teaching is a kind of immortality

[substitute]

Michael Chabon writes an account of the writing of his first novel for the New York Review of Books, and mentions my dad again. Thanks, Michael!

Comments

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

I read that a couple days ago. Small world, I guess!

[springheel-jack.livejournal.com]

Why did he work pseudonymously?

[substitute.livejournal.com]

There were a few reasons. For one, he started writing fiction when he was still doing scholarly publishing and he didn't want to mix the two worlds. He generally disliked "professor novelists" and didn't want to be seen as one.

He also had psychological and philosophical walls between his personal and artistic life. There was the guy who taught at a university, had a suburban home, supported a family, and wrote about literature. And then there was this other guy who went upstairs to his study and wrote novels, which tended to the fantastic and the sexually bizarre. The mad artist and the family man inhabited the same body but not the same name.

He wrote a lot about duality and divided personalities, too.

[ranai.livejournal.com]

wtf? I read 'The Ballloonist' in high school, back when I had a habit of going to the used bookstore and trading books like, bi-weekly. I eventually had to stop when I became the only customer and all the books at the store I had at one time owned.

[substitute.livejournal.com]

that was dad's greatest hit, yeah! nominated for the National Book Award. did you like it?

[ranai.livejournal.com]

I did and also, Balloonist only has 2 L's. Ugh.

I never knew that was your dad; since I rarely click onto someone's journal, opting instead to read them on my friends list, I've never noticed the link to his stuff...

Damn

[citizenx.livejournal.com]

You just got, like, five thousand hot points.