Michael Chabon

Michael CHABON, the author of novels such as the exuberant, Pulitzer-winning "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" and "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," an alternate-universe story that recently won the Nebula Award, has long harbored a passion: to make the literary world safe for genre fiction, and to expand the notion of what a serious work of fiction can be.

With his combination of literary seriousness (long, heavily researched novels), fruitful relationship to ethnic identity (Jewish) and ability to mine pop genres (science fiction, comic books), Berkeley resident Michael Chabon may have the highest capital of any West Coast writer. Today Harper Collins releases "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," a detective story, sort of, set in an alternate universe, kind of, where the Jews have been resettled to Alaska.

It does nothing to slight either Michael Chabon or his slyly entertaining new novel, "Gentlemen of the Road: A Tale of Adventure," when I say that 10 pages into it, I began to think of another book and another writer. On my 10th birthday, my parents gave me the wonderful edition of Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" that N.C. Wyeth illustrated.

Manhood for Amateurs The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son Michael Chabon Harper: 306 pp., $25.99 Over the course of 20 years and six acclaimed novels, Michael Chabon has proved one of the most imaginative fiction writers of his generation. His readers have come to expect, along with silky prose and high-concept plots, a thrilling immersion in far-flung, intricately conceived worlds. His new book, "Manhood for Amateurs," is a decidedly more traditional offering: a raft of shortish essays that traces his progression from a lonely, bookish boy to a thoughtful if addled husband and father.

Stephen King, John Grisham, Andrew Sean Greer, Michael Chabon and several other bestselling authors will sell the right to name characters in their new novels in an EBay charity auction that begins Sept. 1. The profits will go to the First Amendment Project, which defends the free-speech rights of activists, writers and artists. King says his highest bidder will get to name a character in a new zombie novel.

Two tickets are lasering a hole in my hand. They are for Monday's lecture in Irvine by Michael Chabon, who won a Pulitzer Prize for "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," his novel about creating a superhero. One ticket is for me. The other? That is the question. Picking the right person to bring along is harder than finding a mint comic book in a leaky garage.

Batman, Spiderman and a slew of other tights-wearing superheroes have taken a flying leap from page to screen in recent years. But this week, in what may be a literary first, the superhero will jump from novel to comic book with "The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist," a quarterly comics anthology based on Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winner, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay."

Michael Chabon was just your not-so-average literary wonder boy trying to splashily follow up his phenomenally successful debut, 1988's "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," with a great second novel. How difficult could it be? After all, from the moment Chabon discovered his gift for writing, it had seemed so easy. At 13, Chabon penned a story about Sherlock Holmes meeting Captain Nemo, and he was hooked. "It wasn't that hard," he says. "I had fun doing it, and I got all this praise and attention."

On one dark night, though by no means his darkest, Grady Tripp, a writer-in-residence at a Pennsylvania college, finds himself trying to accommodate in his decrepit Ford Galaxie, among other things: A stash of assorted drugs belonging to Grady's editor, who has come to harass him about his bogged-down novel, currently running at 2,600 pages. A tuba belonging to Miss Sloviak, the editor's transvestite companion. James, a suicidal writing student whose derringer Grady has just confiscated.