1,804 words
Brett and Kate McKay
The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man
Cincinnati: How Books, 2009
It’s hard not to like this book. However, it’s really the idea of the book that I like, rather than the book itself. In fact, I almost hesitate to write this review (which will not be wholly positive) because I think the authors have their hearts in the right place, and because I like their website http://artofmanliness.com/
When I showed this book to a young friend of mine he was incredulous: “Do we really need a manual on being a man?” he asked. Well, yes it appears we do. As the authors say in their introduction “something happened in the last fifty years to cause . . . positive manly virtues and skills to disappear from the current generations of men.” They don’t really tell us what they think that something is, but two paragraphs later they remark: “Many people have argued that we need to reinvent what manliness means in the twenty-first century. Usually this means stripping manliness of its masculinity and replacing it with more sensitive feminine qualities. We argue that masculinity doesn’t need to be reinvented.”
I wanted to let out a cheer at this point, but I was sitting in the American Film Academy Café in Greenwich Village, surrounded by young white male geldings and their Asian girlfriends. So I kept my mouth shut and noted to myself that the McKays are clearly not PC, though there are minor nods to political correctness here are there. One gets the feeling that they know more than they are letting on in this book. And one gets the feeling they are employing a simple and sound strategy: to seduce male readers with the natural appeal of traditional manliness – while revealing just-so-much of their political incorrectness so as not to completely alienate their over-socialized readers.
Still, the McKays are pretty socialized themselves, and one sees this immediately on opening the book and finding that it is dedicated to two members of “the greatest generation.” Ugh. Yes, I do think there’s much to admire about my grandfather’s generation, but I long ago came to detest the conventional-minded romanticism about America’s great crusade in WWII. And the very use of the phrase “greatest generation” has become a cliché.
However, the real trouble begins after the introduction, when one finds that the first section of the book is devoted to how to get fitted for a suit. Then we are instructed in how to tie a tie. For some unaccountable reason the tying of the Windsor knot is included here. (Like Ian Fleming, I have always regarded the Windsor knot as a mark of a vain and unserious man.) This is followed by sections on how to select a hat, how to iron a shirt, how to shave, and how not to be a slob at the dinner table. So far so good: I know all this stuff, so I guess I’m pretty manly. Of course, the problem here is that this is all in the realm of appearance. To be fair, the McKays do go on to include much in their book about character, but one must wade through a lot of inessential stuff to get there.
At one point we are instructed in how to deliver a baby. The McKays’ core piece of advice here is “get professional help!” Curiously, this is also the central tenet of their brief lectures on dealing with a snakebite and landing a plane. The baby having been delivered, the reader will find further instructions on how to change a diaper and how to braid your daughter’s hair. (This is what happens when you co-author a book with your wife.) The McKays’ advice on raising children is sound. They advise us not to try and be our child’s best friend.
Once you have tended to your daughter’s snakebite and braided her hair (in that order, please), you can turn to manlier things like how to win a fight, how to break down a door, how to change a flat tire, how to jump start a car, how to go camping, how to navigate by the stars, and how to tie knots. Then it will be Miller time, and you will want some manly friends to hang out with.
The section on male friendship, in fact, is one of the best parts of the book. The McKays remind us that in ancient times “men viewed male friendship as the most fulfilling relationship a person [i.e., a man] could have.” They attribute this, however, to the fact that men saw women as inferior. This is at best a half-truth. The real reason men saw male friendship as more fulfilling than relations with women is because it is. There are vast differences between men and women, and while they may be able to have close, loving relationships they never really understand each other, and their values clash.
Women are primarily concerned with the perpetuation of the species. They are the peacemakers, who just want us all to get along, because their main concern is what Bill Clinton called “the children.” By contrast, men find their greatest fulfillment in achieving something outside the home: they are only fully alive when they are fighting for some kind of value. A man can only be truly understood by another man.
