Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands

Michael Chabon's sparkling first book of nonfiction is a love song in 16 parts - -a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the walls around 'serious' literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH ; procrastination and doubt reveal the way toward WONDER BOYS; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY ; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN'S UNION .