Volume 39, Number 1 & 2 · January 16, 1992
Something for the Boys
By Diane Johnson
BOOKS REVIEWED IN THIS ESSAY
Iron John: A Book About Men
by Robert Bly
Addison-Wesley, 268 pp., $18.95
Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity
by David D. Gilmore
Yale University Press, 258 pp., $12.00 (paper)
Fire in the Belly: On Being A Man
by Sam Keen
Bantam, 272 pp., $19.95
Transformation: Understanding the Three Levels of Masculine Consciousness
by Robert A. Johnson
HarperSanFrancisco, 105 pp., $14.95
King Warrior Magician Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
by Robert Moore, by Douglas Gillette
HarperSan Francisco, 160 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Prisoners of Men's Dreams: Striking Out for a New Feminine Future
by Suzanne Gordon
Little, Brown, 324 pp., $19.95
Feminism Without Illusions: A Critique of Individualism
by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
University of North Carolina Press, 347 pp., $24.95
The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
by Naomi Wolf
Morrow, 348 pp., $21.95
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women
by Susan Faludi
Crown, 552 pp., $24.00
Dorothy Parker is said to have remarked to the authors of Modern Woman, the Lost Sex, 'I bet you say that to all the sexes.' Reading these books together is like being locked in the coat closet at a cocktail party to overhear a muffled cacophony of half-truths, partial insights, and entrenched wrongheadedness, from which emerges the general impression of a society foundering in reproachful cries of loster-than-thou from all the sexes (cries which the events surrounding the Clarence Thomas hearings and the William Kennedy Smith trial have intensifed). The male writers, as usual, tend to find women essentially peripheral to their lives, and seem more interested (or more free of practical cares) to address existential questions of individual moral and emotional progress, while for most of the women writers, men are still the problem. Underlying the discussion are the abiding central questions of definition: What ought 'real' men to be like? What are women really like? What is 'masculinity'? Does a real man 'feel'? Are 'caring' and 'nurturing' the essence of femininity?
Review, 5748 words
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