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Narrated by Michael Chabon
Michael ChabonUnabridged — 2 hours, 16 minutes
Narrated by Michael Chabon
Michael ChabonUnabridged — 2 hours, 16 minutes
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"Magical prose stylist" Michael Chabon (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) delivers a collection of essays—heartfelt, humorous, insightful, wise—on the meaning of fatherhood.
For the September 2016 issue of GQ, Michael Chabon wrote a piece about accompanying his son Abraham Chabon, then thirteen, to Paris Men's Fashion Week. Possessed with a precocious sense of style, Abe was in his element chatting with designers he idolized and turning a critical eye to the freshest runway looks of the season; Chabon Sr., whose interest in clothing stops at "thrift-shopping for vintage western shirts or Hermès neckties," sat idly by, staving off yawns and fighting the impulse that the whole thing was a massive waste of time. Despite his own indifference, however, what gradually emerged as Chabon ferried his son to and from fashion shows was a deep respect for his son's passion. The piece quickly became a viral sensation.
With the GQ story as its centerpiece, and featuring six additional essays plus an introduction, Pops illuminates the meaning, magic, and mysteries of fatherhood as only Michael Chabon can.
Michael Chabon's new book, Pops, collects seven essays, each of which shines a light on moments revealing the plight of the modern father. I noticed early in fatherhood that there aren't many people you can open up to about this particular struggle. Chabon's book feels like a late-night talk with a friend about how much we love our kids and how hopeful we are that we're better dads than we fear.
★ 02/26/2018
Pulitzer-winning novelist Chabon (Moonglow) brings together a deeply affecting collection of essays that scrutinize and celebrate the complexities of relationships between fathers and their children. Selections range from the quietly heartbreaking, as when Chabon describes the inadvertent hurt a father can impart on a child, to the hilarious, as he describes his son taking his idiosyncratic sense of style into the “heteronormative jaws of seventh grade.” Avoiding an overly sentimental tone or rose-colored perspective, Chabon doesn’t shy away from reflecting on parental failures as well as successes. In the particularly moving essay “Little Man,” he regrets missing the signs one son sends as he struggles to create his own identity (“You are born into a family and those are your people, and they know you and they love you, and if you are lucky, they even on occasion manage to understand you. And that ought to be enough. But it is never enough”). Chabon is a gifted essayist whose narratives lead to unexpected and resonant conclusions. His work here packs an outsized emotional punch that will stick with readers significantly longer than it takes them to read this slim volume. (May)
Poignant, often hysterical essays on what it means to be a dad, a son and a man.” — People
“Dazzling... The novelist’s equanimity is so unassailable, and his parenting style so judicious and measured, that lesser men may feel inadequate, hopelessly stuck in the swampy, irrational chafe and fray of day-to-day family life.” — Washington Post
“Winning, poignant.... Each of its eight essays constructs a telling world, as Chabon trains his keen eye on small family moments that open onto larger issues.” — Boston Globe
“Deeply affecting.... Chabon is a gifted essayist whose narratives lead to unexpected and resonant conclusions. His work here packs an outsized emotional punch that will stick with readers significantly longer than it takes them to read this slim volume.” — Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Emotionally provocative.... [A] literary ode to parenting.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Chabon’s book feels like a late-night talk with a friend about how we love our kids and how hopeful we are that we’re better dads than we fear.” — Judd Apatow, New York Times Book Review
“Thoughtful and moving.” — Mary Carole McCauley, Baltimore Sun
“Chabon expertly weaves together past and present events, infusing them with humor, pop culture, and profound observations.” — Booklist, starred review
“Combines perfect pitch of tone with an acute eye for detail.” — Kirkus
Winning, poignant.... Each of its eight essays constructs a telling world, as Chabon trains his keen eye on small family moments that open onto larger issues.
Poignant, often hysterical essays on what it means to be a dad, a son and a man.”
Chabon expertly weaves together past and present events, infusing them with humor, pop culture, and profound observations.
Chabon’s book feels like a late-night talk with a friend about how we love our kids and how hopeful we are that we’re better dads than we fear.”
Dazzling... The novelist’s equanimity is so unassailable, and his parenting style so judicious and measured, that lesser men may feel inadequate, hopelessly stuck in the swampy, irrational chafe and fray of day-to-day family life.
Thoughtful and moving.
Dazzling... The novelist’s equanimity is so unassailable, and his parenting style so judicious and measured, that lesser men may feel inadequate, hopelessly stuck in the swampy, irrational chafe and fray of day-to-day family life.
Winning, poignant.... Each of its eight essays constructs a telling world, as Chabon trains his keen eye on small family moments that open onto larger issues.
Dazzling... The novelist’s equanimity is so unassailable, and his parenting style so judicious and measured, that lesser men may feel inadequate, hopelessly stuck in the swampy, irrational chafe and fray of day-to-day family life.
Chabon expertly weaves together past and present events, infusing them with humor, pop culture, and profound observations.
Hilarious, moving, pleasurable, disturbing, transcendent, restless.... And seemingly by accident, Chabon ultimately does create a composite image of ideal manhood, one that is modest, responsible, bemused, empathic, and thoughtful.
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.
2018-02-20
A compact collection of thematically linked essays, perfectly timed for Father's Day.Acclaimed novelist Chabon (Moonglow, 2016, etc.) takes a breezy approach in these meditations on fatherhood. The author demonstrates subtly how his own relationship with his father, whom he plainly loves but finds removed and difficult, has influenced his relationships with his children. Will his kids ever write, as he does in the powerful title essay that concludes the collection, that their father "will in other ways disappoint, disillusion, or unfavorably surprise me over the coming decades"? Not if he can help it, though he recognizes that the child-father relationship is fraught with challenges and is perhaps inherently problematic. Though he loves baseball, Chabon finds himself discouraging his son from playing for some of the same reasons his own father prevented him from playing it (pressure, failure, parents behaving like jerks). Yet he ultimately permitted his son to join—throughout, he is a very permissive parent, more permissive than his father's generation was likely to be—and his son had a miserable time. This caused the father to question his own lifelong devotion to the sport. His lament about kids no longer having sandlot pickup games is by no means original, but rarely has it been expressed so well: "I got reminded, every game, that this was the world my children live in: the world in which the wild watershed of childhood has been brought fully under control of the adult Corps of Engineers." The author combines perfect pitch of tone with an acute eye for detail, whether reporting on his 13-year-old son's unlikely emergence as a fashion savant—"where'd you get this kid?" designer John Varvatos once asked him. "I really have no idea," responded the author—or trying to navigate his way through reading Huckleberry Finn aloud to his children without repeating a word that makes him recoil.Even when he's driving at cruising speed, Chabon takes his readers for an enjoyable ride.
| BN ID: | 2940170355518 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 05/15/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
