Contemporary Literary Criticism | Chabon, Michael - Jonathan Yardley (review date 19 March 1995)

Jonathan Yardley (review date 19 March 1995)

SOURCE: “The Paper Chase,” in Washington Post Book World, March 19, 1995, p. 3.

[In the following review, Yardley praises Wonder Boys and affirms Chabon's literary accolades.]

Michael Chabon is so stupendously gifted and accomplished a writer at so early an age that it is tempting, when writing about him and his work, to hold back, to leave some of the superlatives unused, to reserve judgment. So many American writers have been impaled upon those early reviews, their careers wrecked by excesses of praise and the distractions that they bring. Even to think of this happening to Chabon—a writer not merely of rare skill and wit but of self-evident and immensely appealing generosity—is painful and thus encourages reticence.

Yet there's no getting around it. With this [Wonder Boys], his second novel and third book, Chabon leaves no doubt that he is the young star of...

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