EBAY WINNER'S NAME REVEALED
Tuesday, September 27, 2005, 5:00 AM ET
Source: Associated Press, via The San Luis Obispo Tribune

The name of the winner of Michael Chabon's eBay auction has finally been revealed: Joyce Generali.

"I'm thrilled to death," said Generali, 48, of Leawood, Kan. She paid $6,000 to appear in Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union. "I was thinking of remodeling my bathroom, but this is a lot better than some Italian tile. The bathroom can wait."

She also apparently lives in the same town as Chabon's dad.

"I've been looking for him in the grocery store," she said.

The auction drew together 19 authors to benefit the First Amendment Project. The authors all put up the right to have the buyer's name in their next book.

In total, the auction raised about $90,000.

CHABON SKIPS NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
Monday, September 26, 2005, 5:45 PM ET
Source: The Washington Post, Salon

Michael Chabon declined an invitation to the National Book Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C., due to his opposition to the war in Iraq and Bush, according to The Washington Post.

Chabon told the paper he believes the Bush presidency is “illegitimate.”

Others also skipped the event, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, for similar reasons. Poet Sharon Olds declined her invitation because she didn't want to leave the impression she condones “the wild, highhanded actions of the Bush administration."

The politics of the Chabon-Waldman household don't stop there this week, as Ayelet Waldman declares in her newest Salon column that her kids would make a better president than Bush, or at least in the case of Hurricane Katrina.

"Why am I surprised that President Bush and his cronies, rather than reaching into their piggy banks and shaking loose their change, are using the disaster as another excuse to cut taxes for corporations and the rich?" Waldman writes. "Now in the Gulf, oil companies, casinos and hotels, all of which are corporations well insulated by insurance, will be even further secured by tax write-offs. Prevailing wage requirements have been suspended for government contracts to protect corporate earnings. The earnings of the poor, many of whom could not afford insurance to begin with, are granted no such protection. Other items under discussions are the suspension of environmental and clean air regulations, school voucher plans, capital gains tax elimination. The list goes on."

CHABON: "I FORGET TO USE DIALOGUE"
Monday, September 26, 2005, 9:00 AM ET
Source: Baltimore Sun

A blurb about Michael Chabon from the New Yorker Festival, courtesy of the Baltimore Sun:

Chabon, a Pulitzer Prize winner, admitted that writing never gets easier. "A very common mistake is I forget to use dialogue," he said. "I forget to write scenes. I'll wonder why something is so leaden and I'll look back and 45 pages have gone by without anyone talking."

NEW HAMPSHIRE TOWN TO SUE MACDOWELL COLONY
Monday, September 26, 2005, 9:00 AM ET
Source: Boston Globe

Town officials in Peterborough, N.H., have voted to sue the MacDowell Colony, an artists retreat used in the past by Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, over refusal to pay for town services.

The Boston Globe reported the tax dispute Monday. The colony already pays about $9,000 a year in property taxes, according to the paper, but would owe more than $100,000 a year if the full property value was taxed.

The colony has a $2.3 million annual operating budget, though less than half is from its endowment. The rest has to come from fundraising.

The colony was founded in 1907 by Edward and Marian MacDowell, and to date has hosted almost 6,000 writers, composers, and artists. Residents, who are chosen based on talent, get to use private studios at the institution for several weeks or months while living in small cabins in the middle of the woods.

Chabon most recently spent time at the colony between November 2004 and April 2005, according to a colony newsletter. He received a Stanford Calderwood Fellowship from the organization to pay for the retreat.

“It's impossible for me to achieve the kind of total immersion, at home, that writing a novel requires. Eating, sleeping, dreaming, walking, doing laundry — here I am always writing,” Chabon said in a MacDowell publication.

Waldman spent a few weeks there in early 2004, where she "wrote the first hundred pages of a novel in two weeks," according to her website.

To read the full story, click here.

DETAILS ON AYELET'S WINNER
Thursday, September 22, 2005, 8:30 AM ET
Source: San Francisco Chronicle

More on the authors' auction on eBay via the San Francisco Chronicle. Ayelet Waldman, author and wife of Michael Chabon, reports her winner "can be either a freshman at UC San Diego with one too many piercings or a far-too-perfect Southern California mother."

She adds, "If they want to be someone who is not loathsome, they'll have to wait till the next book."

The winner of Waldman's auction bid $1,405. Their name will appear in Waldman's next Mommy Track Mystery featuring Juliet Appelbaum.

Waldman's winner's name has not yet been released, nor has Chabon's. However, Lemony Snicket's winner was Joey Shoji of Berkley, Calif. Her father's name will now appear in Snicket's next book.

As of Wednesday, the auction had raised nearly $90,000, according to the Chronicle.

KAVALIER & CLAY SONG ONLINE
Thursday, September 22, 2005, 8:15 AM ET
Source: Exclusive

Faithful followers of this website may recall a story in April reported that Jacques Levy and Steve Margoshes, writers of Fame: The Musical, had finished recording a song based on The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

Now ACM Records, a music production company in New Jersey, has provided this site with an exclusive copy of the song and its lyrics.

The song, titled "Friends," was finished before Levy died on Sept. 30, 2004 at the age 69, according to ACM. Before his death, Levy was trying to get the song into Paramount Pictures' adaptation of Kavalier & Clay, according to a company representative.

To listen to an MP3 of the song, click here. Lyrics are as follows:

You got a problem, I got a problem,
You're celebratin', I'm celebratin',
That's how the story ends,
We're friends.

