Manhood in America: A cultural history
By Michael Kimmel
Free Press, 544 pages
By DWIGHT GARNER Illustration by Jeff NeumannOne of the greatest -- and goofiest -- things about being an active participant in the sexual skirmishes of the '80s and '90s was all those snappy acronyms you got to kick around. I can remember trying to be a SNAG (sensitive new age guy) until that wasn't cool anymore; chasing LUGs (lesbians until graduation) who wouldn't have me; finally snagging some snogging and worrying about AIDS; then marrying and fighting the DINS (double income, no sex) curse. Sexual life, in bed or out, could whack the snot right out of your ego; small wonder we clung to those little pop-psychotic labels and tried to fit them all together like Leggo pieces. That way, when the game was over, you could stash the whole mess in your closet -- or right there under the bed.
Michael Kimmel, the author of "Manhood in America: A Cultural History," a well-received new survey of masculinity from Paul Revere to Bob Packwood, isn't himself a SNAG, exactly. But he's the most visible and prolific example of a new breed I'll call SNAAGs -- Sensitive New Age Academic Guys. SNAAGS write big, warm, huggy-bear books that
cloak themselves in the rigorous, almost ascetic armor of academia; there's a whole lotta footnoting going on. "Manhood in America" is a prototypical SNAAG expedition, a self-help book for men (and women) who wouldn't be caught dead peeking out from behind a self-help book.
Kimmel, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, isn't a new strategist in the gender wars. He's made a career out of climbing inside the male psyche and sounding for echoes, in books that include "Men's Lives" and "The Politics of Manhood." But it's as an anthologist that Kimmel has really left his mark. His collection "Men Confront Pornography" (1990) is full of funny, disruptive and deeply-felt pieces from such disparate writers as rock critic Robert Christgau and novelist Phillip Weiss.
Reading "Manhood in America," you quickly zero in on the quality that makes Kimmel a shrewd anthologist; he's a facilitator, adept at posing flurries of questions for group discussion. "What kind of man would populate this new nation?" he asks, somewhat grandly, early in his new book. "What vision of manhood would be promoted?" By the end he's worked himself up to doozies like, "So where can men go to feel like men?" (A cigar store?) Guys, guys, he always seems to be saying, while passing around the decaf, can't we all just get along?
Next page: Formula for New Men: Talk Amongst Yourselves
