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"In the Family Way: An Urban Comedy"
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[09/30/99]

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"Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and the Future of America"
A sensational history recounts the face-off that altered the course of the nation.
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Ivory Tower
Check your head
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[09/29/99]

How Dawn Powell can save your life
Ground down in a world driven by envy, greed and hypocrisy? America's wittiest satirist can help.
By Gerald Howard
[09/28/99]

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But who? Ah, Mr. Goldstein, that's complicated. Still, you'll no doubt be happy to know that Susan Faludi (of all people) has provided you a far-ranging list of suspects in this, her second book, a walloping inquiry into the woes of modern manhood that looks poised to match the commercial and cultural success of her stellar debut. Among those Faludi hauls into her lineup: the faceless, grinding engines of corporate America; a not-so-Greatest Generation of tight-lipped fathers; a bungled, foggy-headed war in Southeast Asia; grabby NFL owners; corporate-style evangelism and Details magazine -- to name just a few. Confused, Mr. Goldstein? Of course you're confused. But then, that's nothing new, is it?

Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man By Susan Faludi William Morrow and Company, 1999 662 pages   Buy Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi

Faludi launches her coyly titled tome with a rock-hard premise: Something is wrong with men. To dispute that point, of course, would be to call down on your head a mammoth gush of evidentiary news clippings: rage-blinded shooting sprees, chest-beating retreats in the woods, Midwestern stadiums echoing with the twerpy sounds of weeping, vague-minded gatherings, et godawful cetera. Easy analysis of the situation has thus far yielded easy answers. One pinheaded theory dismisses men as atavistic brutes whose fluttering Y chromosome, whether obliged or resisted, leads them toward all manner of trouble. Another, just slightly more reasonable, blames feminism, which, in dethroning men (or attempting to), has left them a bunch of wobbly sad sacks, angry and uncertain about the new paradigm women are forcing upon them, and fearful, like Mr. Goldstein, that shiny knives are somewhere being sharpened.

Not so, Faludi maintains. Whatever's ailing men isn't a product of mere biology -- but neither does it stem from whatever ground feminists have gained. Instead, it's our very culture -- the giant, hazy, formless beast encompassing all those aforementioned suspects -- that's dealing men all the endless betrayals, losses and disillusionments that have incited them to shoot up day-care centers and file sniffling into stadiums. I suspect Faludi will glean all sorts of praise for this kinder, gentler and thus almost revolutionary theory of the gender divide -- for refusing to pin the blame for men's woes on men. And yet underlying this approach lies another, quieter evasion of blame. It's not your fault you feel like this, fellas, says Faludi -- but it's not our fault, either.

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