Chabonesque

English

Etymology

From Chabon +‎ -esque.

Adjective

Chabonesque (comparative more Chabonesque, superlative most Chabonesque)

1. Resembling or characteristic of American novelist, screenwriter, columnist, and short story writer Michael Chabon (born 1963).
   • 1999 April 4, James Hynes, “A human comedy for middle-class America”, in Sunday Monitor, Concord, N.H., page D4, column 1:

     Now, with Werewolves in Their Youth, his splendid new volume of short stories, it’s possible to speak of a Chabon oeuvre, to recognize a style and certain subject matters as Chabonesque.

   • 2002 December 22, Samantha Ellis, “Do we need another fantasy novel? It seems we do”, in The Observer, number 11,019, section “Books”, page 16:

     Mapping is a very Chabonesque activity; in Summerland, he creates not one world but four, linked by a vast tree.

   • 2004 November 21, Alan Cheuse, “Michael Chabon’s deft tribute to novels of detection”, in Chicago Tribune, 158th year, number 326, section 14, page 4, columns 3–4:

     A wonderful setup of an opening chapter—Conan Doylish and yet quite stylish and Chabonesque in its own right.

   • 2006 June 11, “Asides”, in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, volume 79, number 315, page H-2, column 2:

     With Pittsburgh soon to reappear on cinema screens worldwide, cab drivers better be ready to take visitors to such Chabonesque landmarks as the Cloud Factory.

   • 2007 May 13, Steven G. Kellman, “More tsoris for ‘the Frozen Chosen’ people”, in Chicago Tribune, 160th year, number 133, section 14, page 3, column 3:

     “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union” is itself a translation of a Chandler detective mystery such as “The Big Sleep” (1939) or “Farewell, My Lovely” (1940)—translated into Chabonesque American.

   • 2009, Colleen Mondor, Christopher Barzak, Delia Sherman, “Afterwords: An Interstitial Interview”, in Delia Sherman, Christopher Barzak, editors, Interfictions 2: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, →ISBN, pages 297–298:

     DS [Delia Sherman]: I definitely think Chabon has written a lot of interstitial fiction. When The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay came out, I saw it as interstitial, existing at the confluence of historical, literary, and fantastic fiction, all in the service (and this is the kicker) of turning a pair of schlubs who imagined superheroes into superheroes themselves (for a Chabonesque value of superhero).

   • 2012, The Literary Review, page 57:

     But the pervading effervescence reminds me of when my grandfather, asked what he thought of Salman Rushdie’s fiction, observed, in a Chabonesque simile, that it was like eating Chinese food: all very nice when it’s going on, but afterwards it just leaves you feeling empty.

   • 2012 September 7, Jess Walter, “'Telegraph Avenue,' by Michael Chabon”, in SFGate‎^[1], archived from the original on 8 September 2012; quoted in “Praise for Telegraph Avenue”, in Michael Chabon, Telegraph Avenue, Harper Perennial, 2013, →ISBN:

     Actually, forget Joycean or Bellovian or any other authorial allusion. "Telegraph Avenue" might best be described as Chabonesque.

   • 2014, John Joseph Hess, “Quentin Tarantino and the Paradox of Popular Culture in Michael Chabon’s Telegraph Avenue”, in Jesse Kavadlo, Bob Batchelor, editors, Michael Chabon’s America: Magical Words, Secret Worlds, and Sacred Spaces, Rowman & Littlefield, →ISBN, page 43:

     Suffusing the final pages of the novel with an appropriately and characteristically Chabonesque note of nostalgia, Chabon describes a meeting between the former friends Julius and Titus.

   • 2016 November 18, A[nthony] O[liver] Scott, “Story After Story”, in Sunday Book Review, published 20 November, page 1; published online as “Michael Chabon Returns With a Searching Family Saga”, in The New York Times‎^[2], 2016 November 18, archived from the original on 18 November:

     There are moments at which you can feel the irresistible temptation to embellish and invent, to infuse reality with Chabonesque touches of wistful Jewish magic realism, being resisted.

   • 2022 October 7, Kimberley Jones, “Amsterdam”, in The Austin Chronicle‎^[3], archived from the original on 7 October 2022:

     This is a film that actually wants to be a novel; or maybe what I mean is, Amsterdam feels like an unsuccessful adaptation of a better book, perhaps a Chabonesque sprawl of indelible characters darting between actual history and narrative fancy, densely plotted and peopled.