Published: November 03, 2009 10:13 am      

Book review: Michael Chabon explores manhood

"Manhood for Amateurs" (Harper, 320 pages, $25.99), by Michael Chabon: The singular experience of becoming a father can change everything. This seems to include — for literary papas — what you want to write about.

How else to explain the cavalcade of Daddy literature? With the arrival of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon's new memoir, "Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son," another venerable author has chimed in with his take on the greater meaning of being a man and, of course, being a father.

Like the unchanged diaper, there is a real risk for over-saturation here. Ignore the fact that fatherhood is a deeply personal experience that is at least as inchoate as it is universal. The more these books pile up, the more there's a risk of the who cares factor: Your precocious child is capable of saying things that are both cute and cutting in that larger-truth-of-parenting kind of way? So what! I've got a certain somebody I need to pick up from soccer practice now.

The odds say we're surely approaching a tipping point for this stuff — but, alas, by the grace of Chabon's glittering prose, it's not here yet.

Chabon's frenetic, sometimes lovely, rambles in "Amateurs" manage to be, for the most part, both entertaining and thoughtful. And in an increasingly crowded genre this collection — which includes many essays that first appeared in Details magazine — stands out for a laudable lack of oversharing as well as Chabon's characteristic zaniness. (An essay about the virtues of his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, is wrapped in the elaborate metaphor of the cartoon heroine Big Barda.)

Part of why this collection works well is down to the author himself. Chabon is a highly successful novelist whose past books, including the "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" and "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," are works of terrific creative endeavor. It turns out he has some fascinating (Real!) stories to tell.

They include: Chabon's teenage affair with a much older woman, a gripping account of the moment he knew his first marriage was over, and his son's struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder that is sparse in the best possible way.

There are, to be sure, some clunkers. Some are a bit preachy and overly romantic about the notion of childhood's growing lack of "wilderness." Others are just blah. An essay about Chabon learning to "act like a man," or fake it, anyway, reads a lot more like a middle-aged guy congratulating himself for installing a Restoration Hardware towel rack. Time might be better spent installing one of your own.

More characteristic of "Amateurs" are insightful reminisces about growing into a father and a quirky middle-aged man. Stories that readers will recognize as a common experience are blessed with some added verve by a supremely talented writer. One luminescent passage, in an essay about losing a friend over a woman:

"(T)here is something in the guy, something crucial and irreducible, that you do not understand at all, and She is proof. You have no access to that innermost kernel of him, and you never did. And, in turn, this leads you to question everything you ever thought you knew, not only about the man you thought you knew as well as you knew your best friend — yourself."

As long as dads keep writing like this, we'll keep reading.



BEST SELLERS FOR HARDCOVER FICTION

1. "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown (Doubleday)

2. "Scarpetta" by Patricia Cornwell (Berkley)

3. "Pursuit of Honor: A Novel" by Vince Flynn (Atria)

4. "Nine Dragons" by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown)

5. "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett (Putnam/Amy Einhorn)

6. "Heat Wave" by Richard Castle (Hyperion)

7. "Southern Lights: A Novel" by Danielle Steel (Delacorte Press)

8. "The Last Song" by Nicholas Sparks (Grand Central Publishing)

9. "Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel" by Jeannette Walls (Scribner)

10. "Blood Game: An Eve Duncan Forensics Thriller" by Iris Johansen (St. Martin's Press)



HARDCOVER NONFICTION

1. "Have a Little Faith: A True Story" by Mitch Albom (Hyperion)

2. "SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance" by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow)

3. "What The Dog Saw: And Other Adventures" by Malcolm Gladwell, (Little, Brown)

4. "Arguing With Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government" by Glenn Beck (Threshold Editions)

5. "Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves" by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Viking)

6. "Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place" by Suzanne Somers (Crown Publishing)

7. "True Compass: A Memoir" by Edward M. Kennedy (Twelve)

8. "Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters" by Chesley B. Sullenberg with Jeffrey Zaslow (William Morrow)

9. "Jim Cramer's Getting Back To Even" by James J. Cramer with Cliff Mason (Simon & Schuster)

10. "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company)