Thus was born what the McKays refer to as “the heroic friendship”: “The heroic friendship was a friendship between two men that was intense on an emotional and intellectual level. Heroic friends felt bound to protect one another from danger.” The McKays devote some discussion to the decline of close male friendships, and they have a lot to say about the disappearance of affection among male friends.
A while back I found myself in a bookstore flipping through a book of photographs from WWII. Many of them depicted soldiers, sailors, and marines relaxing or goofing around. What was remarkable about many of these pictures was the affection the men displayed for one another. There was one photo, for example, of a sailor asleep with his head in another sailor’s lap. This is the sort of thing that would be impossible today, because of fear of being thought “gay.” The McKays mention this problem. As George Will once said, the love that dare not speak its name just can’t seem to shut up lately. And it has ruined male bonding. Thus was born the “man hug” with the three slaps on the back that say I’M (THUMP) NOT (THUMP) GAY (THUMP). (Yes, the McKays instruct us on how to perform the man hug in both its American and international versions.)
Another thing that has ruined male friendships is women, but in a number of different ways. First of all, as every man knows, women have now invaded countless previously all-male areas in life. This usually results in ruining them for men. Second, many women resent it when their husbands or partners want to spend time with their male friends. In earlier times, men would spend a significant amount of time away from their wives working or playing with male peers. But no longer. Now women expect to be their husband’s “best friend,” and men today passively go along with this. The result is that they often become completely isolated from their male friends. It is quite common today, in fact, for men to expect that marriage means the end of their friendship with another man. Please note that all of the above problems have only been made possible by the cooperation of men – by their not being manly enough to say “no” to women.
Eventually, one finds the McKays dealing with matters having to do with manly character, such as their discussion of the characteristics of good leadership. A lot of what they have to say is sound advice, but it is not without its problems. At one point they invoke old Ben Franklin and his homey list of virtues. Anyone interested in this topic should read D. H. Lawrence’s hilarious demolition of Franklin in Studies in Classic American Literature. Franklin is the archetypal American, extolling (among other things) temperance, frugality, industry, and cleanliness. This is setting our sights very low, and it’s not the least bit manly. If I’m going to take lessons in manliness from an American I’d much rather get them from Charles Manson.
There are other problems I could go on about, such as the McKays advising us to give up porn because it “objectifies women” (“But that’s the whole point!” a friend of mine responded when I told him this). However, as I said earlier, their heart is in the right place. Whatever its flaws, this book is a celebration of traditional manhood and an honest, well-intentioned attempt to improve men.
Still, there is something undeniably creepy and postmodern about this book. If you follow all of its instructions you won’t be a traditional manly man, you’ll be an incredible, life-like simulation of one. The reason is that everything they talk about came naturally to our forebears. It flowed from their characters, and their characters flowed from their life experience. But their life experience was quite different from ours. They were not constantly shielded from danger and from risk taking. They had myriad ways open to them to express and refine their manly spirit. They had manly rites of passage. Their spirits were not crushed by decades of PC propagandizing. They had been tested by wars, famines, depressions. They were tough sons of bitches, and nobody needed to tell them how to win a fight. And if you tried to tell them how to braid their daughters’ hair you’d better be ready for a fight.
True manliness is not the result of acquiring the sort of “how to” knowledge the McKays try to provide us with. Manliness is not an art, not a techne – but it’s inevitable that we moderns, even good moderns like the McKays, would think that it is. Manliness is a way of being forged through trials and tribulations. In a world without trials and tribulations, in the “safe” and “nice” modern, industrial, liberal, democratic world it’s not at all clear that true manliness is possible anymore. Except, perhaps, through rejecting that world. The subtext to The Art of Manliness is anti-modern. But the achievement (or resurrection) of manliness has to raise that anti-modernism out from between the lines and make it the central point.
