Revived love of hip hop inspires Chabon's next novel

A reignited love affair with comics led Michael Chabon to pen his wonderful novel, "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay." Now, he's rediscovered a passion for hip hop music. He describes his writing process:

Every novel is a license to obsess. To fixate on a subject--chess, comic books, Yiddish, the Khazars. To go overboard; to pluck the beeswax stoppers from the ears, cut the restraints, and freestyle madly toward the siren subject that is calling from the shore.

Vinyl records, for example. Early on, I decided to make a used-records store on Telegraph Avenue one of the key settings of my novel in progress. Okay, maybe "early on" is an under-exaggeration. Maybe it would be more accurate to say "the entire novel is just a pretext for spending as much time and money as I possibly can in used record stores." (A similar rationale doubtless underlies my projected next novel, the epic Tacos Al Pastor.)

BTW: If you're a regular visitor to this site, and you haven't read this book, please do. You'll be glad you did: