Manhood for Amateurs
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In these insightful, provocative, slyly interlinked essays, one of our most brilliant and humane writers presents his autobiography and vision of life in the way so many of us experience our own: as a series of reflections, regrets and re-examinations, 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 it goes on being written every day. As a son, a husband and above all as a father of four young children, Chabonâs memories of childhood, of his parentsâ marriage and divorce, of moments of painful adolescent comedy and giddy encounters with the popular art and literature of his own youth, are like a theme played â on different instruments, with a fresh tempo and in a new key â by the mad quartet of which he now finds himself co-conductor.
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Michael Chabon is the author of two collections of short stories, âA Model Worldâ and âWerewolves in their Youthâ, the novels âThe Mysteries of Pittsburghâ, âWonder Boysâ, âThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clayâ, âThe Yiddish Policemenâs Unionâ and âTelegraph Avenueâ, and the non-fiction books âMaps and Legends and Manhood for Amateursâ. âWonder Boysâ has been made into a film starring Michael Douglas and Robert Downey Jr. and âThe Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clayâ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His short stories have appeared in the New Yorker, GQ, Esquire and Playboy. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and their four children.
