Omnivoracious

Open Book: Are Men Necessary?

OK, the title  above is a bit of a cheat: Are Men Necessary? was actually the name of a book by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, published in 2005. But it's the question that jumped to mind over and over while reading Hanna Rosin's The End of Men: And the Rise of Women, an account of the way the sexes are relating to each other in an ever-changing economic and political world. I was lukewarm on Dowd's analysis at the time--it was funny, and smart and charming, as her columns often are, but the book felt somehow slapdash and excruciatingly anecdotal; while covering the same territory, Rosin's, on the other hand, is careful and journalistic, if, at times, more than a little padded. Like so many other well-intentioned cultural analyses, The End of Men sometimes feels like a magazine article on growth hormones.

Then again, sometimes a book is exhausting because it's exhaustive; Rosin addresses the topic of a changing world by talking to all manner of people, from the super-dude Brooklyn stay-at-home Dad to residents of Alexander City, Alabama, whose lives and marriages were unmoored by the closing of the Russell Athletic plant there. She talks to college kids and corporate superearners and criminals, and compares the North American culture to that in other countries. (She may occasionally fall afoul of the Political Correctness police when she blithely refers to Spain as a "traditional or more macho" culture than, say, Belgium or Switzerland.) But what she finds, over and over again, is that women--even if they're still not making the 100 cents on the dollar that men make, in some professions--are becoming increasingly powerful, in work and in the family, while men are suffering. One thru-line: Women, when suddenly unemployed or facing the prospect of having an unemployed husband, tend to "roll up their sleeves." They go back to school, they take lesser jobs, they get on with it; however well-meaning men might be in the same situation, Rosin suggests that their ideas of masculinity, their sense of their responsibility as stoics and providers, keeps them from being so flexible.

What's striking about Rosin's book is that while her bias is pretty clear--I'm assuming she signed off on the provocative title, after all--she doesn't sugarcoat her findings. I'm glad, for example, that she went ahead and discussed how, with the increase of women's power also comes the increase in female violence. I also love that she lets the "outliers" speak. In a section about men whose wives are the bigger breadwinners, she quotes a working Vancouverite husband who makes less than his wife, but shudders at the thought that he could ever be a stay-at-home dad. Guys like that "haunt" him, David tells Rosin. "I'm progressive and enlightened, and on an ideological political level I believe in that guy," he explains. I want that guy to exist. I just don’t want to be that guy."

Every couple of years, there's a book about gender issues that makes a lot of noise in the culture--you can expect to see and hear Rosin all over the media in the next few weeks, just as, a while back, we heard a lot from Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Judith Warner, Jessica Valenti and others. After all, the soundbitish stats are irresistible, e.g.: In 1970 women in the United States contributed 2 to 6 percent of the family income. Today, the average American wife contributes 42.2 percent. But Rosin's book is particularly worth reading precisely because it is, well, a little bit relentless. You might get its message early on, but as you watch the details, personalities, and analyses accrue, you realize you won't soon forget it.

--Sara Nelson

Amazon Asks Steven Rinella, Author of "Meat Eater"

Steven Rinella eats meat. Since his days as a squirrel-chasing eight-year-old in Twin Lake, Michigan, Rinella has hunted his own meat--and he eats all kinds. His new book, Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter, recounts his experiences as a hunter of game both large and small; it's a thoughtful meditation on the ethics of killing for food, the influence of hunting on the American experience, and the value of bringing ourselves closer to the meat we eat.

Rinella, also the star of two real-life adventure shows and the author of American Buffalo (an Amazon Best Books of the Year selection for 2008), talks to us about some of the stranger things he's eaten, his collections of skulls and "completely odorless" animal scat, his favorite piece of fan mail, and more.

 

Describe Meat Eater in 10 words. 

Adventure, food, ethics, history, family, violence, wilderness, killing with respect.

 What was your scariest experience in the wild? 

