Manhood for Amateurs

by Chabon, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780061885464
• ISBN10: 0061885460
• Edition: Large
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-06
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publications

Summary

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author- "an immensely gifted writer and a magical prose stylist" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times)- offers 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 as-simply because- it 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 played- on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key- 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.

Author Biography

Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Tiddish 'Policemen's Union, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier Clay, and The Mysteries of-Pitts-burgh, among others. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.

Table of Contents

Secret Handshake
The Losers' Club	p. 3
Techniques of Betrayal
William and I	p. 11
The Cut	p. 21
D.A.R.E.	p. 29
The Memory Hole	p. 39
The Binding of Isaac	p. 45
Strategies for the Folding of Time
To the Legoland Station	p. 53
The Wilderness of Childhood	p. 62
Hypocritical Theory	p. 72
The Splendors of Crap	p. 82
Exercises in Masculine Affection
The Hand on My Shoulder	p. 95
The Story of Our Story	p. 105
The Ghost of Irene Adler	p. 116
The Heartbreak Kid	p. 123
A Gift	p. 131
Styles of Manhood
Faking It	p. 139
Art of Cake	p. 147
On Canseco	p. 156
I Feel Good About My Murse	p. 164
Elements of Fire
Burning Women	p. 175
Verging	p. 183
Fever	p. 191
Looking for Trouble	p. 195
A Woman of Valor	p. 202
Patterns of Early Enchantment
Like, Cosmic	p. 215
Subterranean	p. 224
X09	p. 232
Sky and Telescope	p. 238
Studies in Pink and Blue
Surefire Lines	p. 247
Cosmodemonic	p. 255
Boyland	p. 263
A Textbook Father	p. 270
Tactics of Wonder and Loss
The Omega Glory	p. 279
Getting Out	p. 289
Radio Silence	p. 297
Normal Time	p. 306
Xmas	p. 312
The Amateur Family	p. 322
Cue the Mickey Katz
Daughter of the Commandment	p. 333
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