454
PARTISAN REVIEW
the object of the new masculinity sometimes seems a plea for the lachry–
mose. All the talk about the necessity of men learning to cry brings to
mind one of the worst images in English poetry, Crashaw's description of
twin tears trickling down Mary Magdalene's cheeks like "two portable
and compendious oceans." However ludicrous the image, she at least
wept for her crucified God. No one knows what American men weep for
- undemonstrative fathers, passive mothers, irresponsible sons, too-sexy
daughters, a ravaged wilderness, their aching hearts, their shrunken balls.
Signs of this tearful binge are everywhere. In a bookstore in the
South, I find myself ignoring a huge stack of copies of
Scarlett,
a contem–
porary sequel to
Gone with the Wind.
Guided by bookcases conveniendy
labeled Fiction, Reference, Poetry, Business, History, Current Affairs, I
drift beyond bestsellerdom until I find myself at Sex and Gender Studies.
Here I face the
Scarlett
of the New American Masculinity, Robert Bly's
Iron John: A Book About Men.
Let me confess that the stack of copies filled
me with jealousy as well as astonishment. A decade ago, when it seemed
to me that what we men suffered from was not an excess of machismo
but our inability to conceive a meaningful role in a society in which gen–
der meant less and less, I had written my own book about American men.
But I wrote
On Men and Manhood
ignorant of the appeal of the lachry–
mose.
Iron John
had been on the bestseller list for almost a year by the time I
found it piled
Scarlett-high
in that bookstore. Openly envious, I bought a
copy. As I read it that night, it occurred to me that
Iron John
was not a
mere book, any more than
Scarlett
was a mere book. It was an event, a
happening, a new Bruce Springsteen album, a flag around which huge
numbers of weary American men had gathered - most of them blubber–
ing. Ideas, style, and argument were beside the point. One could no more
compare
Iron John
to ordinary books than one could compare Jean
Tingueley's self-destructing sculptures to the massive solidity of Maillol's
huge figures.
What is it that allows a book so obviously confused and intellectually
incoherent, so pompously self-righteous and politically naive, to become a
runaway bestseller? By the time I purchased it,
Iron John
had already sold
500,000 copies, with a huge paperback printing in the offing. Both its
message and style are self-consciously
revolutionary
-
the kind of thing one
hoped we had rid ourselves of when the prospect of success and power
transformed the flower children of the sixties into the libertarian yuppie
stockbrokers of the eighties.
I have never particularly liked Bly's poetry, but poet friends whose
opinion I value tell me his is a truly significant voice. And yet, one could
offer a primer of banality from this voice by randomly quoting from his
