- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd (Sep 21 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1554682053
- ISBN-13: 978-1554682058
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #96,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"An immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist." -- MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES -- The New York Times
"It's as if Kurt Vonnegut and Philip Roth started a rock 'n' roll band; this is writing that makes you want to get up and dance." -- LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW -- Los Angeles Times
"It's as if Kurt Vonnegut and Philip Roth started a rock 'n' roll band; this is writing that makes you want to get up and dance." -- LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK REVIEW -- Los Angeles Times
Book Description
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 America's most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own: as a series of reflections, regrets and re-examinations, 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 renders his memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, 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.
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Most helpful customer reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Chabon gets personal and universal,
By
This review is from: Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son (Hardcover)
Michael Chabon starts off his book with a quote from G.K. Chesterton: "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly". This quote is aptly chosen, as each of the essays contained are full of a self-conscious ponderings on Chabon's small successes, and many failures, in his journey into manhood as a father, son, and husband. He approaches each topic with a delicate and candid hand, never overbearing in theme and never preachy, just simple and thoughtful musings on what it means to be a man. There are 39 essays contained in 307 pages of this book, and there was only one essay that I thought I could've done without (the one near the end titled 'Xmas').The best essays are near the beginning, which have Chabon ruminating on the evolution of Lego, the worlds we create as kids and how parents obsessed with safety are set to infringe on these worlds, the bastardization of childhood by consumer culture and corporate movies that package and sell children's imagination back to them. He then goes on to essays about his childhood, his sexual awakenings, his difficulties as a father dealing with such subjects as drugs, sex, and faking how to install the towel rack in the bathroom. Chabon literally covers pretty much every angle that masculinity can be approached from, and he does so with flair and originality, coming at topics that we've heard of so many times before at different angles and making you see them in a new light. He's also hilarious, and deeply philosophical at times. The writing sometimes poetic, but often conversational as if a friend has taken you aside to let you in on a secret. I will definitely be keeping this book for a long time, as these are essays that I know I will turn to time and time again for inspiration, laughter, and nostalgia.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Journey Into Manhood,
By Ian Gordon Malcomson (Victoria, BC) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME) (TOP 10 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son (Hardcover)
Reading Chabon's latest collection of essays on the trials and tribulations of becoming a man serves as a powerful reminder that the process involved in such a transformation is anything but cut and dried. If his intimations about his personal upbringing are anything to go by, there are many subtle and not-so-subtle familial forces out there working to impede the ideal journey of discovery and maturation most boys should take on their way to manhood. Often, the end result of a fatherless boy struggling to become a man in a woman's world is a frighteningly dysfunctional messed-up adult who is emotionally immature, sexually confused and physically inept. Tack on the fact that many people automatically assume that such an individual is ready to take on the responsibilities of parenthood suddenly thrust on him. Emotional, physical and social maturity, as measures of growing up and making it a man's world, are really only fallacies visited on many of us by overanxious or maladjusted parents betraying our trust and spoiling our chance to enjoy life. The particular stories about Chabon's struggles as an often `inept' parent who needed to bond more effectively with his children stems from those moments in his past when he was forced to live as a boy growing up in a predominately female domain. Consequently, most of his early adolescent attitudes reflected a heavy reliance on the sexual influence of older women in his impressionable life. Many of his childhood fantasies were worked out through Captain Marvel comic book heroines who represented `women on fire' who passionately pursued their prey in the form of vulnerable men too weak to resist the temptress's power. Against this muddled and often comic environment that he was forced to grow up in, Chabon challenged himself to become a dependable and loving father to his children that he never had when he was a child. Yet, his candid confession of fatherly inadequacy still speaks to the reality of the world we males live in: a work in progress full of adventure and new beginnings. I recommend this inspiring book to any father who continues to be daunted by the demands of the future while haunted by the failings and inadequacies of a distant past. Realistically, we are all amateurs who are still learning to handle the demands of what it means to be fathers without taking ourselves too seriously.
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