Writing in The Atlantic today, bestselling author and Elmwood resident Michael Chabon muses on the meaning of the word “hometown” and the arbitrariness of borders. While he grew up in Columbia, MD, a place he describes as “fulfilling the promises of the American experiment one neocolonial tract house at a time”, Chabon’s more obvious hometown is Berkeley, where he has lived since 1997.
It was Chabon who composed what to many is the definitive piece of writing on the city, with his Ode to Berkeley (or The Mysteries of Berkeley depending on where it was published).
Chabon’s next book, Telegraph Avenue, promises to reveal more of his insightful observations on our city, a place to which, he writes, “people come most of all, I think, because they want to live around people who are not like them, because that is the very thing they have most in common, because they are dedicated to the self-evident truth articulated in one of the founding documents of my hometown, that it ain’t where you’re from, it’s where you’re at”.
Read the full article on The Atlantic’s website.
