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New Thinking about Boys and Men

4/28/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
In Monroeville, well, they’re Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn't dream of interrupting you on the golf course.
​Harper Lee
Author of ​To Kill a Mockingbird
​Born April 28, 1926
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H. Lee

My Book World

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Reeves, Richard V. Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. Washington: Brookings, 2022.

Reeves’s thesis may be that while the liberation of women in the last fifty years has been a much-needed, even transformative, change in our society, men and boys have been left behind in their liberation or growth. He believes, for example, that boys should be red-shirted, in other words, begin school a year later. Many parents already do this when they see their sons are not ready. An added benefit is that when the boys reach their teen years, they’re in a class of young women whose maturity more closely matches their own. Reeves also includes in his research how black boys and men differ yet from white males and other ethnic groups in their experiences—thus expanding his work.
 
To solve the employment problem of boys and men he advocates more sophisticated tech programs to train boys (as well as girls) for tech jobs that are sorely needed, perhaps entire high schools, not just a single department. He suggests that we as a society make it acceptable for men to train for more HEAL professions (health, education, administration, and literacy), in the same way women and girls have increased their presence in STEM professions (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). In the manner that women have made headway in achieving fifty percent occupation of STEM jobs and professions that used to be closed to women, men and boys should be encouraged and supported financially to enter HEAL professions. He cites research that suggests many boys perform better when they are tutored by male teachers.
 
There are those who will see this book as overlooking women and girls, but Reeves insists that that is not so. An apparent feminist in thought and deed (a somewhat stay-at-home-dad), he believes that progress should continue for women and girls. It’s just that he believes men, because of societal changes occurring in the last half-century, should be allowed to grow in areas that they weren’t previously. And he offers an entire chapter on how these new roles for men may be accomplished. The task will take considerable resources, both financial and human, but if we don’t begin by considering the ideas put forth by our scholars, where else can we begin, and how do we expect to progress as a civilization?

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Hill McCarter

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Reza Aslan
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Anna Olson
FRI: My Book World | Andrew Sean Greer, Less Is Lost


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A Writer's Wit: Cecil Day-Lewis

4/27/2023

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First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it.
​Cecil Day-Lewis,  Poet and Novelist
Author of ​A Hope for Poetry
Born April 27, 1904
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C. Day-Lewis
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret Hill McCarter
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Reza Aslan
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Henryk Sienkiewicz
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A Writer's Wit: Anita Loos

4/26/2023

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The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it,  America would be grim indeed.
​Anita Loos
Author of ​Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
​Born April 26, 1893
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A. Loos
​Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | C. Day Lewis
FRI: My Book World | Richard V. Reeves, ​Of Boys and Men
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A Writer's Wit: Edward R. Murrow

4/25/2023

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We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.
​Edward R. Murrow
Broadcast Journalist 
​Born April 25, 1908
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E. R. Murrow
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anita Loos

THURS: A Writer's Wit | C. Day Lewis
FRI: My Book World | Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men
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Desperation Creates 'Character'

4/21/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
Research for fiction is a funny thing: you go looking for one piece of information, and find something altogether different.
​Nell Freudenberger
Author of ​Lucky Girls
​Born April 21, 1975
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N. Freudenberger

My Book World

Fox, Paula. Desperate Characters. With an introduction by Jonathan Franzen. New York: Norton, 1999 (1970).

This story is indeed one of desperation. Set in the late 1960s amid a crumbling New York City (Brooklyn), the middle-aged characters are desperate in different respects. Sophie, married to Otto, an attorney, feeds a feral cat that bites her. Otto’s longtime law partner, Charlie, leaves their firm, but he also becomes involved with Sophie unbeknownst to husband Otto. Sophie postpones having her bite checked to see if she might be the victim of rabies. After she and Otto finally trap the cat to have it examined, she and Otto travel to their country place to find that it has been ransacked and vandalized. Perhaps only a bottle of booze has been stolen, but many items, including books, are completely unusable due to the destruction. They consult with the man whom they pay to care for their property in the off season, not getting much satisfaction when he claims he and his son just checked it a few days before.

