I was at that age where you start to leave the family you were born into, Chabon says.
Grady wrestles with impending fatherhood and ultimately decides he isnt ready for it.
Chabon completedWonder Boysjust before his wife, Ayelet Waldman, became pregnant with their first child.
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And he shared Gradys lack of parental vision.
You dont ever see Grady being a parent, Chabon explains.
Partly, I think, thats because I wasnt ready to go there myself.
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The bar is so much higher for mothers.
It’s intense stuff, but Chabon, writing just after his biggest success to date, could relate.
Detective Landsmans marriage to Bina falls apart due to a shared trauma: the termination of a wanted pregnancy.
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But the themes recurrence in Chabons work is subconscious.
And that sense of loss is so powerful that it can extend beyond absent fathers.
In [Moonglow], I invented a whole new family for myself and put myself into that family.
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I was fully projecting my own feelings, he says.
In a way, it was almost like Method acting.
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