At its root, modernity is the suppression of manly virtues and manly values. This is the key to understanding the nature of the modern world and our dissatisfaction with it. Manliness today can only be truly asserted through revolt against all the forces arrayed against manliness – through revolt against the modern world
8 Comments
Excellent. This is the first JC essay I’ve really enjoyed. The last three paragraphs are among the best I’ve read on the subject. I’ve read the Art of Manliness book and found it on the whole appealing, but I had many of the same reservations. JC accurately diagnoses the problem at its heart. Form over content. You can put a guy in a Brooks Brothers suit and handmade English shoes, teach him proper manners, show him how to change a car tire, and expose him to the ancient cultural traditions of the West–but this does not make him a man.
“At one point they invoke old Ben Franklin and his homey list of virtues. Anyone interested in this topic should read D. H. Lawrence’s hilarious demolition of Franklin in Studies in Classic American Literature. Franklin is the archetypal American, extolling (among other things) temperance, frugality, industry, and cleanliness. This is setting our sights very low, and it’s not the least bit manly.”
An alternative approach would be to read Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography onself and thereby determine its utility (or lack thereof) for daily living.
It’s a short, clearly-written book.
This is the phrase that pays in Mr. Costelo’s review:
In reply:
“First Rule of Fight Club IS?”
Manhood was earned by successfully passing Initiation Rituals – true Rites of Passage, that became ever more difficult and dangerous. “Pagan Man” is a book that describes some of the issues of masculinity from a pagan view – no geldings allowed.
The Destroyer’s handmaidens created Progressivism – the inversion of the Liebniziain model of social organization and governance – as a tool that would manage society by culling the outliers on both ends of the Bell Curve. These, of course, are the places occupied by men, and, on the right side, Great Men, at that.
So, gradually, the organizations that allowed boys the opportunity to experience the foundations of being Men were gelded, made kinder, and much, much gentler. Standards across the board were lowered, and, to take one example, it is much easier to become an Eagel Scout that it was fifty years ago.
Manliness became a mockery of the new geldings, and we can see this in the Third World known as the Urban Ghetto. There, men are of exactly two kinds – soft, kinder gentler reflections of what their mothers wanted men to be, or hypermasculine, feral predators, and there is very little middle ground; ,b>THAT is the direct result of an environment that is hostile to masculinity in all of its Forms.
In such an environment, Please note that all of the above problems have only been made possible by the cooperation of men – by their not being manly enough to say “no” to women.
The foundation of being able to say “NO” to women – something Children are incapable of doing more than once – is to have your own foundation, your own Core Persona, that operates in the fulfillment of a Higher Purpose, regardless of what the women think.
Tom Leykis, perhaps the foremost student of Man-Woman Relations in all of history (FACT!) made many astute observations concerning how women act against men at all points, particularly in the modern Hell known as matrimony. Leykis said (loosely paraphrasing):
Women are dream killers, They want to replace your Dreams with their Plans for you to fulfill THEIR Dreams, to uwe your “Potential” to serve THEIR Dreams, to make THEIR Dreams a reality at the expense of your dreams. You think she loves you. She doesn’t. She loves your “POTENTIAL” – that word they all use to define us when we aren’t around, and they are talking with each other about us – to make HER Dreams the Reality.
What Western Civilization has become is something so antagonistic to Masculinity that it is little wonder there is no really effective, approved methods of Initiation.
Good.
What the Mind sees as an obstacle, the Soul sees as an Opportunity.
The author of “Fight Club” spent a weekend at Landamrk Education’s The Forum – what est had become. e stripped away all of the artificial limits on his perception. He saw Clearly, and wrote “Fight Club.” I can not say too much about the need for all of us to get a copy of the dvd of “Fight Club,” and see what he is saying.
I can only use one phrase to describe Tyler Durden:
“They are going to war with a warlock! I have tiger’s blood, and Adonis DNA!”
It starts with the stripping away of the facade, the artificial limits, and allows you to accept and worwk with the Primal Masculine, the foundation of the Patriarch, and Patriarchy, as we all know, is the foundation of Civilization.
That opens the door to discovering and accepting the Mindset, the connection to the Eternal Masculine that is the foundation of Creation.
