Michael Chabon made it almost acceptable to enjoy comic
books. Set during and around World War II, the Berkeley author’s
Pulitzer Prize-winning 2000 novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier
& Clay introduces a pair of talented cousins who develop their
drawing and writing skills into careers in the then-emerging comics
industry. Although gosh knows how many doctoral theses about Spiderman
and Archie have been written in the past seven years, genre fiction
— comics, science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, and
thrillers — still gets a bad rap from serious intellectuals,
Chabon argues in his essay collection Maps and Legends,
published in May 2008. That prejudice is one of the main topics that
Chabon will discuss with San Francisco Chronicle columnist
Jon Carroll at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre (2025
Addison St., Berkeley) on January 5. The discussion is a benefit for
Park Day School, a progressive private K-8 in Oakland whose
administrators wish to expand the campus and increase scholarships.
“As a lad, I was an enormous reader of science fiction, and
throughout my life I have read mystery stories by the gallon,” says
Carroll. “I have the new P.D. James on my nightstand as we speak.” He
has been conducting discussions to benefit the school for more than a
year now; past guests have included Chronicle colleague Leah
Garchik and Plan B author Anne Lamott. A future discussion with
drummer Kelly Takunda Orphan will include a concert. Carroll points out
that Chabon waded further into genre waters with another novel, 2007’s
The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, set in a speculative Sitka,
Alaska, in which Jewish refugees settled after World War II when Israel
failed to become a state. “It’s basically a detective story, but it’s
set in an alternate universe, so it’s also a science-fiction story,”
says Carroll. He muses that he thoroughly relished Philip Pullman”s
His Dark Materials trilogy: the novels The Golden
Compass, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass,
set in many alternate worlds where daemons and spectres mix it up with
particle physics. But not until reading Chabon’s essay about it in
Maps and Legends did Carroll realize that “the entire series is
a quarrel with John Milton and Paradise Lost and Paradise
Regained.” He laughs. “It’s high literary criticism disguised as
young-adult fiction.”
As for the dialogue with Chabon: “One of my rules for these things
is to listen — so the conversation tends to go where curiosity
and random remarks take it.” But as a starting point, “we need to
establish that genre fiction does not get the credit it deserves for
the areas it has opened up and the things it has done.” Shazam! 7 p.m.,
$25. ParkDaySchool.org
