Manhood for Amateurs

July 20, 2009
An entertaining omnibus of opinionated essays previously published mostly in Details
magazine spotlights novelist Chabon's (The Yiddish Policemen's Union
) model of being an attentive, honest father and a fairly observant Jew. Living in Berkeley, Calif., raising four children with his wife, Ayelet Waldman, who has also just published a collection of parenting stories (Bad Mother
), Chabon, at 45, revisits his own years growing up in the 1970s with a mixture of rue and relief. A child of the suburbs of Maryland and elsewhere, where children could still play in what he calls in one essay the “Wilderness of Childhood,” he enjoyed a freedom now lost to kids, endured the divorce of his parents, smoked a lot of pot, suffered a short early marriage and finally found his life's partner, who takes risks where he won't. The essays are tidily arranged around themes of manly affection (his first father-in-law, his younger brother); “styles of manhood,” such as faking at being a handyman; and “patterns of early enchantment,” such as his delight in comic books, sci-fi and stargazing. Candid, warm and humorous, Chabon's essays display his habitual attention to craft.

Starred review from January 25, 2010
Chabon delivers a polished, subtle, and enjoyable rendition of his first major work of nonfiction. In plumbing his own experiences as husband and father of four to explore masculinity in all its messiness and promise, Chabon offers a powerful paean to family life. Whether describing his boyhood, his years of dedicated marijuana smoking, the evolution of comic book heroines, his children’s art projects, his marriage, or his career, Chabon is a relaxed and likable reader: his nuanced narration enhances his prose and offers the listener a window into his inner life that deepens the potency and meaning of these essays. Reflective but never indulgent, emotional but never sentimental, and philosophical while remaining funny to the core, this is richly rewarding listening. A Harper hardcover (Reviews, July 20).

February 1, 2010
In his second essay collection, following "Maps and Legends" (2008), justifiably acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Chabon (www.michaelchabon.com) ponders such topics as childhood, sex, love, marriage, divorce, fatherhood, feminism, baseball, comic books, and mortality. Generally, Chabon's comments on popular culture are more interesting and revealing than those involving his private life. His slightly nasal voice and unpolished reading take some getting used to, but his enthusiasm is infectious, as with his joyous account of his children's devotion to "Doctor Who". Recommended for Chabon's fans, appreciators of popular culture, and those (especially males) who grew up in the 1970s. [The Harper hc received a starred review, "LJ" 8/09.Ed.]Michael Adams, CUNY Graduate Ctr. Lib.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 15, 2009
A charming collection of autobiographical essays—on childhood, parenthood and lifelong geekhood—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist.

In modern classics like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier& Clay (2000) and The Yiddish Policemen's Union (2007), Chabon (Gentlemen of the Road, 2007, etc.) gave genre writing literary heft, and he does much the same here. His material is the stuff of folksy, small-town newspaper columns, but he applies an unusual level of wit and candor to the form. In his essay on Legos, he drills deep into the tactile pleasures they provided him as a child and the frustrations that their current complex, imagination-killing designs give him as a parent. Writing about cooking, he patiently runs through the details of the first crumb cake he successfully baked as a nine-year-old."A Woman of Valor" looks at Big Barda, a little-loved comic-book superheroine. It's a sharp essay on the definition of sincerely powerful women and why they rarely appear in pop culture. Chabon's tone is nostalgic, funny and self-deprecating, though the memories are often bittersweet: the strange, brief fling he had with a friend of his mother's when he was 15, bad experiences with women his own age, a botched first marriage, a drug-addicted acquaintance slipping away from his efforts to help. Chabon discusses life as a writer only glancingly. He briefly notes, for instance, his struggle to create an authentic female character in Kavalier& Clay—eventually gutting 400 pages of effort—within the context of misogyny in pop culture, and mentions David Foster Wallace's suicide only as a launchpad for an essay on his wife's bout with depression. Even his defense of MFAs says more about the emotional maturity he received pursuing the degree than anything about craft. Only once, in a forced bit of punditry about Jose Canseco and steroids, is he off his game. He'd much rather discuss sharing Doctor Who with his kids, and he's clearly having so much fun being a dad—and thinking about what it means to be a dad—that it's a wonder he has time to create such excellent novels.

Wry and heartfelt, Chabon's riffs uncover brand-new insights in even the most quotidian subjects.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2009
Known for his works of fiction in which he invites readers to make exhilarating imaginative leaps (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, 2000; The Yiddish Policemens Union, 2007), Chabon takes a big, fat swing at the essay form with his second collection and achieves success. Manhood is the unifying topic, and Chabon explores his roles as son, father, brother, husband, male feminist, and so on, especially reveling in being a dad, illustrating in his essay William and I how he has a more emotional connection with his kids than the men of his fathers generation ever had with theirs. Because of this, Chabon places traditional gender roles in his crosshairs. In the essay I Feel Good about My Murse, he playfully rejects the notion that a man shouldnt carry a purse. Elsewhere Chabon demonstrates his gravitational pull toward things traditionally considered female, such as baking and child rearing. Fans of Chabons fiction will be prepped for his massive range of interests, and they should enjoy his digressions on topics such as astronomy, comic books, baseball, and the art of writing. These warm and thoughtful essays underscore just how good a wordsmith Chabon isregardless of the form he chooses.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)

Starred review from August 15, 2009
This collection of previously published essays by the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" is both lyrical and side-splittingly funny. In each autobiographical composition, the self-deprecating Chabon reveals facets of his ongoing evolution into "manhood." His most resonant role, as father, finds him reviling the "provided solutions" and "pre-imagined environments" of contemporary toys and advocating that children "mock capitalism and the uses to which it seeks to put them." Chabon also notes the infrequency with which today's kids are left to their own devices; there is "no space]free of adult supervision, adult mediation, adult control" so that kids can, as did he, simply ride bikes or mess around. The writing makes epic the mundane, such as his teenaged adventure leading his young brother across an unfamiliar cityscape, or a rant on "crap" that manages to both skewer and celebrate pop culture past ("Planet of the Apes" TV series) and present ("family movies"). VERDICT Readers seeking the intelligence of Updike; the gentle, brainy appeal of Sedaris; or the literary virtuosity of Nabokov will thoroughly enjoy what the publisher bills as Chabon's first major nonfiction work. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/15/09.]Douglas C. Lord, Connecticut State Lib., Hartford

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.