Michael Chabon’s new book, Pops collects seven essays, each of which shines a light on moments revealing the plight of the modern father ... 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 ... at first glance I thought this book might just repackage Chabon’s magazine work, with no other reason for being. But then I read the final chapter and it all came together ... In just a few pages I understood why Chabon found such meaning in fatherhood.
...a heartfelt and thoughtful meditation on what parenthood asks of a man. Rather than focusing on the next generation, the book is about the experience of being in the previous one, and observing one’s slow-burning irrelevance ... While no great parenting secrets are uncovered in this slim volume, Chabon has a knack of locating the fundamentals of the parent-child relationship in the innocuous and the everyday.
The novelist’s equanimity is so unassailable, and his parenting style so judicious and measured, that lesser men may feel inadequate ... To be sure, though, Chabon writes with grace and insight about his relationship with his father, which is 'shadowed by the usual anger, disappointment, and failure, strewn with the bones of old promises and lies.' The best part of Pops— which is admittedly often dazzling—is the introduction, in which Chabon relates, with consummate skill, a long-ago conversation with an anonymous older writer who warned the impressionable young writer, 'You can write great books, or you can have kids.' Chabon’s rejection of this sinister bit of advice is genuinely wise, concluding that only 'a scant few' novels and short stories will survive anyhow.
...even in these accessible pieces, Chabon is in a certain way inhibited by his subject. His children function in the book less as subjects in themselves than as occasions for musing on general themes ... None of these are exactly new themes, though Chabon handles them with appealing sincerity and self-deprecating wit ... Chabon avoids turning his authorial imagination directly on his children, knowing that there is something aggressive about a writer’s gaze ... These are determinedly entertaining and uplifting essays, with little room for the more unpleasant byproducts of family life, such as ambivalence, resentment, hostility, or shame. Chabon has written deeper and more challenging books about family in the guise of fiction.
As a young writer, Michael Chabon found himself at a party where an older and presumably wiser author gave him this advice: 'Don’t have children' ... He went on to have...two sons and two daughters ... He also penned these essays on fatherhood that prove that being a parent doesn’t diminish writing talent ... The two most affecting essays are about Chabon’s sons and the pressure on teens to be individuals and conformists at the same time, in the realm of adolescent fashion ... Chabon concludes that his books and his children did not need to be mutually exclusive, that each supplies a different kind of joy.
Pops is not really a book. It is a short introduction, a GQ article, a handful of Details columns, a bite-sized Atlantic piece, and a kind and moving essay about Chabon coming to terms with his elderly father that appeared earlier this year in The New Yorker ... Amusing, Tender, Mildly Self-Effacing Kvetch ... the same content that’s appeared in every parenting blog for the past 20 years...just written more elegantly and with more semicolons ... what’s missing from Pops is any sense of family dynamic ... His wisdom is very wise, and his prose quite beautiful. But I longed to see him make a mistake, for something to go terribly wrong.
These essays cover a lot of ground, from the grimness of organized youth baseball to how to deal with the N-word in Huckleberry Finn when reading it to your children. Chabon is still learning as a father and is willing to share his successes and failures with his readers. His candor and humor combined with his considerable writing skills turn these essays into a challenging instruction book that asks more questions than it answers.
...droll, tender and shrewd ... They’re [the essays] stand-alones with a common nucleus. The resulting book is a joyful, unidealized salute to the ties between fathers and their kids. If it feels, at times, like a medley of side dishes more than an actual meal, it’s due largely to the modest portions. With this sage, witty, undersized collection, Chabon leaves us wanting more.
If Father’s Day included yuletide characteristics, you could accurately describe Pops, with its modest page count, as a stocking stuffer. Yet each of its eight essays constructs a telling world, as Chabon trains his keen eye on small family moments that open onto larger issues ... The introduction to Pops calls into question whether an ambitious writer should even have a traditional family. Just before his first novel was published, Chabon was cautioned by an author he admired, 'Don’t have children.' You lose a book for every child born, this older writer declared. Pops makes you glad Chabon ignored his advice.
...artfully written and witty ... Chronicling poignant moments into seven vignettes, he shares important lessons learned about fatherhood ... Children require time and attention and work. And they should come before anything else, including writing. But as Chabon skillfully articulates, they are worth it.
There is, obviously, plenty of writing on parenting. The topics are, as they say in the magazine business, evergreen. But they are also primordial. Sleep. Clothing. Food. Freedom. Feces. So what I mean is, if there is one thing even harder than parenting, it's writing about parenting well ... In the end, reading Pops made me feel two things: this is how Eric Clapton felt seeing Jimi Hendrix for the first time, when he exclaimed, 'You never told me he was that fucking good.' And I'm not exactly the Eric Clapton of parenting articles in the first place. The other is the guilty wish that my own kids might have been better off if Chabon had raised them. But he couldn't, because he was too busy writing more books.
...a celebration of fatherhood ... Chabon expertly weaves together past and present events, infusing them with humor, pop culture, and profound observations, lovingly portraying the inspiring individuals some thought might put an end to his brilliant, vital writing career.
...a deeply affecting collection of essays that scrutinize and celebrate the complexities of relationships between fathers and their children ... 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.
