Book Review: Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon

I think I would like to be friends with Michael Chabon.

I tweeted a link to a LA Times interview with Chabon a few weeks ago which spurred me to read his new book (I’ve never read any of his earlier works) entitled Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father and Son, which is his  second nonfiction work.   After reading it, I’m definitely going to go pick up some of his fiction, and go find his first collection of essays, Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands.

Manhood for Amateurs is a wonderful read, if for no other reason than Chabon is a master writer, with each word, from his most crass to his most lyrical, being perfectly chosen and situated in a sentence such that simply the process of reading his prose is a joy in and of itself.  The book collects essays on a variety of topics tied together with Chabon’s personal musings on the subject of manhood, whatever that actually is.  His keen wit, beautiful writing, frank honesty about both his accomplishments and mistakes, fallibilities and regrets (or lack of regrets), and love/obsession with pop culture make these essays compulsively readable.

(You don’t have to like comic books, SciFi stuff, or be a geek to appreciate Chabon’s pop culture obsessions, since they also include baseball, the radio and music, TV and movies, but if you do like comics, SciFi, or are a geek, you will find Chabon a kindred spirit).

I see myself, or who I’d like to be as a father, husband, and adult male, in much of what Chabon writes, and perhaps that may be why enjoyed the book so much.  Manhood for Amateurs is not a manifesto for a way to be a man.  Nor is it an apology for male actions.  Instead, it is what it is:  an example of one male trying to be a man (father, son, husband) and not necessarily the best possible or representable case of a man (in any of those categories), but instead a man comfortable, happy, and satisfied with himself.  It is a statement, through funny, thoughtful, idiosyncratic, pop culture infused prose, that there is no right way to be a man, just the right idea of the attempt to be the man you are – with all of your faults, obssessions, geekiness, successes, failures, lies, truths, ups, downs, hates, and loves.

While reading, I lauded his looks back on how he lived his life (in his best moments and his most asshole-ish) without regret, but instead an acceptance of that is how he became the man he is.  I understood his sense of, if not actual isolation, solitarity, as a son.  I appreciated the love he feels for his wife.  I embraced fully his example of fatherhood as it resonates so strongly with how I hope to father my hypothetical children (hopefully soon to be actual children).

I laughed out loud frequently.  I nodded knowingly.

When I was done, I felt like I knew Michael Chabon better than many of my male friends, and wished that I did know him in actual life.

I have a feeling at least a few of my male friends will be getting this book for Christmas.

Michael Chabon

For more on Michael Chabon, including an extra essay, check out his website.

Book Review: The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King

I haven’t been so wonderfully surprised by the originality of a book in a long time as I was when I finished The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King.  I devoured it recently on vacation in Florida (a perfect setting, by the way, for reading a tale that involves pirates!).

The book tells the tale of Emer Morrisey, who is also Sadie Adams, and has also lived the lives of 100 dogs over the past three centuries.  Huh? You say.  Trust me, it’s brilliant, and to explain too much would give away said brilliance.

Basically, know this:
The story is told in the far past, the mid to late 1600s specifically as Cromwell commits atrocities upon the Irish and Emer Morrisey is growing up and becoming a young woman, and the late 20th Century, when Sadie Adams is a teenager.  After being cursed to live 100 lives as a dog, Emer is reborn as Sadie, with full memory of her first human life, as well as all of the dog lives she has lived in between her two human incarnations.  Interspersed between Sadie and Emer’s chapters are “Dog Facts” which are often hilarious, but also shed interesting light on Emer/Sadie and mankind in general.

Emer and Sadie, while the same person, are delightfully different, living in decidedly different periods of time, and have their own distinct views of their respective worlds.  Sadie is at once haunted, yet also driven, by her memory of her life as Emer, inlcuding the hardships of Cromwellian Ireland, love found and lost, the injustices thrust upon her, and her life as a pirate (the latter providing much hilarity as Emer wishes Sadie to disembowl, or worse, anyone who annoys her).  And while Emer experienced much adversity in the past, Sadie experiences her own in the contemporary setting, from overbearing loser parents, an even more loser drug-addicted brother, and the painful realities of current teen life, all of which come across just as difficult as starvation in Connacht after the British kill your family.

Combined with A.S. King’s amazing storytelling, history, and fantastic characters, are pirates, adventure, lost love, mystery, pathos, and humor, and ultimately, a completely satisfying conclusion.

I feel like this review does not do The Dust of 100 Dogs justice, so go read it yourself.  Also, attention librarians and such out there:  this book should see some awards for young adult literature, please!

Other links:  A.S. King’s blog.

Also, I must say, it has one of the best book covers ever.