We’ll see if he actually makes the real list, but right now people can vote on whether Michael Chabon should make Time’s list of 100 most influential people of the year.

In an interview with Details magazine, Michael Chabon gives an update on the forever-stalled film adaptation of Kavalier & Clay:

“We were so close,” he says. “As far as I was told, we had been greenlighted, and we had part of a cast. Tobey Maguire was supposed to star, and Natalie Portman. Then around Thanksgiving it just completely went south for studio-politics kinds of reasons that I’m not privy to. I have a lot of faith in the producer, Scott Rudin, who has the rights to the material. He’s a great movie producer, and if anyone can pull it all together, it’s Scott. But right now, as far as I know, there’s not a lot going on.”

To read the full interview, and an excerpt from The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, click here.

Del Rey, a subdivision of Random House Publishing Group, announced Tuesday that it had acquired the publishing rights to Michael Chabon’s serialized novel Gentlemen of the Road.

The novel, currently appearing in The New York Times Magazine’s Funny Pages, will hit stands in hardcover form Nov. 6. The price tag is $18.95.

“I’m tremendously excited to bring to Del Rey a writer whose previous work has brought so much enjoyment to fans of our genre,” said Del Rey Editor-in-Chief Betsy Mitchell in a statement. “This new story features all the exotic locales, adventure and intrigue a reader could want, told in a spellbinding voice.”

The hardcover edition will contain new material, as well as black and white illustrations by Gary Gianni. Mary Evans, who has long acted as Chabon’s agent, brokered the deal for the English publishing rights.

Ayelet Waldman gave a brief status update on her Web site this month, saying she’s been busy traveling.

“The last couple of months have been a blur of touring,” she says. “Snow. Bitter cold. And you can imagine the crowds. Actually, one night it was breath-takingly cold in Pittsburgh, but 1900 people came out to hear Michael and me talk at Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures. Three nights later, guess how many people came to hear just me in Old Greenwich, Connecticut? Two.”

In case you haven’t noticed it yet, Michael Chabon has posted on his Web site a poster for the 1977 Sitka World’s Fair, held in the Federal District of Sitka, where his up-coming novel The Yiddish Policemen’s Union takes place.

The poster is from the collection of “Leon Chaim Bach.” The name is an anagram for “Michael Chabon.”

The fair, according to the poster, occurred from May to October 1977. In the novel, which hits stands May 1, Chabon describes the fair as a “pinnacle of Jewish civilization in the north.” The novel takes place 30 years later.

In the real world, Sitka is Alaska’s fourth largest city with nearly 9,000 people. In Chabon’s novel, the city sports a population of 3.2 million and is part of the alternate history’s Jewish homeland.