Manhood for Amateurs - by Michael Chabon (Paperback)

About the Book

In his first sustained work of personal writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Chabon offers these provocative, autobiographical essays--a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter in the present.

Book Synopsis

"Chabon has always been a magical prose stylist, adept at combining the sort of social and emotional detail found in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus stories with the metaphor-rich descriptions of John Updike and John Irving's inventive sleight of hand. . . . As in his novels, he shifts gears easily between the comic and the melancholy, the whimsical and the serious, demonstrating once again his ability to write about the big subjects of love and memory and regret without falling prey to the Scylla and Charybdis of cynicism and sentimentality."
-- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times

"Wondrous, wise and beautiful."
-- David Kamp, New York Times Book Review

The bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Werewolves in Their Youth, Wonderboys, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon "takes [his] brutally observant, unfailingly honest, marvelously human gaze and turns it on his own life" (Time) in the New York Times bestselling memoir Manhood for Amateurs.

From the Back Cover

A Best Book Of The Year

Time - St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Kansas City Star San Francisco Chronicle - NPR - Seattle Times

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 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers addresses with his characteristic warmth and lyric wit the all-important question: What does it mean to be a man today?

Review Quotes

"Probably the premier prose stylist--the Updike--of his generation." - Lev Grossman, Time magazine
"Chabon is a flat-out wonderful writer--evocative and inventive, pointed and poignant." - Chicago Tribune
"His work is page-turning and poignant; he is one of the best writers of English prose alive. . . . He wants to move and thrill us both, and he does." - Elizabeth McCracken, Washington Post Book World
"Chabon's language is incandescent." - Brian Braiker, Newsweek
"A prose magician, Chabon is that rare literary anomaly: a gentle-spirited writer of boundless ambition." - Andrew Lewis Conn, Village Voice
"Chabon brings his prodigiously entertaining verbal intelligence to a very personal investigation of what it means to be a father, a son, and a husband." - Lev Grossman, Time (Top 10 Nonfiction Books Citation)
"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.... Stories that readers will recognize as a common experience are blessed with some added verve by a supremely talented writer.... Stands out for a laudable lack of over sharing as well as Chabon's characteristic zaniness.... As long as dads keep writing like this, we'll keep reading." - Henry C. Jackson, Associated Press
"Lovely." - Katy Read, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Word for word, sentence for sentence, Michael Chabon could be the best American writer of his generation. If we're measuring a writer by the sheer ability to construct beautiful sentences, the kinds that employ great emotional poignancy and tremendous lyrical rhythm, Chabon has no equal." - Adam de Jong, Louisville Courier Journal
"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 magazine
"Michael Chabon brings the most varied and fabulous scenarios alive through his fiction. . . . It's a gift to find that his writing is just as radiant, original, and observant when trained on his own life." - Rebekah Denn, Christian Science Monitor
"Insightful and highly entertaining." - Jed Lipinski, Salon
"Thoughtful, perceptive. . . . All propelled by the shimmering prose that won him the Pulitzer Prize." - Michael Lindgren, Washington Post
"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 Updike's disappointing attitude toward women, Chabon's feminism is smart and never feels coached." - Pete Coco, Time Out Chicago
"A treasure chest of articulated observations and elegantly wrought conclusions about an array of subjects that sorely needed his attentions. Those of his fans who've craved for the moment when Chabon turned his immaculate eye back to the world we share can now rejoice.... As always, Chabon's sentences are pure joy to consume." - Emily Simon, The Buffalo News
"Alternately serious and whimsical, the book offers fascinating insights into what makes the author tick. It is also a probing look at contemporary society." - William Porter, Denver Post
"Chabon has always been a magical prose stylist, adept at combining the sort of social and emotional detail found in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus stories with the metaphor-rich descriptions of John Updike and John Irving's inventive sleight of hand. . . . As in his novels, he shifts gears easily between the comic and the melancholy, the whimsical and the serious, demonstrating once again his ability to write about the big subjects of love and memory and regret without falling prey to the Scylla and Charybdis of cynicism and sentimentality." - Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"Wry and heartfelt, Chabon's riffs uncover brand-new insights in even the most quotidian subjects. . . . He applies an unusual level of wit and candor to the form." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Hilarious, moving, pleasurable, disturbing, transcendent, restless. . . . And seemingly by accident, Chabon ultimately does create a composite image of ideal manhood, one that is modest, responsible, bemused, empathic, and thoughtful." - Jeremy Adam Smith, San Francisco Chronicle
"Michael Chabon is a brave writer, a literary swashbuckler." - Lisa Jennifer Selzman, Houston Chronicle
"An unstoppable master of the ripping yarn, beautifully told." - Claude Peck, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Both lyrical and side-splittingly funny. . . . Readers seeking the intelligence of Updike; the gentle, brainy appeal of Sedaris; or the literary virtuosity of Nabokov will thoroughly enjoy." - Douglas C. Lord, Library Journal
"Chabon takes a big, fat swing at the essay form with his second collection and achieves success. . . . These warm and thoughtful essays underscore just how good a wordsmith Chabon is-regardless of the form he chooses." - Jerry Eberle, Booklist
"To call him an acclaimed author would be like identifying Donald Trump as a well-to-do businessman." - Hillel Italie, Associated Press
"A brilliant American writer." - Michelle Locke, Associated Press
"A silky stylist with a gift for making every sentence sting." - Dan Cryer, Newsday
"Michael Chabon is an escape artist: his novels are elegant and energetic circus tricks which celebrate, again and again, the joy of release from the constraints of the everyday world." - Daniel Swift, Financial Times
"The best writer of English prose in this country, and the most interesting novelist of his generation." - John Podhoretz, Weekly Standard
"Ranks among the most important, and interesting, contemporary American novelists." - Erik Spanberg, Christian Science Monitor