You're makin' honey, I'm makin' honey,
You're in the money, I'm in the money,
Like one of those perfect blends,
We're friends.

Me and you, we'll make a breakthrough,
Wake up and find we're rich,
Spot a hole in the fence and snake through,
Look who's there - - Son of a bitch!

All waitin' to see what we've got,
Waitin' to give us a shot,
Offer us some number with a lot of zero's,
In like flynn - - SUPER HEROES!

If you been thinkin' what I been thinkin'
Nothing can part us - Renaissance Artists,
If you have been dreamin' what I been dreamin'
Well, maybe we're cousins from somewhere or other,
Then how come it feels like I found my lost brother
We can be the means and the ends,
We're ......... FRIENDS.

(instrumental verse, repeat last three verses)

WHY ALL THE HATRED?
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 1:30 PM ET
Source: MichaelChabon.Com

Be sure to check out Michael Chabon's website, which now features a compilation of some of his worst reviews.

Fans of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kavalier & Clay will likely scratch their heads at the reviews Chabon posted.

Amy Benfer of Salon says, “One is either startled by Chabon's virtuosity or dulled by its repetitiveness. Certain readers may want to shout: Enough already! I know the sky is blue!”

And Jonathan Levi of the Los Angeles Times writes, “Shaping without fire, yearning without passion, leave the adventures of Kavalier & Clay three colors short of amazement.”

Chabon even includes potential negative pull-quotes for his up-coming The Yiddish Policemen's Union from Frank Shapiro, author of Haven in Africa. Shapiro, who has not read the novel, provided this site with his thoughts on Chabon's plot in October 2004.

"As of 19 September 2005, T.Y.P.U. has been read by three people, none of whom, to my knowledge, is Frank Shapiro, author of Haven in Africa," Chabon writes on his site. "Fortunately this has not discouraged Mr. Shapiro from providing HarperCollins, my publisher, with a few suitable pull-quotes just as they are getting the jacket copy together."

“Michael Chabon’s...basic premises are actually very tenuous.”

“Perhaps his re-writing of history is a psychological need of some sort.”

“An irrelevant canard.”

To read more reviews from Chabon's critics, click here.

MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH MOVIE IN THE WORKS
Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 10:00 AM ET
Updated: Wednesday, September 21, 2005, 1:30 PM ET
Source: MichaelChabon.Com

Is Rawson Marshall Thurber (left) of Dodgeball-fame writing/directing Mysteries of Pittsburgh?

It's a mystery we're just dying to solve: who is directing the film-adaptation of Michael Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh?

Chabon broke the news of the adaptation over at his website, declaring, "As if to celebrate the recent reissuing of this 1988 novel by HarperCollins, with a swank new cover, a proposed film adaptation of the book is now in the works, to be written and directed by RT, writer/director of the commercially successful and highly amusing D. (2004)."

Chabon adds: "Mr. T.’s script is top notch."

A search of IMBb turned up no film listing for the adaptation of Chabon's first novel. But another quick search of IMDb reminded Nate that he also found the "commercially successful" Dodgeball (2004), written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber, to be a "highly amusing" flick.

Also among his web updates, Chabon said the Yiddish Policemen's Union will now arrive in book stores April 11, 2006, "eight days and eighteen years after the publication of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh."

"If one had been informed, then, that an alternate-history, hardboiled-detective love story would one day follow that dandified mini-epic of gangsters and post-teen angst, one would not, in the least, have been surprised," Chabon wrote.

Chabon also posted his schedule for readings of his new book, taking him through 11 states (including, appropriately, Alaska) and two Canadian provinces.

Chabon's web postings also included news of a new monthly column by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author in the magazine Details, begining with the October issue. Disney's Snow and the Seven, which Chabon is writinng, "is currently between drafts," he said.

Update: Chabon has replaced the mysterious initials on his posting about the Pittsburgh movie, confirming that Rawson Thurber of Dodgeball-fame is indeed the proposed film's writer/director.

BIDDER PAYS $6,000 TO BE IN CHABON NOVEL
Wenesday, September 21, 2005, 10:00 AM ET
Source: eBay, Associated Press

After 10 days and 47 bids, some lucky eBay buyer walked away Sunday with the right to have their name appear at least once in Michael Chabon's next novel for the price of only $6,000.

The auction, to benefit the First Amendment Project, drew together 19 authors who all put up the right to have the buyer's name, or a name of their choosing, in their next book. The name of Chabon's buyer has not been made public yet, and Chabon still holds the right to reject using the buyer's name "if it is offensive, mischievous, ill-intentioned or inappropriate."

Ayelet Waldman, author of the "Mommy Track Mystery" series and wife of Chabon, drew $1,405 after 42 bids. The winner of her auction has not been made public yet either.

Stephen King drew the highest bid, with $25,100. The Associated Press reports that Pam Alexander of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., won that auction. Her brother's name, Ray Huizenga, will likely be the one featured in King's next novel, "Cell."

The First Amendment Project, a nonprofit group supporting freedom of speech and the press, began the auction after hitting hard times financially. Organizers hoped to raise $50,000, and the group has already beaten that goal with $50,052.76 in the first-round of auctions. Another nine authors have auctions that will end Sept. 25.

"We can safely say we're not going to close now," David Greene, executive director of the First Amendment Project, told the AP. "I'm thrilled."

The auction had become the "most watched" auction on eBay, and had become so popular that Italy's version of the auction site asked for a translation.