A bracing, often domineering, self-help book that aims to guide “jerks” and “losers” through relationship boot camp.
Listen up, bros: your manhood will shrivel and die if you don’t shape up and show some respect to the female sex, according to this scabrous relationship manual.
Levis, a community health care researcher who says that he’s in recovery from “male behavioral protocols,” takes aim at “toxic masculinity” in this book: every sleazy, selfish, callous, uncommunicative, emotionally repressed, irresponsible, drunken, filthy, stinking, groping, pathetic trait that keeps men from having successful—or really any—relationships with women. His pronouncements cover every conceivable topic, from hygiene (“Floss Your Fucking Teeth!”) to healthy lifestyles (“Get Some Sleep, You Ugly Troll”); socializing (“not dancing equates to being boring sexually and a cowardly man”); fine dining (“eating alone never leads to sex, unless you count whacking off”); deportment (smiling, he says, is better than catcalling); domestic harmony (“man up,” he says, and do chores); romantic technique (“be like a lithe and gentle sex tiger”); and even gastroenterology (“When it isn’t a good poop, take notes”). Underneath it all, Levis, the co-creator of what he calls the “Levis-Pimm Relationship Model” featuring 13 steps and a complex chart, dispenses sturdy, unexceptionable psychological advice: take responsibility for your life; don’t force others to make up for your emotional deficits; relinquish your sexist entitlements or face obsolescence in the age of gender equality; and don’t be “a douche bag to women.” He translates these feminist-inflected ideas into a stridently masculinist motivational idiom, half frat-boy raillery and half drill-sergeant hectoring, and decorates them with cartoons of scantily clad or naked women with large breasts as an enticement. There are sharp clashes among the book’s content, tone, and illustration, and the subtext of male self-loathing at times gets so extreme and Andrea Dworkin–ish that it may backfire and make demoralized readers want to forfeit the mating game and just play computer chess. (“Resist becoming a sexless, pox-faced, fat-assed, dildo-loving, healthcare liability (who will die alone on a toilet)”—and then it gets nasty.) Still, Levis’ prose is blunt, vigorous, colorful, and funny throughout. It will keep readers awake and perhaps jolt them into searching re-examinations of their lives.
A bracing, often domineering, self-help book that aims to guide “jerks” and “losers” through relationship boot camp.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-6175-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Jan. 25, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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