Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son
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The Pulitzer Prize-winning author— "an immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)—offers his first major work of nonfiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful, and powerful as his acclaimed, award-winning fiction. A shy manifesto, an impractical handbook, the true story of a fabulist, an entire life in parts and pieces, Manhood for Amateurs is the first sustained work of personal writing from Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own lives: as a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past. What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even as—simply because—it goes on being written every day. As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as the father of four young Americans, Chabon presents his memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, as a theme played—on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key—by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor. At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic. The New York Times Book Review - David Kamp A lot of Dad Lit makes me cringe, and, worse, makes me think less of writers I'd previously admired…So it's a relief to say that Manhood for Amateurs isn't really Dad Lit, at least not in the Xtreme sense that its user's-manual-like handle indicates. While it bears some of the hallmarks of the genre…the book is a closer relation to Joan Didion's White Album. That is to say, it's not a chronicle, but rather a vaguely themed collection of thoughtful first-person essays…that capture a certain time and mood. The theme: maleness in its various states—boyhood, manhood, fatherhood, brotherhood. The time: now, juxtaposed frequently with Chabon's 1970s childhood. The mood: wistful…Ultimately, what makes this collection so melancholically pleasurable is not the modern-dad stuff but Chabon's ready and vivid access to his own childhood.
1 Secret HandshakeThe Losers' Club 32 Techniques of BetrayalWilliam and I 11The Cut 21D.A.R.E. 29The Memory Hole 39The Binding of Isaac 453 Strategies for the Folding of TimeTo the Legoland Station 53The Wilderness of Childhood 62Hypocritical Theory 72The Splendors of Crap 824 Exercises in Masculine AffectionThe Hand on My Shoulder 95The Story of Our Story 105The Ghost of Irene Adler 116The Heartbreak Kid 123A Gift 1315 Styles of ManhoodFaking It 139Art of Cake 147On Canseco 156I Feel Good About My Murse 1646 Elements of FireBurning Women 175Verging 183Fever 191Looking for Trouble 195A Woman of Valor 2027 Patterns of Early EnchantmentLike, Cosmic 215Subterranean 224X09 232Sky and Telescope 2388 Studies in Pink and BlueSurefire Lines 247Cosmodemonic 255Boyland 263A Textbook Father 2709 Tactics of Wonder and LossThe Omega Glory 279Getting Out 289Radio Silence 297Normal Time 306Xmas 312The Amateur Family 32210 Cue the Mickey KatzDaughter of the Commandment 333
