So! They're not Jon and Kate Gosselin or Richard Heene and Co. But! Today is Michael Chabon day at the New York Times. A book, reviewed, and a two-page Styles profile! In which we learn: they factcheck with their kids?

They do! And this is actually enjoyable, so bear with me, here. I mean, this does come from the same progressive parent Ayelet Waldman, who wrote her book about what it's like to be a mom that came out in May. Which the Times does mention. I wish they would've quoted from The Hamilton Review of Books, however:

...Look, she likes to fuck her husband, Michael Chabon, a lot, and playing with her kids she thinks is okay and everything, but not really in the same league as fucking her husband, Michael Chabon, and if she feels that way, that's her right. She likes to fuck Michael Chabon, period, deal with it.

And her husband wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. So! These parents, they have these children. And a bunch of people do terrible things to their children like maybe put them in balloons or put them on TV or put them in beauty pageants or, I don't know, make them part of an outer-borough trend New York Magazine ends up having to document for a five page facepalm-heavy read. No, this is not that. These people write books about their children. And not just books, people. Michael Chabon books. Let's be honest: you have fucked up parents. They're either going to put you on a reality show or write a Michael Chabon book about you. What do you want? You want the book. Especially if it's Chabon. Phillip Roth, not so much. Part of me thinks this Times article was written explicitly to make half of grown-ass-man Brooklyn jealous of Chabon's children. Michael Chabon wrote books about them. And not you. Not only that, but he fact-checked with them, too. Neal Pollack, stick this up your AlternaAss:

When they do write about their children, Mr. Chabon and Ms. Waldman check with them first. If the topic might be sensitive, they read the child sections aloud and ask for their permission to publish. (In the Times Book Review published Sunday, David Kamp writes that Mr. Chabon "shows admirable restraint in not pimping out his children, in not giving away too much of their lives, their trials and their cute utterances.")

Boom. Michael Chabon does more fact-checking and on-the-record, off-the-record designating with his kids than the Washington Post does with their lobbyists. And after all of this effort, after having this Pulitzer-winning dad who's brilliant and incredible and god, he's writing a book about you! What do you give him for it?

And for their part, their children have not been particularly interested in what their parents spend their days writing.

SPOILED CHILDREN! And I wonder why they didn't like it? Hm. Anyway: Michael and Ayelet are still crazy in love with each other. They go on "plot walks," which is kind of like when I go have a smoke except I do it alone when I can't come up with a new way to write about Lady Gaga's genitals and they do it together and make brilliant Pulitzer magic their kids won't appreciate for how brilliant it really is. They do it together a lot. They do everything together a lot. They have such loving parents. Why won't these kids like these books??!?!?

The couple's eldest daughter, Sophie, has read a few of her mother's murder mysteries. "She did not enjoy the experience," Mr. Chabon said of his daughter's read. "She just wasn't ready to think of me as having ever been young or smoking cigarettes." Ms. Waldman jumped in: "Or being sexually active, sleeping with men."

Ah. That's why. Embarrassing parents are universal. Also, Ayelet Waldman still likes to fuck her husband a lot, really, is the point.

[Note: I have been informed by two readers (thank you Baroness and Sunroar) that the final quote reads strangely (as it does in the Times). Apparently, Chabon actually did sleep with men, and he discusses it in an essay about The Mysteries of Pittsburgh that now appears at the end of the paperback. That said, Waldman could've easily been talking about herself, and she still likes fucking Michael Chabon. Also, all parents are still embarrassing. Don't ever try to be a 'cool' parent. Ever. You will fail.]