Man Issues: Manhood for Amateurs by Michael Chabon

I saved Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs for a post of its own. I read this during my first two days at Banyon Bay on Ambergris Caye and was alternately moved, irritated, and vindicated by it.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I have man issues. The only thing I remember clearly about my father is weekly child support checks amounting to $24. 90. He deducted ten cents from the checks for postage. With him out of the picture, I was raised by my mother, grandmother, aunt, and two sisters. Of course, with that number of young and single women around, I had a never ending supply of father figures to latch onto. Uncle Carl taught me how to play baseball. Future brother-in-law Terry taught me how to keep from embarrassing myself on a basketball court without much success. My sister Mary Jo's husband Dick taught me to drive his 1957 Ford station wagon. I could list names for at least two more paragraphs.

So, it is with this history that I began to read Michael Chabon's collection of essays gathered from a series of his magazine pieces and bound together in one thematic volume. I didn't read the book in some kind of self-help mode, but rather because I love reading anything Chabon writes. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was a revelation.

Manhood for Amateurs is an honest look at male roles and the problems attendant upon them. The sad outrage he expresses when a woman in a supermarket shopping line congratulates him for being a "great father" simply because he is a man with a grocery cart full of food and kids sets the tone. The standards for being a great father are so low. Would anyone congratulate a cart and kid pushing woman simply because she went shopping?

Everyone knows the issues we're talking about. The demands of male banter is an example. The fact that "a man who can't work with his hands isn't a man," as Willy Loman says, is another. Chabon likes to cook. He likes to spend afternoons inventing new cartoons or drawing old ones with his kids. He thinks it silly that men have to cram everything they need to carry in their pockets rather than carry a purse. He then spends an inordinate amount of time finding the perfect purse, not too effeminate, supple suede and sedately square.

He seems to have a more comfortable time in the company of females. I feel exactly the same way. There are so many things about male behavior that leave me cold. At faculty meetings, for example, the same group of thick necked men, some with emerging pot bellies, would always congregate around a table off to the side and to the rear. There they would sit, arms crossed, sporting ball caps high on their heads, talking to each other about the same stuff they always talked to each other about, "laughing like hyenas at stuff that wasn't even funny," as Holden Caulfield would say.

And now at retirement parties, there is that same group of guys, stomachs still fuller, gossiping at the back table. There is nothing wrong with that, mind you. It's just that I am not able to engage in that kind of man talk.

In Gran Torino Clint Eastwood takes his young Vietnamese neighbor to the local barbershop to "man him up." You're supposed to talk about people who aren't there, complain about your wife/girlfriend, brag about your new set of tires, or tell the great joke you pulled on whathisface the other day. Whatever the topic, you should be able to stand belly to belly, ball cap brims nearly touching, for seemingly ever.

There are lots of great guys at the Y and I look forward to seeing them each morning and the jokes about how the weights aren't getting any lighter, and the daily complaints about the temperature of the hot tub, or the rotten tiling job on the showers. But there are a few who are able to talk for two solid hours, rotating through various sympathetic listeners. I don't know how they do it.

I know what all this sounds like. Sour grapes. I can't talk about that kind of stuff and so I look down my nose at it. I suppose that's true. I know I would feel a lot more comfortable with myself if I could bullshit with the best of them. The only times I can keep up my end of a conversation is if I lapse into teacher mode and start asking questions, but I can only do that if I really have questions. When the conversation comes to gossip, money, funny jokes, and stuff like that, I don't give a shit.

Manhood for Amateurs doesn't offer that many new insights into manliness, but it reaffirms so much of what I already thought. I know lots of people who would profit from reading this book, but I think it might be taken the wrong way if I sent it to them.

Read anything by Michael Chabon. I've never been disappointed by him.