I used to think of grizzly bear run-ins as my scariest moments in the wild. I started having these encounters in 1997 when I moved from Michigan to Montana, and they increased significantly once I started hunting in Alaska around the year 2000. Back then, I would count it as a potentially hazardous situation even if I had a grizzly stand up and look at me from a hundred yards away. But over time I realized that the threat of grizzlies lives mostly in our heads. There’s no doubt that they could kill you flat out, without any trouble, but usually they’re tripping over themselves trying to get away from you. So now I'm much more relaxed about it. Just last week, I was hunting caribou on the North Slope of Alaska's Brooks Range. There was a moment when I realized that my cell phone had been destroyed by a leaking bottle of DEET insect repellent, and I was cursing about that just when I saw this grizzly heading into my camp and toward a cache of freshly butchered caribou meat.  Rather than going after the bear, I continued to lament about my phone until a friend urged me to focus on what he considered to be the larger problem. So what do I worry about now that I'm done worrying about bears? Falling off mountains, rock slides, and avalanches. I had a scare hunting mountain goats on some icy cliff faces last fall, and that’s my number one worry nowadays.   

What’s the weirdest thing you've ever eaten?

I've eaten many strange things. A few that come to mind immediately are beaver tail, domestic dog, electric eel, porcupine, muskrat, the contents of a buffalo's gall bladder, the raw fat plucked from behind the eyeball of a caribou. But I always remind myself that these things are only strange in the context of contemporary American society. For other people, in other times, these items were staples and even delicacies. So to call them weird is to approach the subject from a somewhat limited perspective. 

 What's on your nightstand?

Right now I'm reading Lone Survivors: How We Came To Be the Only Humans on Earth, by the paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer. As an avid hunter, I'm an anthropology buff. After all, the vast bulk of human history is one big long hunting story. Stringer's book is full of interesting tidbits. Like how Neanderthal skeletons often demonstrate injuries that seem consistent with modern day rodeo riders, such as lesions and fractures around the head and neck. But rather than riding large animals, Neanderthals were highly carnivorous humans who likely practiced a "confrontational" style of hunting that resulted in getting kicked, trampled and rolled upon by large critters. He also talks about evidence of hunting weapons, such as spears, going back some 300,000 to 400,000 years in Europe. Reading about the deep antiquity of my fellow hunters sets my head reeling. It inspires me, and helps me to answer that ever-present question: why do I hunt?

What do you collect?

I keep around a good number of animal skulls, mostly from things I've killed and eaten. Right now, on my walls, I have skulls from a buffalo, a Dall sheep, and a mule deer. On my mantelpiece I have skulls from two bears, a javelina, an antelope, plus a skull from a whitetail deer my dad killed in the 1960s and an elk vertebra that I found in Idaho. The white tail deer skull still has my father's steel arrowhead rattling around in the brain cavity. He was aiming at the deer’s heart but it swung its head around and then dropped dead instantly. The elk vertebra has an arrowhead buried into it, just a quarter-inch from the spinal column. The bone had actually healed around the arrowhead, demonstrating that the elk survived the wound. It's a totem that reminds me of the very fine line that separates success and failure in hunting. I used to also collect animal scat. I had a black bear dropping that was formed around another bear's toe and claw. And a coyote dropping that was formed around a deer's hoof. I also had these beautiful grizzly bear scats showing all the different things they eat. One was comprised of pine nut husks; one was comprised of elk hair and bone; one was comprised of grasses and sedges; one was mostly insect carapaces. I'd dry them out and lacquer them and keep them in a glass-topped display case. Visitors would always be blown away by how cool they were. Completely odorless, too. Now that collection is if being curated by my brother Matt, who lives in Miles City, Montana. He takes good care of it, and adds and subtracts specimens as he sees fit.

What's the best piece of fan mail you ever received?

After publishing my second book, I got the following email from an elderly man. This guy has the most natural and beautiful style, and I believe that it’s completely accidental. He’s one of those rare people who can just jot down thoughts in a way that’s lyrical and poetic and compelling. That is, I don’t think he labored over this email. I think it just rolled out like this. To me, it reads like a letter you might get from Cormac McCarthy's great-grandfather: 

“Just finished your book American Buffalo and was carried back in memory some 70-plus years to my youth in Montana. My uncle Buddy and Aunt Alice owned a small ranch in eastern Montana and a neighbor was a retired pioneer by the name of Dan Bowman. Dan knew the country like you know the back of your hand and once took me to place much as you describe in your book where the Indians stampeded the buffalo off a ledge into a pit some 6-8 feet deep. The Indians would then slaughter them at their leisure. This pit was full of bones and for many years I had a buffalo skull with a hole dead center between the eyes. My father got rid of it when I left for the army at age 22. I have no idea why he did so since he could not see it having lost both hands and eyes in WW1. That pit is probably still there untouched although I doubt that I would ever be able to locate it again.”

