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A review by lpm100
Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey Into Manhood and Back Again by Norah Vincent
informative
fast-paced
2.0
Book Review
2/5 stars
Self Made Man
"Tell us that you've never lived among real people without telling us that you've never lived among real people."
*******
This book is okay (and just barely okay) in that takes only 4-5 hours to read; if it took even 30 minutes longer, I would have to not recommend it.
Other than a few nice quotes, the author doesn't discover anything that people who live in the real world don't know.
And this author went to a small, private liberal arts college--tuition is $61,770 per year--and it's a pretty safe assumption that she did not have even a vague acquaintance with the real world.
And if she did, she would be the only Liberal Arts College Brat in the entire country that did.
In addition to discovering what everybody else outside of liberal arts colleges already knows, the book has about it the perfume of the author's own self-actualization therapy. And she tells us from the very first page that she was "undergoing a significantly delayed adolescence, drinking and drugging a little bit too much."
I think that men were an abstraction to her for a couple of reasons:
1. The first is that she is / was (she died by assisted suicide in July of 2022) a lesbian, and so obviously she didn't spend that much time around men getting to know them. Because this type of stuff is not what needs an investigative journalist publication to figure out.
2. The second is that she seems to have been one of these Ivy league / academic types. (The college she went to, Williams College, has a 3.5 billion dollar endowment and 2,100 students.)
OF COURSE the Average Joe that lives in the real world of ANY type is just such a mystery to them!
They can write you a whole paper about black people, but have never encountered any of them in places like Chicago or Detroit--or even had dinner with a normal black family, for that matter.
They can write a whole book about gendered social roles, but have never encountered a few beer-drinking guys playing a bowling game after getting off work. It really is the most novel thing since sliced bread that people might have an existence outside of /
totally different to the one that they are caricatured as having by Liberal Arts College Brats as being a bunch of vicious, uneducated racists.
*******
Even though the book was short, it was somewhat overwritten just the same.
Sample paragraph: "As a woman, you couldn't walk down those streets invisibly. You were an object of desire or at least semiprurient interest to the men who waited there, even if you weren't pretty-- that, or you were just another pussy to be put in this place."
(This is her observation of people walking up and down the street and guys noticing the ladies.)
Second Order Thoughts:
1. Some of the things that she learned were pretty trivial.
a. Women like to use a lot more words than men?
b. Sometimes guys just want to go out with other guys and have camaraderie that does not involve a bunch of talking.
c. Going to a bar to pick up a woman is not the most efficient way to do it. Most women go there to reinforce in their own mind the fact that they have the right of first refusal. (It's honestly a lot more efficient probably to try to find a woman at church.)
d. Harsh, live-or-/die work environments attract a lot more guys.
2. I wonder why Vincent didn't go someplace where there were normal guys in order to see what they are like? (Maybe a church group? Maybe a hunting club? Maybe a Kollel?)
And this seems a bit pedestrian, but she was so completely oblivious to what normal guys should look like (again, both being a lesbian and a product of a small liberal arts college) that it would have been better to start off crawling than walking.
I could imagine that most of the guys in the titty bar/bowling league would be normal, but people who would choose to live in a monastery or who had to go to a men's support group would definitely have some type of damage.
When you see people who try to make a living in multi-level marketing schemes, there is very often something wrong with them; that peculiar psychology of people who are attracted to get rich quick schemes.
3. Zora Neale hurston as very aptly said that the only things she wanted was: "a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death." This author had none of those things. And, really, this book shows you more of the value of those things by way of what happens when somebody has none of those things (that would be our dear author).
The events in this book finished around 2006, and she went and committed assisted suicide by 2022. She said that she was never able to recover from her role playing as Ned.
Can you really just imagine that? Somebody has to live the life of a normal guy for a year and a half, and it is so traumatic that they eventually send themselves to be euthanized?
It was *that* disturbing to know that men and women are two different things, and they occupy different spaces.
Really?
It's a good thing that this lady didn't reproduce before she made her check out.
*******
Environments:
1. Bowling league
2. Titty Bar
3. Monastery
4. Door to door salesman (quasi multi level marketing)
5. Hokey Men's Retreat/ support group (complete with rituals and African drums and all sorts of "emotional release").
Quotes:
(p.88): "Gratification kills desire. And constant gratification kills it permanently until even naked, willing women seem made out of cardboard."
