Editing Michael Chabon (section)

===''Fountain City'' and ''Wonder Boys''===
After the success of ''The Mysteries of Pittsburgh'', Chabon spent five years working on a second novel, ''Fountain City'', a "highly ambitious opus ... about an architect building a perfect baseball park in Florida."<ref name = "onion">{{cite news | url = https://www.avclub.com/michael-chabon-1798208116 | title = An Interview with Michael Chabon |last = Tobias |first = Scott| work = The Onion|date = November 22, 2000| access-date = September 4, 2012}}</ref> It ballooned to 1,500 pages, with no end in sight.<ref name="writing"/> The process was frustrating for Chabon, who, in his words, "never felt like I was conceptually on steady ground."<ref name="onion"/>

At one point, he submitted a 672-page draft to his agent and editor, who disliked the work<!--both disliked it, or just the agent?-->. Chabon had problems dropping the novel, though. "It was really scary," he said later. "I'd already signed a contract and been paid all this money. And then I'd gotten a divorce and half the money was already with my ex-wife. My instincts were telling me, 'This book is fucked. Just drop it.' But I didn't, because I thought, 'What if I have to give the money back?' "<ref name="newsie">{{cite news|last = Giles|first = Jeff|title = He's a Real Boy Wonder|work = [[Newsweek]]|date = April 10, 1995|page=76|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1995/04/09/he-s-a-real-boy-wonder.html |access-date=September 4, 2012}}</ref> "I used to go down to my office and fantasize about all the books I could write instead." Chabon has confessed to being "careless and sloppy" when it came to his novels' plots, saying how he "again and again falls back on the same basic story."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Myers |first1=D. G. |title=Michael Chabon's Imaginary Jews |journal=The Sewanee Review |date=2008 |volume=116 |issue=4 |pages=572–588 |doi=10.1353/sew.0.0074 |jstor=27550011|s2cid=162356370 }}</ref>

When he finally decided to abandon ''Fountain City'', Chabon recalls staring at his blank computer for hours before suddenly picturing "a straitlaced, troubled young man with a tendency toward melodrama, trying to end it all."<ref name="writing"/> He began writing, and within a couple of days had written 50 pages of what became his second novel, ''[[Wonder Boys]]''. Chabon drew on his own experiences with ''Fountain City'' for the character of Grady Tripp, a frustrated novelist who has spent years working on an immense fourth novel. He wrote ''Wonder Boys'' in a dizzy seven-month streak, without telling his agent or publisher he'd abandoned ''Fountain City''. The book, published in 1995, was a commercial and critical success.

In late 2010, "An annotated, four-chapter fragment"<ref name="theatlantic.com">[https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/12/michael-chabon-how-to-salvage-a-wrecked-novel/68665/ Michael Chabon: How to Salvage a 'Wrecked' Novel] December 29, 2010. Accessed September 4, 2012.</ref> from the unfinished 1,500 page ''Fountain City'' manuscript, "complete with cautionary introduction and postscript"<ref name="theatlantic.com"/> written by Chabon, was included in ''[[Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern#36|McSweeney's 36]]''.<ref name="theatlantic.com"/>