Much about this book is unsettling. People with a comfortable life are no longer comfortable with each other or their lives, yet they are loath to abandon them or do anything to change them. The cat bite seems to stand in for the unseen sore that is festering beneath the surface of their marriage. Unless I’ve missed something, we never learn the result of Sophie’s test, whether she’ll have to undergo the twelve rabies shots given to the stomach, one per day for nearly two weeks. Much in the way that we never learn what happens to these desperate people. The way the author must want it. The way many of our lives end up, with more questions posed than answered.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Edward R. Murrow

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anita Loos
THURS: A Writer's Wit | C. Day Lewis
FRI: My Book World | Richard V. Reeves, Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What To Do About It
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A Writer's Wit: Aubrey de Grey

4/20/2023

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There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life.
​Aubrey de Grey
Author of 
The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging
​Born April 20, 1963
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A. de Grey
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Paula Fox, Desperate Characters

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Edward R. Murrow
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Anita Loos
THURS: A Writer's Wit | C. Day Lewis
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A Writer's Wit: Richard Hughes

4/19/2023

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Do your bit to save humanity from lapsing back into barbarity by reading all the novels you can. 
Richard Hughes
Author of 
A High Wind in Jamaica 
Born April 19, 1900 
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R. Hughes
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey de Grey
FRI: My Book World | Paula Fox, Desperate Characters
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A Writer's Wit: Susan Faludi

4/18/2023

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As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it.
​Susan Faludi
Author of 
Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man
​Born April 18, 1959
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S. Faludi
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Hughes

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey de Grey
FRI: My Book World | Paula Fox, Desperate Characters
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'Mysterious' Childhood

4/14/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
America is a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair.
​​Arnold Toynbee
Author of ​Mankind and Mother Earth
​Born April 14, 1889
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A. Toynbee

My Book World

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Heim, Scott. Mysterious Skin: A Novel. New York: HarperCollins, 1995.

Among the best novels I’ve ever read concerning adult male-to-young male molestation. Heim explores the issue inside out, from all angles. The adult, like a hawk (thus, the gay slang, chickenhawk), knows its target’s weaknesses and exploits them: the child’s loneliness, his lack of parental guidance, his need for what seems to be love (though it’s only the predator’s skewed view of love), the child’s own possible homosexuality one day. But another side of it is the fact that the child may perceive he loves this man, as well, in the case of the novel, a baseball coach. One of the coach’s victims is positive the man loves him, all the favors he bestows upon him, other gifts, the apparent affection, even the $5 bill he tosses at his favored victims, already setting them up to become whores. From the beginning, the protagonist is sure he’s been abducted by aliens, and, in a sense he has. The experience of molestation must feel like an abduction—the child’s brain scrambling to make sense of this baffling situation—makes aliens from outer space seem a lot less threatening than dealing with aliens that seem to arise out of the very ground here on earth. 

​Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Susan Faludi

WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Hughes
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey de Grey
FRI: My Book World | Paula Fox: Desperate Characters

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A Writer's Wit: Eudora Welty

4/13/2023

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Writing fiction has developed in me an abiding respect for the unknown in a human lifetime and a sense of where to look for the threads, how to follow, how to connect, find in the thick of the tangle what clear line persists. The strands are all there: to the memory nothing is ever rally lost. 
​Eudora Welty
Author of 
One Writer’s Beginnings 
Born April 13, 1909
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E. Welty
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Scott Heim: 
Mysterious Skin
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Susan Faludi
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Richard Hughes
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Aubrey de Grey
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A Writer's Wit: Aleksandr Ostrovsky

