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A review by ridgewaygirl
Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son by Michael Chabon
4.0
Have you ever gotten a bit of a crush on an author after reading a few of his books? Have you ever thought that someone who write with such insight and compassion must be a truly kind person? And have you then, having attended a lecture or read an interview of the author, found out he was really kind of a pretentious jackass? The opposite thing happened to me as I read Manhood for Amateurs. I've read a few of Michael Chabon's books and formed an image of him, not of a pretentious jackass, but of being a guy's guy and somewhat testosterone-fueled. Not quite Hunter S. Thompson, but moving in that direction. Which, it turns out, is utterly the wrong impression.
Manhood for Amateurs is a collection of Chabon's personal essays, in which he talks about childhood and marriage and having children of his own. In Willam and I he talks about his reaction to being commended on his parenting skills by a stranger:
I don't know what a woman needs to do to impel a perfect stranger to inform her in the grocery store that she is a really good mom. Perhaps perform an emergency tracheotomy with a Bic pen on her eldest child with simultaneously nursing her infant and buying two weeks' worth of healthy but appealing breaktime snacks for the entire cast of Lion King, Jr.. In a grocery store, no mother is good or bad; she is just a mother, shopping for her family. If she wipes her kid's nose or tear-stained cheeks, if she holds her kids tight, entertains her kid's nonsensical claims, buys her kid the organic non-GMO whole-grain version of Honey Nut Cheerios, it adds no useful data to our assessment of her. Such an act is statistically insignificant. Good mothering is not measurable in a discrete instant, in an hour spent rubbing a baby's gassy belly, in the braiding of a tangled mass of morning hair. Good mothering is a long-term pattern, a lifelong trend of behaviors most of which go unobserved at the time by anyone, least of all the mother herself.
So I'm not sure how I'll view the next novel of his that I read. I'm sure it will be just as full of male protagonists behaving like guys and engaging in manly adventures, but I wonder if I'll be reading it a bit differently, knowing that the author is a guy who cooks the meals and loves his family. Then again, maybe I'll run into an interview with him on Larry King or npr and discover that he actually is a bit full of himself. I hope not.
Manhood for Amateurs is a collection of Chabon's personal essays, in which he talks about childhood and marriage and having children of his own. In Willam and I he talks about his reaction to being commended on his parenting skills by a stranger:
I don't know what a woman needs to do to impel a perfect stranger to inform her in the grocery store that she is a really good mom. Perhaps perform an emergency tracheotomy with a Bic pen on her eldest child with simultaneously nursing her infant and buying two weeks' worth of healthy but appealing breaktime snacks for the entire cast of Lion King, Jr.. In a grocery store, no mother is good or bad; she is just a mother, shopping for her family. If she wipes her kid's nose or tear-stained cheeks, if she holds her kids tight, entertains her kid's nonsensical claims, buys her kid the organic non-GMO whole-grain version of Honey Nut Cheerios, it adds no useful data to our assessment of her. Such an act is statistically insignificant. Good mothering is not measurable in a discrete instant, in an hour spent rubbing a baby's gassy belly, in the braiding of a tangled mass of morning hair. Good mothering is a long-term pattern, a lifelong trend of behaviors most of which go unobserved at the time by anyone, least of all the mother herself.
So I'm not sure how I'll view the next novel of his that I read. I'm sure it will be just as full of male protagonists behaving like guys and engaging in manly adventures, but I wonder if I'll be reading it a bit differently, knowing that the author is a guy who cooks the meals and loves his family. Then again, maybe I'll run into an interview with him on Larry King or npr and discover that he actually is a bit full of himself. I hope not.