Wonder Boys

I like how Wonder Boys is written through the perspective of writer and professor Grady Tripp, and how Chabon, through Tripp, illustrates the tribulations of writing a story… through a story.
Tripp has been struggling with his book, Wonder Boys, for quite some time, and throughout his drunken and drugged escapades, we seem to catch a glimpse of the significance of this unfinished novel. Furthermore, Tripp himself seems… a bit trippy. He falls out of love just as quickly as he falls in love; he doesn’t know what he wants. In class, he left James Leer sulking in the back of the room, alone, but as the story goes on, we see that he cares for him. He doesn’t think of the consequences of his actions, and it takes him a long time to realize the painful truths of reality. 

James is a troubled, lost character, who I feel sorry for, and I hope that as the plot unfolds, he discovers more about himself. The fact that he is so hung up on the lives of celebrities - and that he stole Monroe's coat - seems to show that he seeks refuge in significant dates and events in Hollywood, because they distract him for what's real - from himself. Crabtree, on the other hand, embodies, in my opinion, those people who do things for ‘novelty’ of doing it –– he seems only in on things for the thrill of adventure.
I’m curious to see how Tripp tells Sara that Doctor Dee was shot, how she’ll react, and what will happen to the baby. Tripp himself seemed a bit indifferent at the fact that Sara was pregnant, but I think that it just takes him a while to accept frightening news into his conscious mind.
The book also talks about the ‘midnight disease,’ that plagues writers with a kind of ‘emotional insomnia,’ where you would feel disconnected from the world and develop a sense of envy and distance from everyone else. Quickly though, he describes, you begin to crave that feeling of apartness, until “one black day you woke to discover that you yourself had become the chief object of your own hostile gaze” (76). 

This reminds me of my English class last year, when we had a discussion where the proposition was brought up that the Humanities makes you more human; that reading, interpreting, analyzing, writing about universal truths, emotions and cognition, ultimately leads to you having a better grasp of your own mind and emotions. The ‘midnight disease,’ which Chabon describes as taking over writers and driving them to the brink of insanity, seems, at first glance, to illustrate otherwise. But maybe Chabon’s point is to show that writing has a significant effect on the intellectual and emotional aspects of the human mind; being a writer, as Chabon shows, does change the way you perceive the world.