Insight into Chabon

Our pal the Rake saw Michael Chabon speak on Tuesday. TW, this one's for you:

[H]is lecture--an untitled "new talk"--was delivered in dramatic fashion, occasionally in the melodramatic voice of a Late Nite Movie mad scientist, and with great comic timing. Chabon is the picture of the perfect college roommate—if you brought him home for Thanksgiving, he'd charm the hell out of your parents.

And now the good stuff...

Here, the tale became a series of small, character-building mortifications. Most notably, one of his instructors--Oakley Hall, author of the Thomas Pynchon favorite, Warlock--reads the manuscript and declares, flatly: "I don’t like it." He also said it was "showy," "dull," and furthermore, there was "no goddamn story." According to Chabon, he was absolutely right. [...]

A short Q&A followed, and the same five or six questions that seem to be asked at every reading were duly asked. Chabon did score points when, in response to a question that began "Where did you get your Jewish identity…?", he replied, "Target." We learned that, for the record, he has been reading the NYRB and The Metaphysical Club, which baffled him, he said, but in a good way.

This makes me happy. But now I'm really curious about what part of it "baffled" him...