Books. Reading books. Thinking about books. Talking about books. Writing about books. Books.
The way I remember it, sometime during the summer of 1975 I picked up a copy of Ripley’s Believe It or Not comics for 25-cents from the local pharmacy. The cover depicted the ghostly apparitions of a coonskin-cap-wearing frontiersman and an Indian with a mohawk clenched in mortal combat. Behind them a stunned night watchman nearly drops his flashlight in horror. Inside there was…
(I originally wrote this review in 1995, long before there was a movie and the book became a bestseller. Back then I had created the first website for Chabon’s work, an archive of which can be found here.) A young man stands in the darkened back yard, holding a small silver pistol to his temple. An older man watches from the deck of the…