“Though one is an account of aspiration and scuffling in Manhattan in the year leading up to the 9/11 attacks (Charles filled a cubicle in the WTC and his account of the day is startling and fresh), and the other is a (quirky, personal) consideration and history of a great band’s neglected masterpiece, the two books actually interlock and engage with each other in a number of interesting ways,” Chabon said.

For recommendations by other authors, including Dave Eggers and Jennifer Egan, head here and here.

Chabon succeeds Robert MacNeil, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week. In an interview with the Journal, Chabon said he began frequenting the colony around the time he was working on “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.”

“There I was with one child and trying to write this novel and beginning to struggle in a way that a lot of writers who are parents struggle,” he said. “I went in 1995 for a three-week stay. Instead of getting one-thousand words done –- and if I get one-thousand words, I feel heroic –- I was getting two, three, sometimes four-thousand words in a day.”

Chabon also told the Journal that he is trying to turn his next novel, Telegragh Avenue, in to his publisher in 2011.

I’m working on a novel that I started at the MacDowell colony a couple of years ago, actually. I’m going to try to turn it in 2011. It’s called “Telegraph Avenue.” Chabon said he began work on it “a couple of years ago” at MacDowell. He told the Miami Hurricane last year that it is “set in contemporary Berkeley and Oakland” and is “a family story, I guess.”

“Telegraph Avenue” was also the name of a pilot script Chabon worked on for TNT some years ago that he has said was “the story of two families, white and black, in Oakland and Berkeley, CA.”

The book, which was supposed to be Chabon’s follow up to 1988’s Mysteries of Pittsburgh, is described in a preface by Chabon as having been written by “a poetically sad young man who apprenticed himself to a visionary, postmodern architect.” After spending years on the book, which hit four-digit page lengths, Chabon finally abandoned it and turned the experience writing it into what actually became his second novel, 1995’s Wonder Boys.

McSweeney’s is publishing the first four chapters, just 93 pages of what GalleyCat says became a 1,500 page book. Chabon had previously published the first chapter on his Web site, but he took it down a few years ago following a revamp. McSweeney’s No. 36 is available Dec. 7.

“If Israel was, as the Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann put it, to “become as Jewish as England is English and America is American,” then, like England and America and every other modern polity, Israel must slog along through history, purblind and panicky, from its founding to its ultimate fate, prey at every moment to — and, God willing, on guard against — its rich, inglorious human heritage of blockheadedness,” Chabon wrote.

The full piece can be found here.

“There are all sorts of social events that occur that allow a very fluid communication between people,” he tells the WSJ. “Part of the collegiality comes from how there is an interconnectedness among the different institutions that put on literary events.”

Apparently not. I checked in with Michael Chabon, who said the listing is a mistake and no such book exists.

A book of eight short stories carrying that title was announced back in 2002, after Miramax won an option for the unwritten collection that was to include “a horror story, a Sherlock Holmes adventure, a ghost story, an adventure story, a science fiction story, a story of suspense, a costume or period or historical story and a sea story” in styles similar to H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, according to an article by DealMemo.com at the time.

But Chabon said Sunday that book was what ultimately became 2004’s The Final Solution.

The decision came from new Disney Studios chief Rich Ross less than four months before the movie was to begin shooting. Disney had only recently brought on Chabon to help rework the script for the movie, called Captain Nemo: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The movie was to be directed by McG.

The decision, according to the paper’s sources, was out of concerns the movie was going to be too dark.

Perhaps most prominent was a New York Times article yesterday profiling Chabon and Ayelet Waldman. The piece looks at the two authors’ use of their families in their writing, specifically their two most recent non-fiction books detailing the highs and lows of parenthood.

“It’s not like writing about our family life is the daily bread of our writing,” Chabon told the Times. “We’re not Dennis the Menace or Family Circus.”

To the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (now only in online format, sadly) published a Q&A, where Chabon talked about his parenting philosophy. “Tell the truth,” he said. “That’s what we demand of [the kids], and that’s what they know they can expect from us. There are times when we can’t quite get the whole truth out, although that’s our goal, always. And we try to make an environment where there’s enough trust and support that it’s not going to be terrifying for them to tell the truth. They need to know that you’re not going to stop loving them no matter what decision they make.”

Chabon also said has recently been following the work of Julie Orringer and her husband, Ryan Harty. “I love their work,” he said. “I have tried to support them when they ask me to read their manuscripts. It’s a shared thing; I’ve asked them to read my manuscripts, too. We’re an embattled tribe.”

The Los Angeles Times asked Chabon what it is like switching to non-fiction. “There’s something liberating, refreshing, recharging about taking a memory or a particular subject or a recent occurrence in my life and just dwelling on it, in a restricted form, without having to worry about creating big set piece descriptions, or worry too much about thematic patterning, and all the kinds of things that I have to worry about when I’m writing a novel.

“But it also can be really hard, because I feel like I have to stick to the facts, and tell the truth, and not make stuff up,” on the other hand, he continued. “A lot of times, things didn’t really happen the way I would like them to happen, if I were writing a short story or a piece of fiction, and that can be kind of frustrating”

There are other interviews too, which I won’t excerpt but are worth reading. Among the interviews I’ve come across include the Kansas City-Star, the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, the Globe and Mail, the Denver Post, and the Montreal Gazette.

The non-fiction book of essays will be released next Tuesday. Chabon’s Web site shows a myriad of readings are scheduled throughout October everywhere from Pittsburgh to New York to Portland to Los Angeles.

For a complete schedule, head over to Chabon’s site.

The film, based on Ayelet Waldman’s novel and staring Natalie Portman, will be one of 335 films from 64 countries that will screen at the festival, which runs from Sept. 10 through 19. Seventy-one other films will also have their world premier at the festival.

Here’s how the film is described in TIFF’s press release, which was issued last week:

“Emilia Woolf (Natalie Portman) is a Harvard law school graduate and a newlywed, having just married Jack, her high-powered New York lawyer boss (Scott Cohen). Her life takes an unexpected turn when the couple loses their newborn daughter. Emilia struggles through her grief to connect with her precocious new stepson William (Charlie Tahan), overcome a rift in her relationship with her father caused by his infidelity, and cope with the constant interferences of Jack’s angry, jealous ex-wife (Lisa Kudrow). An adaptation of an Ayelet Waldman novel, this tearful and terrific tale by writer-director Don Roos proves that even with a pursuit like love, nothing is impossible.”