I asked a young relative of mine what the big difference was in him since he came back from Parris Island, South Carolina.
His answer?
“Jesus, Uncle, it’s hard to say, but I know this. I don’t take no shit from nobody no more!”
Good.
Think he had “tiger’s blood, and Adonis DNA!”
So do I.
We can learn from this.
Excellent review.
I particularly liked:
But we should also keep in mind that “concerning woman, one should only talk unto men” (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra). It would only cause issue to show this to a woman, especially your woman.
A woman should feel secure in her husband’s ability to be a provider and help raise the children (best achieved by being a model unto them). In my opinion, there does not need to be a conflict of interest between being a “family man” and “fighting for some kind of value.” In my case, the former is important to the latter.
Of course, this undoubtedly entails acting in contrast to how one’s wife would like you to, but a man knows when to say “no” to his wife (not just how).
I also agree that the McKays likely know more than they are letting on.
I would argue that it is absurd to consider “manliness” not possible in the modern world. Is it harder? Yes, and that serves to further divides the weak “men” from the strong (real) men. So essentially, it is a challenge. You can call it “revolting against the modern world” or whatever you like. I don’t prefer that term considering how much of a cliché it has become in our circles and how it insinuates “radical traditionalism” in the Evolian sense, which much less than 1% of us would be able to claim correctly. Regardless of terminology, the modern world needs real men more than ever. It is screaming for them.
The last thing I would like to emphasize is that manliness is exclusive (some may even argue artificial). It may well be something people are born with innately, but in order for it to be recognized, it must be shown through ones actions. The very concept of manliness, of being a real man, requires and assumes that not all men are manly, i.e. real men. It is exclusive, excluding large portions of biological men. There would be no point in proving one is a man (rites of passage etc.) if everyone could do it. Those exhibiting the qualities of real men have almost always enjoyed higher status and positions of greater responsibility and authority than those who do not (and rightfully so!). I am not talking about some physically harsh rite of passage 13-year-old tribesmen do to prove they are men but truly exhibiting the qualities of manliness such as Will to power, self-discipline, loyalty, bravery etc.
Manliness is natural in the sense that natural born leaders and people of authority in more organic societies have a strong tendency to be “manly.” Manliness is artificial in the sense that it is something that has to be earned or proven and that it excludes the masses of “men” (by my definition anyhow). For those of us who believe hierarchy is natural and desirable, what the McKays consider “manly” is not artificial but part of the organic makeup of human society.
If I may —
White man’s own technology and civilized “state” renders him unnecessary in his own society. This is the fundamental problem, not feminism, modernity per se, or lack of manliness. White man has become, dare I say it, too advanced for his own existence — i.e. for his own good.
Put differently, technology and “welfare” have replaced ‘the man’. This is one of the main social issues the Germans had the most trouble overcoming during the NS years. Hence the expansion of the armed forces, “pyramid building” (public works projects), and uniforms, uniforms, uniforms!
Lucius
A good quote from an Art of Manliness article:
From ancient times until modern, men have been insecure about their manhood in a way women by and large do not experience in regards to their womanhood. Manhood must be gained and earned, and therefore can also be lost; thus, preventing potential emasculation has forever been a male concern.
http://artofmanliness.com/2010/05/09/scarcity-luxury-and-proving-ones-manhood/
My father, who happens to be an old school, pre-Vatican II Catholic would surely appreciate this book. Without being too personal: he shines his shoes, wears collared shirts (nearly always), and loves his cuffed/pleated trousers. I remember his ‘militarized lesson’ on keeping a closet orderly; for such continues to this day.
Thank you my dear father.
Another paternal influence and ongoing habit is having a handkerchief at hand when needed. Such small steps for the recovery of needed methods and protocols are vital for the re-building of our currently phlegmatic condition.
En fin: basic, self-maintenance and tact were once the traits of our European/European American societies (both agrarian and urban).
An addendum:
Despite the reservations stated in the article: nevertheless, the book may be a good start for it can always be refined later. I look forward to its purchase.