View a FREE sample

Chapters 1-7

• The following version of this book was used to create this Lesson Plan: Chabon, Michael. Wonder Boys. Open Road Media, 1995. E-book.

• Chapter 1 begins on page 3.

• The first-person narrator of the novel is a writer named Grady Tripp.

• He begins by discussing the first person he knew whose qualities he considered inherent to a “real writer” (3).

• The man’s name was Albert Vetch.

• His pen name was August Van Zorn and he wrote horror stories throughout his life.

• Albert Vetch lived at the hotel owned by Grady’s grandmother, which is how Grady made the writer’s acquaintance.

• Albert Vetch is portrayed as having been a tortured soul, even before his wife Honoria’s suicide.

• In addition to writing, Albert Vetch also “taught English literature at Coxley, a small college on the other side of the minor Pennsylvania river that split [their] town in two” (3).

• Grady romanticizes...

(read more Chapter Abstracts)

This section contains 4,600 words (approx. 16 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample