Original version

BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Book of the Week

Audiobooks

Factual

Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book of the Week: Michael Chabon - Manhood for Amateurs

Book of the Week: Michael Chabon - Manhood for Amateurs: Episode 4

Factual: Life Stories

Manhood for Amateurs

Episode 4

Michael Chabon - Manhood for Amateurs

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Michael Chabon - Manhood for Amateurs, Episode 4

Michael Chabon wonders why men can never admit to being out of their depth.

The need to put up a new towel rail leads Michael Chabon to wonder why men can never admit to failure. Memoir of a husband, father and son. Read by Jason Butler Harner.

Jason Butler Harner continues to read from Pulitzer prize-winning author Michael Chabon's moving, warm and witty memoir about life as a husband, father and son. 

In exploring what it means to be a man today, Chabon reflects on the personal and family history that haunts him even as it's being written every day. At the centre of a large and complex family, and with four young children, Chabon evokes memories of his childhood, of his parents' marriage and divorce and of moments of painful adolescent comedy.

In today's episode, the need to put up a new towel rail leads Michael Chabon to wonder why men can never admit to being out of their depth. "This is an essential element of being a man: to flood everyone around you in a great radiant arc of bullshit, one whose source and object of greatest intensity is yourself. To behave as if you have everything firmly under control even when you have just sailed your boat over the falls." 

Michael Chabon is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven novels including The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and The Yiddish Policeman's Union. He has been described by the Guardian as 'a spectacular writer' and by the New York Times as 'one of his generation's most eloquent voices'. 

Jason Butler Harner has starred in films such as The Changeling with Angelina Jolie, as well as numerous TV series including Law and Order and John Adams. An accomplished stage actor, he has just appeared on the London stage in Serenading Louie at the Donmar Warehouse. 

Producer: Jane Greenwood. This is a Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Jason Butler Harner reads from Michael Chabon's memoir

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Book of the Week

Michael Chabon - Manhood for Amateurs

Episode 4

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 Extra

About BBC Radio 4 Extra