Chabon examines the ideals of manhood, and they aren’t easy
Michael Chabon has been showered with praise, ratified with book sales, and honored with elite prizes. But sometimes even “the Updike of [his] generation” (as Time magazine once called him) has gotta eat.
Artists often have to sing for their suppers. Without financially sponsored art, we wouldn’t have the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But even at its best, art that has been commissioned by corporations with caveats can often be disconcertingly veal-ish: Tasty and tender, but seasoned with the sinister flavor of its dubious origins.
Chabon’s “Manhood for Amateurs: the Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son” is no Sistine Chapel, but it’s a happy example of sponsored art that has lost no integrity on its journey from commission to completion.
Chabon is well-known as one of America’s pre-eminent fiction writers, winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay.” After well-received naturalist beginnings, Chabon chose to greet the dawn of the new millennium by riding off into the fabulist forest in search of adventure. He has given us Alaskan Jewish dystopias, Sherlock Holmes homages, and modern children’s epics a la Tolkien, but he hasn’t set a novel in the recognizable modern world since “Wonder Boys.”
“Manhood for Amateurs” is being sold as a memoir, and Chabon’s “first work of sustained personal writing.” But the marketing glazes over the fact that this is also a collection of previously published work: i. e., almost all of it has appeared in magazines, and more than 75 percent of it was culled from Chabon’s regular column in the men’s magazine Details.
So to re-cap: From a man who has spent the last decade creating elaborate fantasy worlds, we now have a journal of nonfiction musings on modern manhood. It’s reasonable to conclude that he chose the topic and form because he was paid to do so.
And thank goodness he was. Chabon’s labors under the lash of sponsorship have produced a treasure chest of articulated observations and elegantly wrought conclusions about an array of subjects that sorely needed his attentions. Those of his fans who’ve craved the moment when Chabon turned his immaculate eye back to the world we share can now rejoice.
“Manhood for Amateurs” is a chatty domestic memoir with gravitas, written in a John Updike-cum-Erma Bombeck voice, for the sensitive, intellectual man with a formidable frame of reference and an evolving identity.
In times when you can’t swing a hardback without hitting a blogger or a “revealing memoir,” it’s nice to be reminded that some people’s personal opinions and experiences really are worth paying for.
Chabon writes about women he’s known, Legos he’s played with, universal mysteries he’s contemplated, drugs he’s done. He worries about the future of imagination and his own “free-range” children. He celebrates fathers and fatherhood, nerds and nerdiness. His essay about putting up a towel rack moves seamlessly into a discourse on how the primary job of manhood is looking like you know what you’re doing.
The “what have we learned here today?” payoffs to these pieces aren’t remotely forced or sentimental— they’re the natural product of a Big Thinker living his life day-to-day and then scurrying off to examine it.
And as always, Chabon’s sentences are pure joy to consume. About being accused early in his life of lacking seriousness because he hasn’t spent enough time being sad, he writes:
“I implemented a crash program and, like a middle-tier regional power seeking weapons-grade plutonium, went out and got myself a broken heart.”
About circumcising his son: “It was not the making of a covenant that the rite called Brit Milah commemorated, but the betrayal of one. Because you promised your children, simply by virtue of having them, and thereafter a hundred times a day, that you would shield them, always and with all your might, from harm, from madness, from men with their knives and their bloody ideas. I supposed it was never too soon for them to start learning what a liar you were.”
One truly quotable piece begins:
“One of the fundamental axioms of masculine self-regard is that the tools and appurtenances of a man’s life must be containable within the pockets of his jackets and pants. Wallet, keys, gum, show or ball game tickets, Kleenex, condoms, cell phone, maybe a lighter and a pack of cigarettes: just cram it all in there motherf---er.”
Without ruining the ending for you, let’s just say the essay is called “I Feel Good About My Murse.”
Most of us don’t really have the time to contemplate, much less parse, the deep meaning that might be extracted from our most mundane habits or cultural obsessions. Or at least, we don’t necessarily have time to do it with exceptional passion and skill.
So in today’s busy world, full of voices clamoring for your attention, you may now and then want to offer someone a modest fee to articulate a sublime observation for you. If you do, Michael Chabon is the guy you want on payroll. And this year, you might even want to give him a bonus.
Emily Simon is a freelance writer living in California.
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