Michael Chabon Vital Stats
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Michael Chabon Quotes
The problem, if anything, was precisely the opposite. I had too much to write:
too many fine and miserable buildings to construct and streets to name and clock towers to set chiming,
too many characters to raise up from the dirt like flowers whose petals I peeled down to the intricate frail organs within,
too many terrible genetic and fiduciary secrets to dig up and bury and dig up again,
too many divorces to grant,
heirs to disinherit,
trysts to arrange,
letters to misdirect into evil hands,
innocent children to slay with rheumatic fever,
women to leave unfulfilled and hopeless,
men to drive to adultery and theft,
fires to ignite at the hearts of ancient houses.
I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but as virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing is possible, of the power of my work: as a sign that I am on the right track, that I am following the recipe correctly, speaking the proper spells. Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth, when the truth matters most, is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn
The adept handles the rich material, the rank river clay, and diligently intones his alphabetical spells, knowing full well the history of golems: how they break free of their creators, grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled. In the same way, the writer shapes his story, flecked like river clay with the grit of experience and rank with the smell of human life, heedless of the danger to himself, eager to show his powers, to celebrate his mastery, to bring into being a little world that, like God's, is at once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life.
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M Christian Heywood
