys
Michael Chabon, 1995
Random House
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812979213


Summary
Michael Chabon's Grady Tripp is one messed up college writing professor—his marriage is breaking up, his girlfriend (wife of the dean) is pregnant, his marijuana habit is taking over and his editor is just about out of a job.

Tripp has published a few moderately successful novels but is strangling his creativity with introspection and marijuana—never finishing a 2,000-plus-page novel called Wonder Boys.

When his editor and best friend, Terry Crabtree, comes to town and spreads chaos, Tripp goes along for the ride. Farcical misadventures dominate, from a picked-up transvestite to a wild ride in a stolen car that contains a tuba and the corpses of a dog and a boa constrictor.

Chabon writes with a wry, vulnerable wit that cleaves open the minds of his wonderful characters while his clean prose keeps the madcap story going so well that you'll want it to never end. (From the publisher.)