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end of season specials

 Herbst Theatre

Tickets:
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Michael Chabon & Adam Gopnik

In conversation

Monday, November 9, 2009 |  Herbst Theatre, 8pm

Michael Chabon is first and foremost a writer of great imagination, intelligence and originality. In 2001, Chabon received the Pulitzer Prize for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a novel that pays tribute to his lifelong love of comics, superheroes, and graphic novels. His many books include, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, Summerland, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union - which has been described as an "alternate history mystery novel," a description that could apply to much of Chabon's highly inventive work. In a review of Gentlemen of the Road, the New York Times describes "the sheer headlong pleasure of Chabon's language," and he is a wizard of the gleeful, action-packed sentence. His forthcoming collection of essays, Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son, delves into modern manhood, and Chabon's personal experience balancing those roles. With characteristic humor, insight, and warmth, Chabon relates his life behind the public persona of fiction writer.

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1986. His work for that publication has earned him both the George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting as well as three National Magazine Awards for Essay and Criticism. In 1995, The New Yorker dispatched Gopnik to Paris to write the "Paris Journals," in which he described daily life in that city, drawing revelations from everyday observations. A beloved collection of essays called From Paris to the Moon grew from his time there, recounting his family's life in the City of Light. With help from his young son Luke, Gopnik wrote the children's novel The King in the Window, a magical adventure of a young American boy living in Paris. Gopnik's subjects are always uniquely imaginative and wide-ranging. His most recent book is a collection of essays and historical meditations, Angels and Ages: A Short Book about Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life. Gopnik explores the way in which these two men, who never met, brought about stark changes in mankind's understanding of itself.

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