The Final Solution

And Nicholas Lezard usually talks sense (see section in brackets at end):

But whether or not there is some trauma that Chabon prefers to skate around, or underplay (his parents' divorce when he was 12, perhaps?), there is no gainsaying his pleasing niceness, a kind of all-consuming tolerance which manifests itself in a wide-eyed appreciation of the geekier areas of the imaginative universe. Star Trek, the "American Flagg" comic strip, Sherlock Holmes and MR James stories, Doctor Who . . . there's a recurrent strain of Anglophilia in these writings that won't hurt his popularity here at all; one of the sweetest moments in Manhood for Amateurs occurs when he stupefies an English expatriate with his family's knowledge and deep appreciation of Doctor Who. The Englishman doesn't even know of the Russell T Davies reincarnation of the show. "'It's a pretty good show,' I said, but I knew that my tone and my posture and the wild fannish tenor of my voice were saying It's the greatest show ever in the history of television." (I would like to make a substantial bet that he is a fan of The Lord of the Rings too; there are hurried nods to Tolkien's imaginarium here and elsewhere, but of all the means for professional suicide that are available to the writer, expressing affection for Tolkien is one of the most effective.)