She Treads Softly: Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces

Sunday, May 20, 2018

Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces

Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces by Michael Chabon
HarperCollins: 5/15/18
eBook review copy; 144 pages
ISBN-13: 9780062834621

Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces by Michael Chabon is a very highly recommended collection of seven short essays. It is a sheer pleasure to reads these essays all thematically linked to fatherhood. There are poignant, funny, contemplative, and universal moments in this short collection that will leave a lasting impression on the reader. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole collection.

Contents include:
The Opposite of Writing: Chabon, father of four, contemplates the advice given to him by a successful writer when he was young. The man told him to not have children if he wants to write great books.
Little Man: A wonderful piece about taking his youngest son, Abraham Chabon, to fashion week in Paris. Abe is a young man who just loves clothes and wants to do something in fashion.
Adventures in Euphemism: Reflections on editing out offensive words and replacing them with a substitute word when reading a story to his children - something many parents have struggled with.
The Bubble People: While we may refer to living in certain areas as living in a bubble, the truth be told, we are all living in a bubble - for exactly one.
Against Dickitude: Thoughts about teaching his son to not be a jerk to girls.
The Old Ball Game: Chabon muses about when he tried to talk his son out of playing baseball, and why he did so, even though he personally loves the game.
Be Cool or Be Cast Out: Thoughts about the stress a group of socially repressive twelve-year junior high students can inflict on each other.
Pops: Chabon shares a memory about his own father.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.