How to Be a Man

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.