Posted by Jason Diamond
I tried to find some merit in the NY Daily News piece “When writers were real men: Maybe guys aren’t reading because manliness is absent from literature,” but unfortunately I had to give up midway through because what I had read was wedged somewhere between “bullshit hyperbole” and “flaming hot turd.”
Where have all the booze-swilling Dylan Thomases gone? Without the kinds of drinkers (Faulkner), brawlers (Hemingway) and lotharios (Bellow) who used to write our greatest works of literature, it’s no wonder that masculinity has gone elsewhere (say, Kid Rock) for self-validation.
I’m not sure who needs to define their masculinity via the pages of a book, but if you really think that’s what is going to get men to buy more books, I guess go ahead and continue thinking that “real” dudes are desperately waiting for the release of Kid Rock’s memoir. I’ll be busy reading the same books I’ve always read, and being the total pussy this article says I am.
4 comments
Nice. Real men are boozers, fighters and ‘women’s men’. They should be more specific: real *divorced* men are boozers, fighters and ‘women’s men’. Happily married men can’t be real men because real men can’t be happy. And people wonder why society is so screwed up.
I can’t even bring myself to click on the link because the quoted excerpt makes me want to set fire to a copy of the Daily News (in a fit of manly rage?). I’d like to see the Venn diagram of “Kid Rock fans” and “people who have ever read a book”. Would the circles even touch?
There is no merit because it’s purely an advertisement for the author, Brian McGackin. Since you quit reading half-way through, you missed this very important sentence at the end of the article, “McGackin is the author of ‘Broetry: Poetry for Dudes,’ which will be published in July.” He’s complaining about the lack of manly literature so that he can then go and hock his manly poetry book. It’s shameless. Advertising masked as editorial. It works like this: “Oh man, what a shame, there aren’t any books for real masculine men to read. This is quite a problem. But, oh, look! I just happen to be releasing a book that’s perfect for real masculine men to read. So that problem I just told you that you have, I just solved it too. You can thank me by buying it in hardcover.”