What talent or superpower would you like to have (not including flight or invisibility)?

I wish I didn’t need so much damn sleep. If I go a few nights without getting eight hours, I start to fall apart. And since hunting means a lot of early mornings, I’m often thinking about going to bed before it even gets dark out. It’s embarrassing. All those lost hours!

Amazon Asks Gretchen Rubin, Author of "Happier at Home"

Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project, the year she spent methodically testing happier strategies, plays out on a more powerfully intimate stage with Happier at Home, new this week. Rubin opened up to us about her obsession with scent, Flannery O'Connor, and the moment she wrote "one of my favorite things I've written in my whole life."

What's your elevator pitch for Happier at Home?

Studying happiness, I realized that for me—and most people—home was the foundation. I decided to figure out what changes I could realistically make to be happier at home. Marriage, parenthood, my time, possessions, body, neighborhood—I looked at all these elements to find and share ways to boost happiness.

Who’s your current author crush?

Flannery O’Connor. I can hardly read her fiction, because it makes my head explode, but I’m rereading her nonfiction now--I’m reading The Habit of Being for the third time, which is a collection of her letters, then plan to reread her essays and speeches.

What’s your current obsession?

The sense of smell, with a sub-obsession of perfume. In the past, I paid no attention to scent, and now it’s a huge pleasure for me.

What’s on your bedside table?

I’m very cautious when I turn off my alarm in the morning, because I fear being crushed under that stack of books if it topples! I used to be very disciplined about acquiring books, but my husband (easily) broke me of that. Plus I live a block from a library, and you can really be reckless in a library. Sometimes I feel almost panicky when I think of how many books I want to read.

What’s been your most memorable moment as an author?

One of my most thrilling writing moments happened when I was writing the final chapter of Happier at Home: I sat there, thinking about Little House in the Big Woods, about all my feelings for my home, and I was able to bring it together in a way that perfectly expressed what I wanted to say. I almost felt like I was in a trance. That ending changed very little in editing, and it’s one of my favorite things that I’ve written in my whole life.

What’s your favorite fuel while you’re writing?

Diet soda. Lots of diet soda.

Trend Stetting 21: Getting Schooled

I didn’t go in for much slang as a kid, having had like drilled out of me by an academic dad and a serious reading habit centered on Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, and Anne of Green Gables. Articulate companions all.

Then I spent the summer after high school in Berkeley, and by the time college rolled around I couldn’t make it through a sentence without nice, tight, and sweet (but never hella—even back then, it didn’t feel right to bend grammar quite that far). Eventually my older brother asked me to stop calling him bro, so he morphed into dude instead. I was hooked.

Why those words? And why that summer in that place? Michael Adams, an English professor at Indiana University, considers these questions and more in Slang: The People’s Poetry, out in paperback this week. First he helpfully outlines the distinction between slang and its kissing cousin, jargon. The latter tends to be homogenous across regions and interest groups: the casual restaurant terminology recognized by servers from Jersey to Oregon, for example, or the snowspeak familiar to boarders worldwide.

Slang, on the other hand, has direct links to “social, aesthetic, and linguistic knowledge,” as Adams explains: “It’s a language of being, not of vocation or avocation.” Slang isn’t language at work; it’s language at play. That said, it also does a fine job of demonstrating where we come from (and, in the case of my first Bay Area stint, where we’ve been). If I call it soda and you call it pop, we’ve learned a little something about each other.

Adams' take on Slang is a serious read, if not heavy-handed. You’ll find more hilarity on Urban Dictionary and other wiki-style sites that track the evolution of our twisted, effed-up, gnarly language. But the professor's thoughtful, thorough exploration of why we sling slang waxes much more, like, eloquent. For realz.

