With novels like Telegraph Avenue and the Pulitzer-winning The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon has earned renown for creating astoundingly detailed worlds based on the lives of others. In Moonglow, published just before Thanksgiving, Chabon returns to his own biography for inspiration. (His youth provided some source material for his first two novels, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys.) Just after publishing Mysteries, Chabon spent a week at the bedside of his dying grandfather, listening to family history that might otherwise have been lost. Moonglow’s narrator does the same, and the tale he hears paints a portrait of American culture, twisting and turning over the long arc of the 20th century. “Wherever liberties have been taken with names, dates, places, events and conversations,” writes Chabon in his author’s note, “or with the identities, motivations and interrelationships of family members and historical personages, the reader is assured that they have been taken with due abandon.” Hear him examine the strangeness of truth at length on Sunday afternoon. STEPHEN TRAGESER
Salon@615 With Michael Chabon, Author of Moonglow
