Wonder Boys

Image credit: Michael Chabon: Brian Smale

TRES BON Chabon (also the author of ''Wonder Boys'') won the Pulitzer for ''The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay''

On the afternoon of April 16, Michael Chabon, 37, dashed into his Berkeley, Calif., house to learn he'd won this year's Pulitzer Prize for fiction. ''I was in my office out in back when I heard this bloodcurdling scream,'' he says, dazedly, 90 minutes after getting the news. ''My wife is eight months pregnant, so I ran in, and it was the Associated Press on the phone.'' Chabon scored the award for ''The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay'' (Random House, $26.95), a 600 plus page leap through the lives of two comic book artists that glimmers with the same precision of style as Chabon's earlier novels, ''The Mysteries of Pittsburgh'' (1988) and ''Wonder Boys'' (1995).

Chabon (pronounced, he's said, ''Shea as in Stadium, Bon as in Jovi'') has just finished a draft of a ''Kavalier & Clay'' screenplay for producer Scott Rudin, and he's working on a children's novel titled ''Summerland.'' And at the moment, he's getting ready for his close up. Or, rather, not getting ready. ''I'm having my picture taken right now,'' he says. ''This is very strange.''