Baseball as a foundation for Ragnarok

Hey, bookish chums! Wow, I haven't written or read anything in ages! (I've read SOME things, just not "books." Terrible plays, mostly. Less rewarding, as it turns out, than you'd think!)

So here I'm back with this sprawling epic of a classic young-person's fantasy novel, from everybody's favorite creator of unique worlds, Michael Chabon. There's something really delightful about the way Chabon builds the environments in which his novels unfold (at least Kavalier and Clay and Yiddish Policeman's Union; I haven't read Wonder Boys yet, but presumably it, um, works wonders on Pittsburgh?). Elaborate detail underlies YPU's Jewish community of exiles in Alaska -- easily half the joy of the book is tracing Chabon's comprehensive working-through of the geographical and behavioral attributes of the alternate-timeline's settlement. And Summerland follows that model in exploring an island community located at a point connecting our reality and a host of others, all jam-packed with a dizzying amount of detail and attention.

It's a mashup of Norse mythology ("Ragged Rock" replacing Ragnarok), Native American mythology (Coyote serving as the principal villain), classic post-colonial American mythology (a community of tall-tales figures, a Sasquatch, etc.) and sweet, sweet baseball, which Chabon clearly loves. To the extent that you're looking for a book containing both references to trickster gods and clever riffs on Bill James's SABR organization, this is your book.

That said, even running a little over 500 pages, the book's a little cramped for space -- there are so many lands, characters and worlds encountered that it begins to feel a little like a montage rather than a full-fledged story, especially as the book heads into its climax and through its denouement. Breaking the book into multiple volumes would probably have been structurally problematic, and I'm sure there's an upper limit for how many pages a publisher would prefer Chabon take on what's ostensibly a children's novel (albeit in the Tolkein mold more than what passes for kids' lit today), but it would have been nice to see these cats breathe a little more than they do.

Guys, it has been real. I will see you when next I post (mid-August 2012, I believe).