4/12/2023

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To pronounce something clever and honest is not such a big deal, lots of them have been said and written. For a statement of truth to be effective and for it to make people wiser, it has to be filtered through the soul of a highest quality, the soul of an artist.
​Aleksandr Ostrovsky, Playwright
Author of ​Without a Dowry
​Born April 12, 1823
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A. Ostrovsky
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Eudora Welty
FRI: My Book World | Scott Heim: Mysterious Skin
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A Writer's Wit: Margaret of Valois-Angoulême

4/11/2023

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Love works in miracles every day: such as weakening the strong, and stretching the weak; making fools of the wise, and wise men of fools; favouring the passions, destroying reason, and in a word, turning everything topsy-turvy.
​Margaret of Valois-Angoulême, Poet
Author of 
Heptaméron
Born April 11, 1492
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M. of Valois-​Angoulême
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Aleksandr Ostrovsky

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Eudora Welty
FRI: My Book World | Scott Heim: Mysterious Skin
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Plotting Marriage

4/7/2023

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A WRITER'S WIT
       The wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away
Than what it leaves behind.
​William Wordsworth
Author of ​The Prelude
​Born April 7, 1770
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W. Wordsworth

My Book World

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Eugenides, Jeffrey. The Marriage Plot. New York: Farrar, 2011.

I loved the author’s book, Middlesex, but this novel seems to lack movement. I saw little growth in the three main characters: Madeline, Mitchell, and Leonard. At the end, in this love triangle, Madeline is still no closer to deciding what she wants in life. Perhaps that is all right; she is just out of college, just like the other two. The young man who falls in love with her, Mitchell, is a fellow college student and her best friend since childhood, but when she rejects him to marry Leonard, another student, he takes a protracted world trip with his best male friend. And when Mitchell returns, he finds Madeleine in a mess because she has married Leonard (against Mitchell’s advice) who is diagnosed bipolar, and he has freed Madeleine to divorce him after his major meltdown. Mitchell then lives with Madeleine and her family (they love him) while she recovers. The two even have sex, a meh experience for both of them. The marriage plot, alluding to the title, turns out to be a reference to an academic essay Madeleine has written, finally published by an obscure journal within the last pages of this novel. Leonard has gone to live in the Oregonian woods with a buddy. Hm. Even if “sad,” it seems the novel could have a more satisfying end. Just me, I guess.

Coming Next:
TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret of Valois-
Angoulême
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Aleksandr Ostrovsky
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Eudora Welty 
FRI: My Book World | Scott Heim, Mysterious Skin

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A Writer's Wit: Margarita Simonyan

4/6/2023

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The root cause of xenophobia in Russia is not religious differences between Muslims and Christians. Nor is it crime. The root cause is the terrible education that children acquire on the street,  at school,  and at home.
​Margarita Simonyan
Russian Journalist
​Born April 6, 1980
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M. Simonyan
Coming Next:
FRI: My Book World | Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot

TUES: A Writer's Wit | Margaret of Valois-Angoulême
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Aleksandr Ostrovsky
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Eudora Welty
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A Writer's Wit: Charles Cumming

4/5/2023

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I'm fascinated by the journey that an intelligent and an ambitious woman makes in the professional world in contrast to the journey that a man of similar ambition, of similar intelligence makes. What sort of concessions does a woman have to make? Does she have to work twenty percent harder than a man?
​Charles Cumming
Author of ​A Colder War: A Novel
Born April 5, 1971
Coming Next:
THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margarita Simonyan
FRI: My Book World | Jeffrey Eugenides, ​The Marriage Plot
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C. Cumming
0 Comments

A Writer's Wit: Marguerite Duras

4/4/2023

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Journalism without a moral position is impossible. Every journalist is a moralist. It's absolutely unavoidable.
​Marguerite Duras
Author of ​The Lover
​Born April 4, 1914
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M. Duras
Coming Next:
WEDS: A Writer's Wit | Charles Cumming

THURS: A Writer's Wit | Margarita Simonyan
FRI: My Book World | Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot
0 Comments
    AUTHOR
    Richard Jespers is a writer living in Lubbock, Texas, USA.

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