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THE BOOK OF MEN

Name: THE BOOK OF MEN
Author: Colum McCann
ISBN: 978-1-250-04776-2

EIGHTY WRITERS ON HOW TO BE A MAN

edited by Colum McCann ; Tyler Cabot ; Lisa Consiglio ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2013

A mixed bag. Each piece is intended to respond to “an essential question: What is a man?” but the answers remain elusive.

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A collection of 80 pieces on the essence and challenges of manhood that almost reads like a literary parody of self-help books.

According to the introduction, the book commemorates the 80th anniversary of Esquire, a magazine that “has always sought to instruct.” Here, the instruction concerns “what it means to be a man and how to live up to that responsibility.” The project is a collaboration between the magazine and Narrative 4, which attempts to “connect people and communities everywhere through the sharing of stories," and the collection’s contents were curated by novelist McCann (TransAtlantic, 2013, etc.), a co-founder of Narrative 4 and Esquire contributor, along with editors from each. The pieces span much of the globe, crossing gender lines (some of the best are from women, some of whom don’t seem to treat manhood as seriously as many men do), featuring journalists, novelists and a few nonwriterly ringers (actor Gabriel Byrne, songwriter-producer Joe Henry). There is plenty of violence and copious amounts of tears, and there is sex that is usually more an expression of power, however twisted, than of romantic love. Some of the shortest are some of the best, such as this two-sentence contribution by Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid: “What did it even mean, walk like a man? Still, Omar was in enough pain to take off his makeup and start trying.” There’s a provocative piece of reportage on a transgendered performer by novelist Michael Cunningham, which ends with the question, “Men. I mean, what are we anyway?” There’s also an instructional piece by Vanessa Manko that initially seems to be about sex—“It is done with the body, not with the mind. She should feel when you begin to move and if she precipitates the wrong direction, you’ve done something wrong”—but is really about the tango (which is really about sex). None of the pieces are titled, and many blur the distinction between fiction and nonfiction.

A mixed bag. Each piece is intended to respond to “an essential question: What is a man?” but the answers remain elusive.

Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-250-04776-2

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Picador

Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
TWIST
by Colum McCann

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICAN MOTHER
by Colum McCann with Diane Foley

- BOOK REVIEW
APEIROGON
by Colum McCann

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

by William Strunk & E.B. White ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 15, 1972

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

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Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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IN MY PLACE

by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992

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From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)