Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Chabon, Michael - Michael Chabon with Michael J. Ybarra (interview date 9 October 2000)

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Michael Chabon with Michael J. Ybarra (interview date 9 October 2000)

SOURCE: “The Novelist as Wonder Boy,” in Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2000, pp. E1, E4.

[In the following interview, Ybarra provides an overview of Chabon's life and literary career, discusses Chabon's comments about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and examines the author's interest in comic books and 1940s-era American culture.]

When Michael Chabon was a child, his pediatrician father would lug stacks of comic books back to their Columbia, Md., home, where the young devotee devoured each issue, especially the work of Fantastic Four creator Jack Kirby, amassing thousands of skinny volumes. Three decades later Chabon, 37, a celebrated prose stylist whose first two novels were bestsellers, has written an effusive, magisterial paean to the genre and its creators; the 600-page story [The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay] plumbs...

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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