Michael Chabon Publishes Excerpt from ‘Wrecked’ Novel

By Jason Boog on GalleyCat,  November 9, 2010

In an upcoming edition of McSweeney’s, novelist Michael Chabon will publish the first four chapters of Fountain City–a “wrecked” novel Chabon abandoned in 1992. The booklet-sized paperback is 93 pages long, including author annotations and a poster jacket of a Leon Krier painting.

In the preface to the paperback (pictured), Chabon described the 1,500-page manuscript about “a poetically sad young man who apprenticed himself to a visionary, postmodern architect.”
McSweeney’s 36 will be released on December 7th–a 275-cubic-inch box containing writings from debut novelist Adam Levin, actor Jesse Eisenberg, and author Colm Toibin.

We wish more writers would give us a glimpse of abandoned manuscripts. Chabon offered aspiring writers some advice about advances (which he admitted he didn’t follow). Here’s an excerpt: “Don’t take advances; sell your work only when it is complete. A monetary obligation to one’s publisher places all kinds of undue pressure, both subtle and overt, on the writer, chief among them the aforementioned pressure to persist on a f***ed project well beyond the point of reason.”