Two Recent Essay Collections

In recent years I have found myself reading more essays than in the past. I highly recommend two recent collections of essays. The well-regarded novelist Michael Chabon's "Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son" (Harper, 2009) includes engaging pieces on the author's own childhood, his marriage, his children, and much more. Although I was a bit wary of the book, just as I am of all the attention men often receive if they do parenting tasks that women have always done without special acclaim, I was won over by Chabon's honesty, modesty, originality, and beautiful writing. As an aside: Chabon and his wife, the writer Ayelet Waldman, are active in the literary community here in the San Francisco Bay Area (they live in Berkeley); for example, I saw Chabon interview the political cartoonist Garry Trudeau at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco, and I briefly met Waldman at an event at one of my favorite bookstores, Book Passage in Corte Madera.

The English writer Zadie Smith, also a well-known novelist (whose novels include "White Teeth" and "On Beauty," both wonderful) has a new book, "Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays" (Penguin, 2009) that includes essays on books, movies, politics, and family; it ends with a touching tribute to her father. The writing is thoughtful, personal, and often illuminating, and is written in a direct, almost conversational tone. The pieces I particularly like include those on E. M. Forster, George Eliot, and other writers who have influenced Smith's own writing. (Her novel "On Beauty" is loosely based on the structure and story of E. M. Forster's masterpiece, "Howards End," one of my all-time favorite novels.)