Trend Stetting 20: Brief Case

What if I told you that a 200-page prose poem is the most useful guide to writing that I've come across in ages? Before you run away shrieking, consider the man behind the effort. New York Times contributor and editorial board member Verlyn Klinkenborg—the versatile author of three books on farm life, immigration, and reptiles, respectively—takes a Neruda-like approach to dispensing advice. Several Short Sentences About Writing consists of occasionally startling, always opinionated statements and questions that aspiring wordsmiths would do very well to consider.

"This is a book full of starting points," notes Klinkenborg in his prologue, and each could keep a literary debate team busy for hours: "Pay attention to rhythm, first and last"; "Most of the sentences you make will need to be killed. The rest will need to be fixed"; "'Inspiration' is what gets you to the keyboard, and that's where it leaves you." His guidance ranges from nuts-and-bolts practical to lyrically philosophical, but three clear messages ring throughout: Write short. Always revise. Never stop reading. As Klinkenborg observes, "You're not responsible for your readers' ignorance, and they're not responsible for your erudition." That smarts a little. But you know he's right.

In my years of working with authors, I've often defined the editor's role as "a conduit of clarity": Sift out the sediment, polish the gold nuggets, and leave no trace of yourself behind. Klinkenborg counsels writers to accomplish the first two steps themselves by asking questions, making lists, crafting sentences in their heads before marking them down, and avoiding the common traps of jargon, chronology, and expectation. "Your job isn't to arrange chunks of evidence, chunks of the world in the order you gather them," he cautions. "Your job is to atomize everything you touch."

To his point, Several Short Sentences About Writing need not be read from front to back. Dip in anywhere you'd like—you'll find gold. Then maybe you'll start spinning some of your own.

Jonah Lehrer: Blowin' in the Wind

I have to admit, when the news broke a few weeks ago, that New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer (of the now removed-from-sale Imagine) had plagiarized himself--i.e. he'd recycled some of his words and ideas from previous articles or posts published under his name--I breathed a big sigh of "So What?" Haven't we all done this, at one point or another? Especially lately, as the mantra is to Tweet and Facebook and publish, publish, publish, some self-repetition seems inevitable. And yet, Lehrer was called out for this, and while he was allowed to keep his prestigious job at The New Yorker, editor David Remnick was "reluctant" about it, according to the New York Times.

But, now--or actually at least a year ago, the publishing cycle being what it is--Lehrer has really done himself in by making up quotes he then attributed to Bob Dylan. That's a particularly stupid idea, and not only because it violates journalism's rule #1, the one that says you can't make stuff up. But misquoting Bob Dylan, of all people? Not only are there, to estimate conservatively, at least 47 million Dylanologists out there (I have several amateur versions in my own family); not only is Dylan still very much alive and sometimes even talking, mostly in his own memoir; but even a casual observer could see, if he looked, that Lehrer's quote--"It’s a hard thing to describe. It’s just this sense that you got something to say"--couldn’t possibly have come from Dylan: IT WAS WAY TOO COHERENT. (A friend remarked that a more believable quote would have gone something like this: Mumble, Mumble, Mumble [harmonica chord] Mumble.)

So why did Lehrer do this? Because he was in a hurry and, after all, it wasn't such an earth-shattering statement he attributed to Dylan? Because he was lazy or overwhelmed by pressure to succeed? (That's often the excuse: Remember Jayson Blair from the New York Times, or Stephen Glass from The New Republic?) Or maybe, just maybe, we're going to find out that the self-plagiarism and the Dylanism were Jonah Lehrer's gateway drugs, the first steps on a slippery slope of lies that lead we know not yet where?

Years ago, I wrote about the now famous James Frey scandal, which involved the author allegedly fictionalizing key aspects of his memoir, A Million Little Pieces. (Question: Is it self-plagiarism if I tell you I'm doing it while I’m doing it?) There was also the case of Norma Khouri, whose Honor Lost was found by an enterprising Australian reporter to be a hoax. I could go on... but I won't, because I don't want to keep on promoting books that ripped readers off. But I do notice that with Lehrer, as with Frey and Glass, there's an element of self-destructiveness in these acts. I mean, if you really want to get away with something like this, wouldn't you pick a much more obscure plaigeree than the Bard of his Generation? And wouldn't you bury your deed a bit, instead of putting it in the very first pages of your book?

