I had high aims" (
Publishers Weekly, 10 April 1995). Many critics have characterized Chabon's writing as elegant, vividly descriptive, polished, and sophisticatedly fluid, placing his work much closer to that of writers such as John Updike, John Cheever, or even F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Chabon (pronounced shay-bahn) was born in Washington, D.C., on 24 May 1963. His father, Robert, is a physician, lawyer, and hospital administrator; his mother, Sharon, is a retired lawyer. Chabon graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in English in 1984 and earned an M.F.A. at the University of California, Irvine, in 1987, where he worked with novelist and critic Donald Heiney (MacDonald Harris). He also married poet Lollie Groth in 1987. After he won a short-story contest with Mademoiselle in that same year, he wrote his master's thesis, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; his adviser, Heiney, was so impressed that he sent the manuscript to Mary Evans, a literary agent at the Virginia Barber Agency in New York City. Evans sold the book to William Morrow Publishers for $155,000 at a private auction--one of the highest figures ever paid for a first novel by a virtually unknown author.
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh made Chabon famous in the highly competitive world of New York publishing.
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