After the publication of "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh", Chabon was mistakenly featured in a "Newsweek" article on up-and-coming gay writers ("Pittsburgh"'s protagonist has liaisons with people of both sexes). "The New York Times" later reported that "in some ways, was happy" for the magazine's error, and quoted him as saying, "I feel very lucky about all of that. It really opened up a new readership to me, and a very loyal one." In a 2002 interview, Chabon added, "If "Mysteries of Pittsburgh" is about anything in terms of human sexuality and identity, it's that people can't be put into categories all that easily." In "On "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh"," an essay he wrote for the "New York Review of Books" in 2005, Chabon remarked on the autobiographical events that helped inspire his first novel: "I had slept with one man whom I loved, and learned to love another man so much that it would never have occurred to me to want to sleep with him."