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jakeowens93 's review for:
Iron John: A Book About Men
by Robert Bly
DNF
This book does for me what the worst modern art does to an unreceptive audience. Every time I'd finish a chapter, I would think "What the fuck is he even saying?" and then I'd think "I could have written that."
For me, it's a pretty disqualifying characteristic for an author to so clearly be in love with his own words. That's obnoxious and arrogant, and that would be sufficiently off-putting in its own rite. But where Bly really fucks up in a special way that puts him into a different category is that he's clearly so impressed and satisfied with himself while saying absolutely nothing meaningful at all. Does it take 25 pages to say, for example, that adversity builds character? It shouldn't. And I guarantee you there's a Veggie Tales episode that does a better job of communicating a similar lesson.
Bly does exactly what Jordan Peterson does in going off on borderline indecipherable tangents about manhood as informed by ancient myths and Jungian archetypes that are ultimately Rorschach tests for the reader. Something ancient has been lost, and the losing of that undefinable thing is at the root of men's emotional and societal problems.
He doesn't say anything with enough clarity or precision to actually have a concrete meaning, so you're left to supply it with whatever meaning you can fit into it.
But here's where the wheels really fall of for me:
Underneath this whole book, there is an assumed belief in gender essentialism, which is transparently bullshit.
Why should I believe "wildness" a uniquely masculine trait? Why should I see the importance of inter-generational relationships as a specifically gendered issue? Why should I assume that older cultures necessarily had things more figured out or that their rituals indicate a richer interiority than I can achieve without some village elder knocking some of my teeth out and leaving me in the woods blindfolded for 3 days while I discovered what it means to be a man?
Why is being a "man" an important or useful target? Why should I care at all?
Bly makes plenty of true-enough (if inane) observations about men and our emotional interiority that are not actually any more true for men than for women. For example: "where a man is wounded, that's where his genius will be." Okay, maybe so. But couldn't you remove gender from this statement and it still be true?
Much of Bly's diagnostics are more-or-less around the post-industrial aimlessness of "manhood." And I think it's true that industrialization has completely redefined gender roles across cultures. And I'd even add that I'm sure it's bad that our modern culture is structured such that human relationships are largely mediated by profit-driven tech platforms, and we're a car-ride away from most people we interact with.
But I don't think it follows that I should have to reconstruct some approximation of ritualized "manhood" that allows me to feel in-touch with some an ancient Germanic forager when there is zero need in my life for me to fill that role. It boils down to aesthetics, and I don't want an aesthetic fix to my problems. I want to be an emotionally in-touch person who can both relate to himself and the people around him. I could give fuck-all about Bly's poorly articulated ideals of manhood because I'm not convinced they'd make anybody's life better.
Getting food from the supermarket is nice, and I actually really like being able to "go to work" on a computer. I'm not convinced that the loss of gender roles play any sort of singular, causal role in the ways that our post-industrial lives have become more atomized. Same for the abandonment of the rituals practiced by ancient tribes of yore or the loss of "Zeus energy" whatever the fuck that even is. What am I supposed to do? Construct some agrarian village where I can farm turnips and haze teenage boys in my sweat lodge? That sounds like it really sucks, actually.
Feminist writers have one thousand times more value for men trying to understand gender identity or "masculinity." Just go read some of that instead.
This book does for me what the worst modern art does to an unreceptive audience. Every time I'd finish a chapter, I would think "What the fuck is he even saying?" and then I'd think "I could have written that."
For me, it's a pretty disqualifying characteristic for an author to so clearly be in love with his own words. That's obnoxious and arrogant, and that would be sufficiently off-putting in its own rite. But where Bly really fucks up in a special way that puts him into a different category is that he's clearly so impressed and satisfied with himself while saying absolutely nothing meaningful at all. Does it take 25 pages to say, for example, that adversity builds character? It shouldn't. And I guarantee you there's a Veggie Tales episode that does a better job of communicating a similar lesson.
Bly does exactly what Jordan Peterson does in going off on borderline indecipherable tangents about manhood as informed by ancient myths and Jungian archetypes that are ultimately Rorschach tests for the reader. Something ancient has been lost, and the losing of that undefinable thing is at the root of men's emotional and societal problems.
He doesn't say anything with enough clarity or precision to actually have a concrete meaning, so you're left to supply it with whatever meaning you can fit into it.
But here's where the wheels really fall of for me:
Underneath this whole book, there is an assumed belief in gender essentialism, which is transparently bullshit.
Why should I believe "wildness" a uniquely masculine trait? Why should I see the importance of inter-generational relationships as a specifically gendered issue? Why should I assume that older cultures necessarily had things more figured out or that their rituals indicate a richer interiority than I can achieve without some village elder knocking some of my teeth out and leaving me in the woods blindfolded for 3 days while I discovered what it means to be a man?
Why is being a "man" an important or useful target? Why should I care at all?
Bly makes plenty of true-enough (if inane) observations about men and our emotional interiority that are not actually any more true for men than for women. For example: "where a man is wounded, that's where his genius will be." Okay, maybe so. But couldn't you remove gender from this statement and it still be true?
Much of Bly's diagnostics are more-or-less around the post-industrial aimlessness of "manhood." And I think it's true that industrialization has completely redefined gender roles across cultures. And I'd even add that I'm sure it's bad that our modern culture is structured such that human relationships are largely mediated by profit-driven tech platforms, and we're a car-ride away from most people we interact with.
But I don't think it follows that I should have to reconstruct some approximation of ritualized "manhood" that allows me to feel in-touch with some an ancient Germanic forager when there is zero need in my life for me to fill that role. It boils down to aesthetics, and I don't want an aesthetic fix to my problems. I want to be an emotionally in-touch person who can both relate to himself and the people around him. I could give fuck-all about Bly's poorly articulated ideals of manhood because I'm not convinced they'd make anybody's life better.
Getting food from the supermarket is nice, and I actually really like being able to "go to work" on a computer. I'm not convinced that the loss of gender roles play any sort of singular, causal role in the ways that our post-industrial lives have become more atomized. Same for the abandonment of the rituals practiced by ancient tribes of yore or the loss of "Zeus energy" whatever the fuck that even is. What am I supposed to do? Construct some agrarian village where I can farm turnips and haze teenage boys in my sweat lodge? That sounds like it really sucks, actually.
Feminist writers have one thousand times more value for men trying to understand gender identity or "masculinity." Just go read some of that instead.