Recently Michael Chabon was speaking to a New York Times reporter about his dazzling and delightful new novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, when he was asked “the question,” the one that Chabon has been asked repeatedly during the 11-plus years since publication of his first book, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, a sensitive and smart story of bisexual love. So, the reporter inquired, how did the happily heterosexual Chabon feel about being labeled by Newsweek as one of the most promising new gay writers? Chabon simply said, “I felt very lucky about all of that. It really opened up a new readership to me, and a very loyal one.”

While certain famous folks, misperceived as gay, have taken out full-page ads proclaiming their heterosexuality, it's refreshing to meet someone who views being mistaken for gay as a stroke of luck. “Since my first book came out, so many young men and women have told me they read that book at exactly the right moment,” explains Chabon from Berkeley, Calif., where he lives with his wife and two children. “They were feeling a little confused or scared about their sexuality and responded to the book's message that no matter which way they went or what person they became, it was going to be all right. Even if the Newsweek article was wrong, it ended up being good for me and, hopefully, for others.”

Following The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Chabon included gay characters in his next two novels, Wonder Boys—made this year into a film starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, and Robert Downey Jr.—and now The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, about two Jewish cousins, one gay and one straight, working as comic book creators during World War II, the golden age of comics. The story includes an unforgettably touching gay kiss atop the Empire State Building as well as several scenes in New York's queer demimonde. To capture the era's gay vibe, Chabon read Charles Kaiser's book The Gay Metropolis: 1940–1996 and then followed his instincts. The result is one of the best books of the year, a broad yet heartfelt depiction of America as a place of personal reinvention and sometimes imprisoning identity politics. And while the media may keep wondering about the connection between Chabon and his novel's gay characters, for the 37-year-old writer, it's no mystery at all.

“I've always been drawn to stories that blur the categories of male relationships,” he says. “To me there is just something powerful and juicy about that as the source of a story and character. Another, more obvious, explanation is that I have a lot of gay and lesbian friends. They make up a very important fabric of my emotional and social life, and it would be hard and unnatural not to reflect that.”