Pulitzer winner visits Pitt

Chuck Kinder keeps stories from many of his “extraordinarily talented” former writing… Chuck Kinder keeps stories from many of his “extraordinarily talented” former writing students in a small manila folder on his desk. A Pulitzer Prize-winning author wrote the first story in this stack of papers, and that author was Michael Chabon.

“Dream of the Whale Musicians” was the first story that Chabon wrote for Kinder’s senior seminar in fiction writing class that semester, and as soon as Kinder read it, he knew that Chabon was an amazing writer.

“I thought the world of Michael,” Kinder, who is now the director of Pitt’s fiction writing program, said. “I thought he was extraordinarily talented.”

Chabon – who is famous for his novels, “Wonder Boys” and “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh,” as well as his Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” – visited Pittsburgh yesterday to speak at the Drue Heinz Lecture Hall at Carnegie Mellon.

Yesterday morning, Chabon and his wife, Ayelet Waldman, a murder-mystery novelist, conducted a question-and-answer discussion with graduate fiction writing students and undergraduate senior fiction majors in the Cathedral of Learning. Chabon was an undergraduate student at Pitt during the mid-1980s and majored in fiction writing.

Chabon and Waldman took their seats behind a table as the English Department Chair, David Bartholomae, introduced them to the group.

“We’re going to see if we can get him off probation,” Bartholomae said, adding that Chabon and Waldman were going to meet Chancellor Nordenburg later that day. “Does anyone have any questions?”

Waldman folded her arms across her chest and turned to Chabon. “I have a question,” she said, peering inquisitively at her husband. “What did you do to get on probation?”

Chabon grinned and explained that when he was an undergraduate, some of his friends had purchased giant Magic Markers during a visit to New York City and that one night at a party in the basement of the Frick Fine Arts Building, he and his friends had used them to draw all over the walls.

“[They were] like big devils’ swords,” Chabon explained.

“But that is the age when you should be on probation,” Chabon said, referring to his undergraduate years at Pitt. “You have plenty of time to become dull and boring.”

Chabon explained that during his undergraduate career, it was hard to focus solely on writing. He finally became disciplined enough to sit down and write every day after he had spent some time living with a writer ten years older than him.

The older writer would wake up at 6 a.m. every morning to write, Chabon explained, even if he was out partying the night before.

“I would hear his clicking,” Chabon said, making a keyboard in the air with his hands. “I would say, ‘he’s working so hard, I have to be the same way.'”

One student raised his hand and asked what the best piece of advice Chabon and Waldman had ever received.

The couple looked at each other for a moment before turning back to the student. Finally, Chabon spoke.

“If you want to write a novel, you have to sit on your ass.”

Waldman said the best advice she had ever received came from Chabon. She explained the significance of a golem – a Jewish mythological being – and said that in one of Chabon’s stories, a creature had been made of mud and had come to life.

Your stories have to have a life of their own, she said.

“Once you make a monster and bring it to life,” she said, “you don’t have control of it anymore.”

In fact, losing control of a story could be one of the best things that could happen to a writer.

After working on a particular manuscript for five and a half years, Chabon finally decided to take a break from his work and spend some time visiting Waldman in California.

During the six weeks of his stay, Chabon started a completely different project: the novel soon to be called “Wonder Boys.” The novel was released in 1995 and eventually became a movie in 2000.

“It was like a huge burden had been lifted,” Chabon said. “It was a magical experience.”

For a while, he managed to keep it a secret. When Waldman would ask him how the revisions for his old manuscript were coming along, Chabon would just smile and say, “It’s going good.”

The first sentence Chabon wrote that night came to him easily, and the narrator had a strong voice. His characters however, were only just being developed. They always are.

“I tend to not know who my characters are,” Chabon said. “I explore that through writing.”

Brendan Kerr, a third year student in Pitt’s Masters of Fine Arts program, sat in the middle of the room during the discussion. Kerr admitted that, like Chabon, he could spend more time writing and less time goofing off.

Kerr is currently working on his own novel about a love triangle, class issues and an invisible island.

“He was encouraging us to be disciplined,” Kerr said. “That’s a valuable message to keep again and again.”