Michael Chabon is best when he soars into fantastical worlds. In his book of personal essays, Manhood for Amateurs, he rarely breaks away from melancholy musings about fatherhood and its responsibilities. But when he does slip into this other world, his essays approach awesome.

Those worlds Chabon thrives in can be the comic book history that won him his Pulitzer (The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay). He was wonderful in the weird book The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, where he imagines a Jewish Zion in Alaska, told like it was a Raymond Chandler mysteryl. Even the weirdness of academia novelists (Wonder Boys) is mystical in Chabon’s hands.

Manhood for Amateurs contains essays from Details magazine, mostly. They tell of Chabon’s ongoing struggle to be a modern dad. He rails against the low standard fathers have been measured by in history. He still feels a failure. He worries about his son, his daughter. He sometimes talks diaper bags and baby formula. Was there nothing fantastic or mysterious Chabon could find about this? It gets dull.

Then he’ll sometimes go off on a funny and entertaining tangent about how he’s passing on his geeky obsession with Dr. Who to his kids. He can even make the magical chemistry of baking seem exciting, but he’s better when he launches on his lengthy knowledge of Legos! Hilarious! He talks about what a joy it is to love the trashiness of Star Wars and Planet of the Apes. Yeah, this also means he’ll type some screed about how children don’t use their imagination any more. Hmm, tell that to your granddad who made guns out of twigs, Mr. Chabon. Grandpa didn’t even have Legos.

It’s the more common stuff that Chabon writes about that kind of put me to sleep. Chabon’s thoughts on his single, dating mother aren’t particularly new or exciting. A distant father isn’t by itself gripping enough, and Chabon doesn’t make those unique connections he does when he goes into fantasy. It just doesn’t feel like he’s challenging himself as a writer; he’s moping. The obsessive nature of his family could be interesting: I think Sedaris and Burroughs do stronger essays about this. Again, Chabon doesn’t take the risks he does in his better novels.

What Chabon soars at is fiction – inventive and wild works that borrow from pop culture in a way that “serious literature” is told it shouldn’t. I simply adore his first four novels and Yiddish Policemen’s Union. Chabon takes these chances, injecting some real depth into modes which have therwise been dismissed by our bastions of cultural worthiness. In this book, when Chabon escapes the bonds on maudlin parenthood or navel-gazing at his personal history, he is amazing. Hit’s just that he rarely hits escape velocity here.