In a New Novel, Moonglow, His First Since the Best-selling Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon Spins a Magical Family Narrative That Is as Grand and Mysterious as the Literary Form in Which He Presents It.
AS THE author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Random House, 2000), his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about the early years of the comic-book industry, Michael Chabon knows all about origin stories. Every superhero has one—from Superman’s escape from the exploding planet Krypton to Peter Parker’s chance encounter with a radioactive spider—and so does every novel, including Chabon’s own. The story behind his new one, Moonglow, published this month by Harper, is particularly intriguing. According to promotional copy in the advance reader’s edition distributed by the publisher, the spark of Moonglow was ignited in 1989, when the author, having just published his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (William Morrow, 1988), spent a week at his mother’s home in Oakland, California, where his grandfather lay dying. “Tongue loosened by powerful painkillers, memory stirred by the imminence of death, Chabon’s grandfather shared recollections and told stories the younger man had never heard before, uncovering bits and pieces of a history long buried and forgotten,” reads the text. “That dreamlike week of revelations forms the basis for the novel Moonglow, the latest feat of legerdemain in the ongoing magic act that is the art of Michael Chabon.”
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Literary MagNet
When Greg Marshall began writing the essays that would become his memoir, Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It (Abrams Press, June 2023), he wanted to explore growing up in Utah and what he calls \"the oddball occurrences in my oddball family.\" He says, \"I wanted to call the book Long-Term Side Effects of Accutane and pitch it as Six Feet Under meets The Wonder Years.\" But in 2014 he discovered his diagnosis of cerebral palsy, information his family had withheld from him for nearly thirty years, telling him he had \"tight tendons\" in his leg. This revelation shifted the focus of the project, which became an \"investigation into selfhood, uncovering the untold story of my body,\" says Marshall. Irreverent and playful, Leg reckons with disability, illness, queerness, and the process of understanding our families and ourselves.
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