Books 2010: Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon

This book – a collection of short essays - was amazing! I laughed out loud. At times, I read it aloud to others and to myself. I re-read passages and sentences just because I enjoyed and appreciated the thought and the prose so much, and wanted to savor each delicious word. Admittedly, I slowed down in this book towards the end – lost focus with my many distractions and less uninterrupted reading time to immerse myself. I got this book from the library, but it is definitely one I want to own, and re-read time and again, discovering its riches again and anew.

Chabon writes about manhood – a topic of which I am endlessly fascinated, as well as bewildered. However, as a thinking, thoughtful, smart man, he has endless insights on the topic that go beyond the typical observations of hormones, power, sex, machismo and masculinity. While retaining absolute masculinity - his love of baseball, his appreciation and drive for sex, his geekiness in his love for Dr. Who, his ability to compartmentalize ;-) - he is also insightful and sensitive observer.

[And I fear, I’m getting into stereotypes – but know, dear reader, that I am fully aware of our human and gendered complexities. I have wrestled with my own as a strong, intelligent, independent woman with not much interest in, in fact resistance to, girliness, maternal nirvana, and things frilly and frivolous. But somewhere along the way, I also embraced and accepted my femininity as good, and not diminishing, and my love of lipstick totally within the realm of acceptable].

Chabon explores his identity an experience as a man- as father, husband, and son. He chronicles his relationships with the people in his life, and the unique dynamic with a man they each provide – his wife (both current and ex), his eldest daughter, his younger sons, first father-in-law, his best friend, his brother. I have a greater appreciation for what each of these distinct relationship dynamics mean for a man.

He does all this with a light hand and a sense of humor (seriously, I rolled laughing), and writes from an accessible place of common experience and recognition. But he does not miss the mark on depth, wisdom, complexity, and nuance (among my favorite qualities in a book and in a person (MC is, unfortunately for me, happily married)). He employs rich prose, a wonderful vocabulary (mine is failing me right now), gorgeous metaphor, while also freely referring to “ass-sliding” when no other word could do any better justice.


Among my favorite essays – and there were many…Normal Time, which explores the time we all long for, drama- and event- free. Here, he talks about a “mad hankering this utopian or millenarium yearning for the coming days of Normal Time, of time to spare, of time in plenty…not just for work and reflection and unhurried lovemaking but for all kinds of fine and tiny things…to learn German…to print digital photos and reorganize the albums…Time to write the short stories I used to fling out like Frisbees into the blue…” Instead, we just face “one damn thing after another,” and often “several damn things at the same time” – “overlapping swaths of color on the digital calendar [I can relate], conflicts and cancellations, two tasks half-done badly…” There is never a “long, lulled pause before history happens,” Chabon quotes Irish poet Tom Paulin. And then he states it plainly, “There is no Normal Time [alas!], or rather this is it, with all its accidents and discontinuities.”

I also loved “The Hand on My Shoulder,” in which he builds, by necessity, certainly not by natural affinity, a critical relationship with his father-in law. The Ghost of Irene Adler, where he reflects upon how and why “a friendship between men most often falters, fades, and dies when a woman – the Woman, in Sherlock Holmes’s formulation - intrudes.” “The Textbook Father” chronicles his mixed response to both respect and fiercely protect his eldest daughter’s emerging sexuality, despite all conscious and rational efforts otherwise. I wish I could easily excerpt the incredible passage there on pages 246-247 about his own respect and enjoyment of sex, and the dual-edge of women’s sexuality. And I so enjoyed, and appreciated “D.A.R.E.” in which he discussed drug use (his own and in general), and talks about being honest with one’s children in “contending not only with this issue but all the other hypocrisies that life as a parent entails.”

The final essay, “Cue the Mickey Katz,” describes his daughter’s bat mizvah, and the introspection on the cycles of life that such events evoke. At 45, Chabon, reflects on getting older with a creaky neck and acid reflux, but notes he also feels he is at the prime of his life – “I have never understood more (though still very few) of life’s mysteries than I do now, or trusted my instincts to a greater degree, or written better sentences than the ones I find myself writing sometimes these days.” Those words were powerful, as I am in the throes of reconciling my own aging, disappointments, and failures, but at the same time feeling better than ever about myself, and trusting myself as never before.

I did not want the book to end. I knew I would miss it, and long for more. Here, as he holds the chair leg for his daughter perched atop in dancing the hora, he looks up at her “grinning and beautiful and terrified and happy, and felt not the same old ‘time is fleeting and we are all mortal’ but something harder and simpler and harder to bear in mind. This is our life happening, I told her, or would have told her if I could have caught my breath long enough to say it over the clamor of the clarinet and fiddle, and it’s happening right now.”

4 stars (of 4 stars). I’m not prone to perfect scores, nor grade inflation, I simply loved this book.