I'm not saying that Lehrer is conscious of this, of course--and let me say clearly that I have never met the man, and have only skimmed his book. Still, even an amateur psychotherapist--I've got several of those in my household, too--can see that this wasn't an accident. "The lies are over now," Lehrer said to the New York Times. "I will do my best to correct the record." Let's hope so.

--Sara Nelson

 

Trend Stetting 19: Precision Shooting

Marjorie Garber, professor of English and visual and environmental studies at Harvard, does not rest on her laurels. She has authored or coauthored more than a dozen books on a strange and impressive range of topics (Shakespeare After All, Sex and Real Estate: Why We Love Houses, and Dog Love, among others), and her latest essay collection has a stark, striking cover and a great deal to say.

Though it clocks in at right around 200 pages—practically emaciated in the annals of academic publishing—Loaded Words is far from a light read. It may take you a couple of chapters, as it did me, to ease into the dense prose: Dr. Garber's decades of scholarship lend themselves to a thicket of citations, footnotes, and quotation marks around common terms to indicate their grander significance ("data," "beliefs," "our"). But if you stay the course, she will prove very approachable, even delightful, in her unabashed passion for language and history ("I own Hamlet T-shirts in a variety of fetching styles").

Consider the lovely passage in which she first meets the rare Cranach Press edition of Hamlet, published in 1930: "When I saw the book, I was enraptured…I touched the handmade paper. I looked at the type and the typeface…. It was like falling for a movie star, or a rock star." Garber calls this her "boing-boing" feeling, and anyone who considers literature a tactile experience knows exactly what that means. I've fallen hard for a few handsome books in my day.

Loaded Words also shines when the author brings contemporary politics and culture into the conversation, as in her insightful essays on critic F.O. Matthiessen, who counted himself as married to his longtime partner 75 years before Prop 8 hit the ballot; and "Our Genius Problem," wherein the modern "genius" designation extends to football coaches and entrepreneurs as often as to scientific and literary pioneers.

You'll need your thinking cap to navigate Loaded Words—or perhaps your velvet thinking tam. If you set it at just the right jaunty angle, you'll be in for a treat.

Trend Stetting 18: Get the Lederer Out

Born to an English mom and an academic dad, I was raised in the tradition of intellectual absurdist humor perfected by the likes of Beyond the Fringe, Flanders and Swann, and Monty Python. America falls depressingly short of modern equivalents in TV land (maybe if Jon Stewart wrote for 30 Rock? And it stayed on the air?), and most new books about language that try to be funny wind up on the novelty shelf.

Thank goodness for Richard Lederer. During his heyday in the 1990s—when this young Trend Stetter was chomping her way through the library at alarming speeds—Lederer wrote one of our most entertaining books about the quirks and foibles of the English language. A couple of decades later, his Anguished English is still the dog-eared paperback I'm most likely to pull off the shelf and wave around during a dinner party. (In fact, I recently did; hence this column.) Its finest chapter, "The World According to Student Bloopers," kills me every single time: As one teen scholar explains about ancient Egypt, "The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so certain areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation." Is our children learning?

Dr. Lederer, bless his puntastic heart, wrote several other books that also make me nostalgic for the literary comedy of yore. Favorites include Get Thee to a Punnery and Crazy English, which shamed my proud memorization of "antidisestablishmentarianism" (dying to tell you I just spelled that without looking it up) by showing off words that were twice, three times, ten times as long! It blew my mind. In case yours hasn't exploded yet, consider that "hippopotomonstrosesquipidalian" has no function in this entire universe except to mean "pertaining to a very long word." If you don't think that's awesome, we probably can't be friends.

Summer is officially here, word fans. Maybe instead of lugging a blockbuster hardback or a tiny screen full of crappy reality shows on vacation, you'll stash some classic language humor in your beach bag. I promise your next dinner party will thank you.

