Maps and Legends by Michael Chabon: book review

Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands (2010) is a series of 16 linked essays on why writer Michael Chabon thinks reading is important. It is basically a promotion of books in general, and – in naming books and authors – the specific books that influenced his writing.

He especially defends ‘non-serious’ literature and debates ‘literature’ versus ‘genre fiction’ by using examples. His discussions include several chapters on comics and their rise from ‘juvenile’ to ‘grown-up’ modes of expression.

He discusses Arthur Conan Doyle’s 56 books about the detective Sherlock Holmes; Cormac McCarthy’s ‘Border’ Trilogy; and Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ Trilogy.

There are several self-reflective chapters on the author’s own influences, the process of writing, and his motivations. He opens up about himself and his insecurities.

The title, Maps and Legends, refers to the grey areas, the borderlands, between fantasy and fiction. In discussing epic fantasies he says, ‘we consign to the borderlands our most audacious retellings of what is arguably one of the two or three primal human stories: the narrative of Innocence, Experience, and … the Fall.’

These essays are, naturally, a very different style to his novels. They are a blend of literary criticism, memoir, and introspection about his craft. The 16 essays vary in their ability to captivate my full attention. The essays that I thought were most notable were the ones on Arthur Conan Doyle, Philip Pullman, and the essay called My Back Pages about the writing of his book, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh – mainly because he mentions F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel The Great Gatsby.

Readers of epic fantasies will probably enjoy many of the essays. I enjoyed the essays about the books or authors I was already familiar with. But, generally, the book is of mixed interest, although it might introduce readers to authors and books that they would otherwise not have heard of – or seen in the same perspective as Chabon.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).