The American novelist Michael Chabon is approaching that rarefied place where he is accepted both in the canon and in popular culture as an exciting and relevant storyteller. Chabon’s novels are all brilliant, but his recent nonfiction title, Maps and Legends, is a great read as well. His essay about his failed second novel, Fountain City, is worth the price of admission. Chabon’s sentences are perhaps the best in the business. For me, he is one of those writers–like Faulkner, DeLillo, Neal Stephenson–who almost drives me away from the craft because you perpetually find myself thinking I could never do this! when I read him. But his plots and characters (and details; my God what details) are just as solid, just as stunning. In this book, he trains his exacting eye on other writers–most of them genre writers–who are meaningful to him. An enlightening, interesting, beautifully made book that you will sink into like a good novel.