Manhood for Amateurs Read online

  —Lev Grossman, Time (Top Ten Nonfiction Books Citation)

  “He emerges from these thirty-nine beautifully written personal essays as a prince among men… Daddy diaries are a growing phenomenon. Chabon raises the bar with his often poignant meditations on manhood, fatherhood, and aspects of his own childhood. Most of these loosely connected essays … add up to an episodic autobiography of sorts.”

  —Heller McAlpin, NPR

  “Chabon takes the same brutally observant, unfailingly honest, marvelously human gaze that won him a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and turns it on his own life as a committed husband and father, Lego enthusiast, and unrepentant nerd—in short, as a man.”

  —Time

  “Chabon trains his twinkling novelist’s eye on the mirror in these essays, finding faults but also satisfaction and cause for laughter… As always, Chabon’s prose acrobatics provide brainy entertainment.”

  —Kyle Smith, People (3½ out of 4 stars)

  “Lovely.”

  —Katy Read, Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Thoughtful, perceptive… All propelled by the shimmering prose that won him the Pulitzer Prize.”

  —Michael Lindgren, Washington Post

  “If it’s true that, as Time has written, Michael Chabon is the Updike of his generation, then Manhood for Amateurs is his Self-Consciousness, Updike’s revealing memoir.”

  —Village Voice

  “[Chabon] is an emotional orchestra… Manhood for Amateurs is a tour de force—a stunningly acute, funny, and intelligent exploration not just of fathering, but also of sex, death, the pluses and minuses of smoking dope, marriage, friendship, the vital necessity of creative boredom, the phenomenology of hearing old pop tunes on the radio, and anything else toward which Chabon directs his unblocked imagination. A stylist of great delicacy and flexibility, he infuses his writing with a rare combination of feminine sympathy and masculine analytic power.”

  —Gary Kamiya, San Francisco

  “A fully coherent, incisive examination of his roles as a father, husband, child, writer, and celebrated, self-proclaimed geek… By so profoundly connecting with his own inner child, Chabon makes the business of raising children seem as effortless and graceful as his beguiling fiction.”

  —Eric Liebetrau, Boston Globe

  “Manhood is no self-help book on how to be a better father, although I’d argue it can’t hurt. Its instructions are more literary: how to write graceful essays that seamlessly jump between the specific and general while helping to raise four children, which is as specific as anything gets.”

  —Bob Minzesheimer, USA Today

  “The odds say we’re surely approaching a tipping point for this stuff [Daddy literature]—but, alas, by the grace of Chabon’s glittering prose, it’s not here yet… Both entertaining and thoughtful.”

  —Henry C. Jackson, Associated Press

  “This book is a buffet of tasty, tapas-size tidbits… There’s something here for everyone, no matter your chromosomal makeup.”

  —Chris Tucker, Dallas Morning News

  “Ultimately understood in terms of the tension between Chabon’s alternating embrace of an archetypally male role and his alienation from it. That, basically, is (post)modern life, and Chabon might just be one of its most able chroniclers… Chabon has been called ‘his generation’s Updike,’ but in contrast to Updikes’s disappointing attitude toward women, Chabon’s feminism is smart and never feels coached.”

  —Pete Coco, Time Out Chicago

  “There is no pose in these wise and engaging pieces.”

  —Alan Moores, Seattle Times

  “Chabon brings to his autobiographical essays the same things that have made his works of fiction among the most celebrated of the past twenty years—a natural affinity for storytelling; a deep sense of nostalgia; unapologetic celebration of his many geeky, guilty pleasures; sly, often devastating humor; unbending honesty—while at the same time avoiding the pitfalls of self-aggrandizement, cynicism, shallow epiphany, and self-pity… Manhood for Amateurs offers entertainment as well as enlightening reflections.”

  —Marc Covert, Portland Oregonian

  Other Works

  THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY

  A MODEL WORLD AND OTHER STORIES

  THE YIDDISH POLICEMEN’S UNION

  WEREWOLVES IN THEIR YOUTH

  THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH

  GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD

  MAPS AND LEGENDS

  THE FINAL SOLUTION

  WONDER BOYS

  SUMMERLAND

  Copyright

  MANHOOD FOR AMATEURS. Copyright © 2009 by Michael Chabon.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Acknowledgment is made to the following, in which the essays in this collection first appeared, some differently titled or in a slightly different form: Details: “The Losers’ Club,” “William and I,” “The Cut,” “D.A.R.E.,” “The Memory Hole,” “The Binding of Isaac,” “To the Legoland Station,” “Hypocritical Theory,” “The Splendors of Crap,” “The Story of Our Story,” “The Ghost of Irene Adler,” “The Heartbreak Kid,” “Faking It,” “Art of Cake,” “I Feel Good About My Murse,” “Burning Women,” “Verging,” “Looking for Trouble,” “Like, Cosmic,” “Subterranean,” “XO9,” “The Amateur Family,” “Surefire Lines,” “Cosmodemonic,” “Boyland,” “A Textbook Father,” “Getting Out,” “Radio Silence,” “Normal Time,” “X-mas,” “Sky and Telescope,” “Daughter of the Commandment,” and “Subwoofer Submarine”; Vogue: “The Hand on My Shoulder”; the New York Times Magazine: “A Gift”; the New York Times: “On Canseco”; Swing: “Fever”; Allure: “A Woman of Valor”; NYRB: “The Wilderness of Childhood.”

  P.S. section “Meet Michael Chabon” essay courtesy of Ben Marcus.

  A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2009 by HarperCollins Publishers.

  P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

  First Harper Perennial edition published 2010.

  * * *

  The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:

  Chabon, Michael.

  Manhood for amateurs : the pleasures and regrets of a husband, father, and son / Michael Chabon. – 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-0-06-149018-7

  1. Chabon, Michael—Marriage. 2. Chabon, Michael—Family. 3. Men—United States—Biography. 4. Husbands—United States—Biography. 5. Fathers—United States—Biography. 6. Sons—United States—Biography. 7. Marriage—United States. 8. Fatherhood—United States. 9. Masculinity—United States. 10. Authors, American—Biography. I. Title.

  PS3553.H15Z463 2009

  813′.54—dc22

  [B]

  2009004749

  * * *

  ISBN 978-0-06-149019-4 (pbk.)

  EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062124593

  FIRST EDITION

  10 11 12 13 14 ID/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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