The Pulitzer Prize-winning authorβ "an immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)βoffers his first major work of nonfiction, an autobiographical narrative as inventive, beautiful, and powerful as his acclaimed, award-winning fiction.
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 Michael Chabon. In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and his vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own lives: as a series of reflections, regrets, and reexaminations, each sparked by an encounter, in the present, that holds some legacy of the past.
What does it mean to be a man today? Chabon invokes and interprets and struggles to reinvent for us, with characteristic warmth and lyric wit, the personal and family history that haunts him even asβsimply becauseβit goes on being written every day. As a devoted son, as a passionate husband, and above all as the father of four young Americans, Chabon presents his memories of childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, as a theme playedβon different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new keyβ by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co- conductor.
At once dazzling, hilarious, and moving, Manhood for Amateurs is destined to become a classic.
Media Buzz
Fresh Air - NPR - June 25, 2010 Fresh Air - NPR - June 25, 2010 All Things Considered - December 14, 2009 Studio 360 - October 10, 2009 Fresh Air - NPR - October 7, 2009
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