Authors: Michael Chabon
ISBN-13: 9780061490187, ISBN-10: 0061490180
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Date Published: October 2009
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Although his novels and short stories have varied in setting -- from the 1940s New York of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay to the contemporary Pittsburgh of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh -- all of Michael Chabon s witty and understated books feature memorable, deftly-drawn characters trying to find their place in the world.
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.
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 statesboyhood, 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 Handshake
The Losers' Club 3
2 Techniques of Betrayal
William and I 11
The Cut 21
D.A.R.E. 29
The Memory Hole 39
The Binding of Isaac 45
3 Strategies for the Folding of Time
To the Legoland Station 53
The Wilderness of Childhood 62
Hypocritical Theory 72
The Splendors of Crap 82
4 Exercises in Masculine Affection
The Hand on My Shoulder 95
The Story of Our Story 105
The Ghost of Irene Adler 116
The Heartbreak Kid 123
A Gift 131
5 Styles of Manhood
Faking It 139
Art of Cake 147
On Canseco 156
I Feel Good About My Murse 164
6 Elements of Fire
Burning Women 175
Verging 183
Fever 191
Looking for Trouble 195
A Woman of Valor 202
7 Patterns of Early Enchantment
Like, Cosmic 215
Subterranean 224
X09 232
Sky and Telescope 238
8 Studies in Pink and Blue
Surefire Lines 247
Cosmodemonic 255
Boyland 263
A Textbook Father 270
9 Tactics of Wonder and Loss
The Omega Glory 279
Getting Out 289
Radio Silence 297
Normal Time 306
Xmas 312
The Amateur Family 322
10 Cue the Mickey Katz
Daughter of the Commandment 333