As Joseph Dewey notes in his introduction to this first official scholarly volume of criticism dedicated to Michael Chabon, despite a number of acclaimed best sellers and a Pulitzer Prize to his name, Chabon's output is currently somewhat underrepresented in academic criticism (3–4). Apart from a modest but growing number of scholarly articles, one chapter on his early works in Shopping in Space: Essays on America's Blank Generation Fiction (1992), and the nonacademic reading guide Reading Michael Chabon (2010), Chabon's fiction has largely been overlooked by literary scholars. Whether this is due to Chabon's initial association as an orbiting “Brat Pack” writer, or whether his post-2000 revival of genre fiction has rankled highbrow critics, Chabon is belatedly being given his due in this new Understanding Contemporary American Literature volume.

Dewey's key argument in this study is founded in defining Chabon as a “post-Pynchon” writer wrestling with the legacies of pioneering experimentalism and the compelling storytelling of psychological realism. Furthermore, this historical and literary contextualization of Chabon allows Dewey to persuasively align his work with post-postmodern sensibilities, Chabon consciously struggling between “escape and engagement” (2) and validating his generation of writers as “sorting through the mess and complexities” of the 1970s when they grew up (6). Far from embodying near-Generation X apathy or postmodern malaise, Dewey argues, Chabon and his peers, such as Jennifer Egan, Nathan Englander, and Richard Powers (2), are engaged in a project of reaffirming civic values, “a reenchantment with the real world” (129), in spite of circumstances that make such a project challenging.

Following the established Understanding … series format, Dewey chronologically works through Chabon's extant publications, considering novels and key short stories in an accessible but thorough manner. Pleasingly, although Chabon's more recent novels The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), and Telegraph Avenue (2012) are subject to detailed readings, it is Dewey's consideration of Chabon's earlier works that often produces the most interesting analysis. Considerations of Chabon's debut, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (1988), and the short-fiction collections A Model World (1991) and Werewolves in Their Youth (1999), in particular illuminate subtleties that many critics missed the first time around, including connections to and subversions of classic American literature and Chabon's conscious adoption of more morally complex and ambiguous themes since the late 1990s (36, 70).

Equally valuable in this study is Dewey's reassessment and defence of Chabon's output after his “turn to genre” with Kavalier & Clay, persuasively addressing the criticisms of Chabon by certain literary critics that these works are lightweight and insubstantial. The speculative detective fiction of The Yiddish Policemen's Union is given a thoughtful reappraisal, posited by Dewey as an outlet for Chabon to reflect upon his own reengagement with Judaism via a consideration of Jewish identity for Jews born after the Holocaust, and as an outlet for working through post-9/11 national trauma (89–90, 92). Equally valuable for its contemporaneity and scope, the section on Telegraph Avenue credibly situates the novel as an appropriately hybridized “post-Obama narrative,” advocating a “broad, sweeping humanism” after the George W. Bush era (116).

If there are flaws to be found with Dewey's study, they are mostly minor and to do with the proportioning of the criticism across the volume. While its inclusion is necessary for the comprehensive overview of Chabon's corpus that any inaugural study should have, undue attention is given to Chabon's 2002 young-adult novel Summerland, although the criticism itself is insightful, at the expense of deeper critical analysis of Telegraph Avenue. Additionally, while the study does address Chabon's experiences as a creative-writing student in passing, some further reflection on how Chabon's subsequent literary development and career path compares to MFA-program-trained peers, such as Jeffrey Eugenides and David Foster Wallace, would have been welcome.

These are minor criticisms, however. Dewey writes with clarity and enthusiasm for his subject, with occasional input from Chabon himself via quotes from personal correspondence, complementing Dewey's reflections on Chabon's upbringing and literary influences. As with other entries in the Understanding … series, a comprehensive annotated bibliography is included, and the overall structure of the book is logical and easy to follow. This study will be of great benefit and interest to undergraduate and postgraduate scholars of Chabon, established academics considering revising their contemporary American fiction module reading lists, and general readers looking for further insight into the writing of this acclaimed novelist.