Research Catalog

Title

How to be a man : scenes from a protracted boyhood / Thomas Beller.

Author

Beller, Thomas

Publication

New York : W.W. Norton, c2005.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

231 p.; 21 cm.

Summary

From strip clubs to the Academy Awards to the basketball court-a ride through the landscape of guyhood. Acclaimed fiction writer Thomas Beller digs deep into his own history in this humorous and insightful collection about the state of masculinity. With sharp and engaging eloquence he discourses on T-shirts; being your mother's date at the Academy Awards; life at a bagel factory; the irrational pleasures of old American cars-and the mysterious disappearance of the author's own particular vehicle from a street in downtown Manhattan; love, sex, and breakups in an office environment; the social ecology of street basketball-including the sudden peril befalling a particular court in Manhattan and the heartwarming efforts of previously disparate community members to save it; coaches; the death of a parent; getting over J.D. Salinger; and an attempt to build a complicated piece of furniture for a beloved. Through stints as a bike messenger, a drummer, a boyfriend and-possibly, potentially, finally-a husband, Beller writes about the life-changing effects of love and marriage-past, present, and future.

Subjects

• Beller, Thomas
• Authors, American > 20th century > Biography
• Beller, Thomas > Childhood and youth

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• Autobiographies

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Manhattan Ate my Car 1 -- The Costume Party 9 -- Mother Goes to Hollywood 19 -- Chemistry Set 27 -- The Drummer 35 -- The Birthday Suit 43 -- Portrait of the Bagel as a Young Man 51 -- The Problem with T-Shirts 77 -- A Biker in the City 81 -- Turtles in New York 87 -- The Breakup 91 -- The Tryout 105 -- Addicted to Love 113 -- The Last Days of Shakespeare & Company 135 -- Scenes from a Playground 141 -- A Bike Messenger in the City 155 -- Strip Club 165 -- A Car is not a Castle 173 -- Walking the Dog 189 -- The Floating Armoire 211.

ISBN

0393326837 (pbk.)

LCCN

^^2005015095

OCLC

60516705

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library