## Metadata - Author: [[Michael Chabon]] - Full Title: Manhood for Amateurs - Category: #books ## Highlights - (one of the notable qualities of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, the material from which Lego bricks are made, is that it is sterile). ([Location 546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VE73JU&location=546)) - Where Lego-building had once been open-ended and exploratory, it now had far more in common with puzzle-solving, a process of moving incrementally toward an ideal, pre-established, and above all, a provided solution. ([Location 557](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VE73JU&location=557)) - The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors. ([Location 644](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VE73JU&location=644)) - Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted—not taught—to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself? ([Location 685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VE73JU&location=685)) - Children must learn to mock capitalism and the uses to which it seeks to put them as early as they learn how to swim. ([Location 734](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VE73JU&location=734)) - The new studio-made CGI products are like unctuous butlers of the imagination, ready to serve every need or desire as it arises; they don’t leave anything implied, unstated, incomplete. There is no room in them for children. And so they never form the basis for my own kids’ games. ([Location 853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B006VE73JU&location=853))