Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Chabon, Michael - David Montrose (review date 26 April 1991)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

David Montrose (review date 26 April 1991)

SOURCE: “Another Last Summer,” in Times Literary Supplement, April 26, 1991, p. 20.

[In the following review of A Model World, Montrose finds Chabon's short fiction well composed but unexceptional.]

Over recent years, certain hypesters in American publishing have managed to pass off a potential to achieve great things some day as great things already achieved. The result has been a string of young writers whose books possessed, the PR went, serious literary merit as well as impressive sales.

Michael Chabon's novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988) was the unlikeliest bestseller of the bunch. The hype-assisted successes of Less Than Zero, Slaves of New York and Bright Lights, Big City were not unexpected, given that fictional guides to new lifestyles have been popular, and overpraised, at least since F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. David Montrose (review date 26 April 1991)
   2. Elizabeth Tallent (review date 9 June 1991)
   3. Kathryn Herold (review date Fall 1991)
   4. Greg Johnson (review date Summer 1992)
   5. Douglas Fowler (essay date Winter 1995)
   6. Jonathan Yardley (review date 19 March 1995)
   7. Richard Eder (review date 26 March 1995)
   8. Shelby Hearon (review date 2 April 1995)
   9. Michael Chabon with Lisa See (interview date 10 April 1995)
   10. Bharat Tandon (review date 21 April 1995)
   11. Erik Himmelsbach (essay date 27 April 1995)
   12. Roz Kaveney (review date 9 June 1995)
   13. Michael Gorra (review date 26 June 1995)
   14. Suzann Bick (review date Fall 1995)
   15. Sven Birkerts (review date January 1996)
   16. Mark Greif (review date 5 March 1999)
   17. James Hynes (review date 4 April 1999)
   18. Donna Seaman (review date 16 May 1999)
   19. Michael Dirda (review date 17 September 2000)
   20. David Horspool (review date 6 October 2000)
   21. Jonathan Levi (review date 8 October 2000)
   22. Michael Chabon with Michael J. Ybarra (interview date 9 October 2000)
   23. David Bahr (essay date 19 December 2000)
   24. Tom Deignan (review date February 2001)
   25. Tom Deignan (essay date February 2001)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright