A few years ago, Entertainment Weekly painted a word picture of married novelists Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman working back-to-back at opposite desks in a backyard writing cottage that smells of Spanish cedar, "a famous-and famously in love-writing pair like Nick and Nora Charles with word processors and not so much booze." That idyllic image doubtless sold books (and magazines), but the truth, of course, is much more complicated. During his hectic career, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Kavalier & Clay has survived one divorce, several critical controversies, a major novel mishap, and several encounters with Hollywood. In Manhood for Amateurs, he revisits the particulars of his experiences, including generous portions of both pleasure and regret.
“Chabon has always been a magical prose stylist, adept at combining the sort of social and emotional detail found in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus stories with the metaphor-rich descriptions of John Updike and John Irving's inventive sleight of hand. . . . As in his novels, he shifts gears easily between the comic and the melancholy, the whimsical and the serious, demonstrating once again his ability to write about the big subjects of love and memory and regret without falling prey to the Scylla and Charybdis of cynicism and sentimentality.”
- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
“Wondrous, wise and beautiful.”
- David Kamp, New York Times Book Review
The bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Werewolves in Their Youth, Wonderboys, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon “takes [his] brutally observant, unfailingly honest, marvelously human gaze and turns it on his own life” (Time) in the New York Times bestselling memoir Manhood for Amateurs.
“Chabon has always been a magical prose stylist, adept at combining the sort of social and emotional detail found in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus stories with the metaphor-rich descriptions of John Updike and John Irving's inventive sleight of hand. . . . As in his novels, he shifts gears easily between the comic and the melancholy, the whimsical and the serious, demonstrating once again his ability to write about the big subjects of love and memory and regret without falling prey to the Scylla and Charybdis of cynicism and sentimentality.”
- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
“Wondrous, wise and beautiful.”
- David Kamp, New York Times Book Review
The bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Werewolves in Their Youth, Wonderboys, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon “takes [his] brutally observant, unfailingly honest, marvelously human gaze and turns it on his own life” (Time) in the New York Times bestselling memoir Manhood for Amateurs.
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940170413621 |
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Publisher: | HarperCollins |
Publication date: | 10/06/2009 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |