A Review of Michael Chabon’s “Pops”
Fathers and Sons
I once heard a remark, presumably attributed to Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, that you can do two out of three things in life: be a writer, have a job that supports your writing until you “make it,” and have children. You can be a writer and have a job, but cannot have children at the same time. You can also have children and have a job, but cannot sustain yourself as a writer. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, or if Atwood is indeed the source of that paraphrase, but Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon recounts a similar conversation he had with another writer many years ago in the introduction to his upcoming essays collection, Pops, that left him with the same impression: that he could not write and have children. Well, Chabon has made a career for himself and is the father to two sons and two daughters, so that pretty much makes that anecdote moot.
Pops is a stop-gap collection that is relatively brief: at about 140 pages, it took me an hour and a half to devour its contents. All of the essays are about the relation he has with his children, save for the final self-titled essay which is about his relationship with his doctor father. At the book’s centerpiece is an article that Chabon wrote for GQ magazine about his then 13-year-old son attending Paris Fashion Week. The son was in his element, but the father (known in the essay as the son’s “minder”) was bored out of his skull. However, Chabon comes to realize his son’s passion for clothing, and comes to a sort of understanding about his son. That piece went viral, and it probably merits the publication of this book: to milk extra revenue from it. (To wit, Pops has a first printing run of 150,000 copies.)
Still, the GQ piece has it merits — as do a few of the articles included here — and many of the essays are about fathering in a “non-dick” way. (Chabon tackles masculinity in one of the pieces.) He writes about reading Tom Sawyer to his children at bedtime, but grapping with Mark Twain’s use of the word “nigger” in a few places. This may have been my favourite essay in the whole collection as it colludes the fathering angle with one of dealing with literature that was written in a different time and context, and whether or not that literature still holds any power or relevance in today’s politically-correct saturated world. The article in intriguing because Chabon, himself, is writing from a posture of privilege, which presents its own thorniness.
If there’s any failing to Pops, it may be that Chabon has too much privilege, making it hard to relate to him. After all, he’s a well-known award-winning author who is suitably very well off, so this peek behind the velvet curtain can be too rich at times. After all, how many parents can afford to bring their offspring with them to a week of fashion shows while on magazine assignment? Even Chabon himself confronts this notion by noting at one point that he doesn’t write short stories much anymore because, as a parent to four children, short stories don’t pay enough to sustain his family. Can anyone but a select few relate to this?
Still, if you’re a fan of Chabon’s work, you may take a hankering to Pops — the primary reason being that you may get to see a side of the author that might have been previously off-limits to you. That said, the vast majority of these essays have been published in other places, so you may very well already know much of the contents of this work. The eponymous piece, which is not noted for being published elsewhere in the book’s acknowledgements, is of middling length, so buying the book just for it may be a dicey proposition — it may be more worth it as a library check-out.
At times, Chabon has a tendency to natter on about matters of not much import, such as how his daughter can stick out in their hometown of Berkeley and not be targeted as an outsider, which she would be if she had been dressed the way she was in Middle America. The truth of that essay is pretty self-evident from the get-go. And I found that’s Chabon’s take on his son joining Little League tended to meander into the pros and cons of modern day Major League Baseball, so I was left with the impression that there wasn’t too much point to that one other that to ramble on at length for a few pages. I did have to wonder if some of these pieces were published originally in magazines such as The Atlantic and Details simply just on Chabon’s name recognition alone.
Overall, Pops doesn’t answer too many questions, but if you haven’t already staked out the original magazine articles, it is a short and affecting read at its best, and a bit pretentious at its worst. (Chabon, it turns out from reading this, is a major Rush fan, so perhaps that might explain a thing or two.) The pieces are not connected in any other way than theme, so these are really snapshot Polaroids about the relationships between his father and his children. It would have been preferable if the book was told in some sort of chronological order and it had a little more than just sketchy pencil shadings of his life details. Still, as a placeholder, Pops may satisfy for the curious Chabon fan who doesn’t wade too far outside of what he publishes in book form, as, as it is, is about as satisfying as hearing a deep album cut from one of your favourite pop group. Pops can be appealing in certain moments, so if you want to under Chabon’s inner life a bit better, this would be a good place to start reading.
Michael Chabon’s Pops: Fatherhood in Pieces will be published by HaperCollins on May 22, 2018.
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