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192 reviews for:
Manhood for Amateurs: the Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son
Michael Chabon
3.69 AVERAGE
192 reviews for:
Manhood for Amateurs: the Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son
Michael Chabon
3.69 AVERAGE
Thoughtful and full of sentences that were so beautifully constructed that I had to re-read them again. This book of essays was pure Michael Chabon.
I am stalled on this one. The beginning was promising, but I guess manhood is not all that interesting to me.
Did I fall asleep for about ten percent of this? Yes. Am I still counting it as read? Also yes.
No one should be allowed to publish essays about fatherhood until their children are grown.
I often have Chabon's novels recommended to me, although I have only read just one and, while it was good, I wasn't blown away. I did however completely enjoy this memoir. I thought it was honest and familiar and full of humor and good stories. It was prefect for reading while I was on vacation to Mexico.
A few very strong essays, and a few throwaways, with the remainder somewhere in the middle. Chabon's trademark verbosity sometimes gets in the way, but he does a nice job using small moments and memories as jumping off points for larger thoughts about childhood and parenthood.
I really enjoyed this book! I think Chabon's writing style is very accessible and lovely.
It took me a while to start this book - I was afraid it might be some kind of a man-self-help book...turns out, Chabon took my hand and led me on a journey through his own experiences. His life as a man, father, husband, person - equal parts funny and poignant all wrapped in beautifully crafted prose.
Chabon presents himself as a lovable loser, a guy I can really relate to. I read this on another reader's recommendation shortly after I became a first-time father. I think the concept of masculinity as a whole is very confusing in our modern times, as we both aspire to and reject the traditional machismo of Hemingway and both embrace and feel uncomfortable towards the sensitive new age male of the early 90s. Things haven't gelled very satisfactorily for American male identity, but we men are still breeding and raising our little progeny with the hope that they'll do better than ourselves.
While Chabon writes admirably well, he doesn't have a lot of keen insights. "Legos were better in my day, when we didn't get instructions and had to use our imaginations, dagnabit." "Kids used to go exploring wtihout adult supervision and we turned out just fine, dagnabit." It is in the generic nostalgia pieces, as a parent pining for a childhood experience now either lost or co-opted by commercialization, that he is at his worst, his most predictable, and his preachiest. But he redeems himself in his explorations of the father/son dynamic, the intimate and the one-on-one, that he presents with a genuine and heartfelt sentimentality.
3 stars out of 5.
While Chabon writes admirably well, he doesn't have a lot of keen insights. "Legos were better in my day, when we didn't get instructions and had to use our imaginations, dagnabit." "Kids used to go exploring wtihout adult supervision and we turned out just fine, dagnabit." It is in the generic nostalgia pieces, as a parent pining for a childhood experience now either lost or co-opted by commercialization, that he is at his worst, his most predictable, and his preachiest. But he redeems himself in his explorations of the father/son dynamic, the intimate and the one-on-one, that he presents with a genuine and heartfelt sentimentality.
3 stars out of 5.
A lose confederation of meditations on everything from marshaling a family of geeks to sexual rites of passage to the commodification of childhood grossness, it's all gathered under the banner of what could broadly be classified as the experience of the American male.
I picked up the book principally because I was curious what Chabon, whose work I both respect and admire, would have to say on the topic of fatherhood.
I appreciate the degree of honesty he brought to bear. In literature, fathers seem most often to be the vessels for establishing a character's particular neuroses and not a whole lot else. Or if the reader is taken into the perspective of a father, his children and his implied paternity usually seem secondary to whatever the actual, central point of the novel is supposed.
Chabon though is pretty straight-forward. He doesn't know what the fuck he is doing and he's trying to make the best of it based on the experiences he had growing up. He wonders audibly at the strange particulars of modern childhood -- such as the fact that modern children are utterly lacking in autonomy despite living in the safest times in the country's history -- but he doesn't have any answers because... well, do any of us?
It was an incredibly readable book. Each of the chapters only take a few minutes to read, so it was extremely digestible.
Does it rise to the heights of Kavelier & Clay or Moonglow? Not by a good stretch, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
I picked up the book principally because I was curious what Chabon, whose work I both respect and admire, would have to say on the topic of fatherhood.
I appreciate the degree of honesty he brought to bear. In literature, fathers seem most often to be the vessels for establishing a character's particular neuroses and not a whole lot else. Or if the reader is taken into the perspective of a father, his children and his implied paternity usually seem secondary to whatever the actual, central point of the novel is supposed.
Chabon though is pretty straight-forward. He doesn't know what the fuck he is doing and he's trying to make the best of it based on the experiences he had growing up. He wonders audibly at the strange particulars of modern childhood -- such as the fact that modern children are utterly lacking in autonomy despite living in the safest times in the country's history -- but he doesn't have any answers because... well, do any of us?
It was an incredibly readable book. Each of the chapters only take a few minutes to read, so it was extremely digestible.
Does it rise to the heights of Kavelier & Clay or Moonglow? Not by a good stretch, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.