Trend Stetting 17: Smart Quotes

I should mention right away that I loathe epigraphs. It's a visceral reaction: the same feeling I get from footnotes in fiction, the scraping tool dentists use, and people who call their coffee drinks "expresso." Like literary criticism, epigraphs tell me how I'm supposed to feel about a piece of writing before I've had a chance to read it—please don't mess with my head like that. Maybe (maybe) I'll check out your italicized George Orwell excerpt after finishing your book, so I can look for the connection. But not before. Never before.

Here's something I do love, though: pith. And it doesn't get much pithier than a good quotation, expertly employed. Robert Byrne may be America's foremost employer of quotes, as evidenced by his satisfyingly chunky new collection, The 2,548 Wittiest Things Anybody Ever Said. (Why that particular number? He explains in his winning introduction, so I won't spoil the story here.) In logical progression—the chapter on "Love" precedes "Marriage" precedes "Birthing and Babies" precedes "Divorce"—Byrne's book marches us through the stages of our lives as elucidated by masters of the bon mot.

On the modern end of the spectrum, Byrne offers wisdom from Jon Stewart on war, Ellen DeGeneres on religion, and David Sedaris on travel; reaching back into the archives, he calls on trusted sources W.C. Fields (re: children), Jane Austen (re: happiness), and Anthony Powell (re: aging). Comedian Rita Rudner has apparently cornered the market on sex and relationships—"Not only was I not asked to the prom, nobody would tell me where it was"—along with usual suspects Steve Martin and Woody Allen.

Even with all these accomplished wordsmiths to choose from, I have only B.B. King to thank for my favorite quote in Byrne's extensive volume: "Nobody loves me like my mother, and she could be jivin'." You won't see that line at the front of my next book, but it's a serious contender for my gravestone.

Other fine collections for your quoting needs

The Quotable Hitchens: Offend everyone you know as articulately as possible.
The Book of Poisonous Quotes: Somewhat obscure, but worth it for the author bio alone.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: The granddaddy of the genre, now in its 17th edition.

Ask Augusten Burroughs: Why Couldn't We Be "Just Friends"?

Over the past several weeks, Augusten Burroughs tackled your questions about handling chronically late spouses, losing your best friend, infidelity, growing up gay, optimism, irony, and anorexia.

In his last Omni column (for now, at least), he explains why people assume the worst when a married woman is just friends with a man who's not her husband.

And if he hasn't touched on the problem that's been giving you fits, chances are good you'll find fitting advice in This Is How.

Dear Augusten,

I am a married woman that developed a close relationship with a recently divorced man after I relocated for my job to a new city far away from my family. My husband was well aware of the friendship and trusted me implicitly, as I trusted him.

When my family did move up, my friend spent many hours with my husband and with the family. He became a close family friend.

What irritates me is the fact that so many people assumed that we were having an affair. Several people came up and asked me if I were having an affair. When I told them no, they then had the gall to ask me if my friend was gay! When I told them no, I could just imagine what popped into their heads and what most of them would have liked to have asked next--"How do you know?"

I was a cheerleader to my friend when it came to him pursuing romantic relationships after the sting from his divorce had eased. He has found a girlfriend, and I am very happy for him. Unfortunately, the girl friend does not want me in his life and my friend has managed to rationalize it in his head that it is all for the best. I have accepted that there will be no more contact except possibly at an occasional conference, since we are both in the same profession. He is aware that if he needs anything, my husband and I will always be there for him. I owe him a lot, because he helped me through some tough times.

Can a man and a woman just be friends? Why do people always think the worst? What do you say to people who have the gall to ask such stupid questions? Are my husband and I just weird in the fact that we trust each other? Thank you! --Anon

Dear Anon,

I’m not the least bit surprised so many people in your life assumed your friendship with this recently divorced man must be a “friendship with benefits” but why, you ask? Because we are a society that reports as news when the nipple of a celebrity becomes exposed on television, provide our children with genital-free dolls to play with, and obsess relentlessly over which combinations of people should and should not be allowed to have sex with each other.