(p.44): "Girls can be a lot nastier than boys when it comes to someone who stands in the way of what they want. They know where to hit where it'll hurt the most and their aim is laser precise."
(p.38): "The idea of telling one of these guys that smoking or drinking to excess was bad for his health was too ridiculously middle class to entertain..... The idea that you would try to prolong your grueling, dead end life, and do it by taking away the few pleasures you had along the way, was just insulting."
(p.24): "..... and you understand in some elemental way that the male animal is definitely not a social construct."
Verdict: Recommended at the price of $3. And not a penny more.
Vocabulary:
vigils
lauds
vespers
niblick
2/5 stars
Self Made Man
"Tell us that you've never lived among real people without telling us that you've never lived among real people."
*******
This book is okay (and just barely okay) in that takes only 4-5 hours to read; if it took even 30 minutes longer, I would have to not recommend it.
Other than a few nice quotes, the author doesn't discover anything that people who live in the real world don't know.
And this author went to a small, private liberal arts college--tuition is $61,770 per year--and it's a pretty safe assumption that she did not have even a vague acquaintance with the real world.
And if she did, she would be the only Liberal Arts College Brat in the entire country that did.
In addition to discovering what everybody else outside of liberal arts colleges already knows, the book has about it the perfume of the author's own self-actualization therapy. And she tells us from the very first page that she was "undergoing a significantly delayed adolescence, drinking and drugging a little bit too much."
I think that men were an abstraction to her for a couple of reasons:
1. The first is that she is / was (she died by assisted suicide in July of 2022) a lesbian, and so obviously she didn't spend that much time around men getting to know them. Because this type of stuff is not what needs an investigative journalist publication to figure out.
2. The second is that she seems to have been one of these Ivy league / academic types. (The college she went to, Williams College, has a 3.5 billion dollar endowment and 2,100 students.)
OF COURSE the Average Joe that lives in the real world of ANY type is just such a mystery to them!
They can write you a whole paper about black people, but have never encountered any of them in places like Chicago or Detroit--or even had dinner with a normal black family, for that matter.
They can write a whole book about gendered social roles, but have never encountered a few beer-drinking guys playing a bowling game after getting off work. It really is the most novel thing since sliced bread that people might have an existence outside of /
totally different to the one that they are caricatured as having by Liberal Arts College Brats as being a bunch of vicious, uneducated racists.
*******
Even though the book was short, it was somewhat overwritten just the same.
Sample paragraph: "As a woman, you couldn't walk down those streets invisibly. You were an object of desire or at least semiprurient interest to the men who waited there, even if you weren't pretty-- that, or you were just another pussy to be put in this place."
(This is her observation of people walking up and down the street and guys noticing the ladies.)
Second Order Thoughts:
1. Some of the things that she learned were pretty trivial.
a. Women like to use a lot more words than men?
b. Sometimes guys just want to go out with other guys and have camaraderie that does not involve a bunch of talking.
c. Going to a bar to pick up a woman is not the most efficient way to do it. Most women go there to reinforce in their own mind the fact that they have the right of first refusal. (It's honestly a lot more efficient probably to try to find a woman at church.)
d. Harsh, live-or-/die work environments attract a lot more guys.
2. I wonder why Vincent didn't go someplace where there were normal guys in order to see what they are like? (Maybe a church group? Maybe a hunting club? Maybe a Kollel?)
And this seems a bit pedestrian, but she was so completely oblivious to what normal guys should look like (again, both being a lesbian and a product of a small liberal arts college) that it would have been better to start off crawling than walking.
I could imagine that most of the guys in the titty bar/bowling league would be normal, but people who would choose to live in a monastery or who had to go to a men's support group would definitely have some type of damage.
When you see people who try to make a living in multi-level marketing schemes, there is very often something wrong with them; that peculiar psychology of people who are attracted to get rich quick schemes.
3. Zora Neale hurston as very aptly said that the only things she wanted was: "a busy life, a just mind, and a timely death." This author had none of those things. And, really, this book shows you more of the value of those things by way of what happens when somebody has none of those things (that would be our dear author).
The events in this book finished around 2006, and she went and committed assisted suicide by 2022. She said that she was never able to recover from her role playing as Ned.
Can you really just imagine that? Somebody has to live the life of a normal guy for a year and a half, and it is so traumatic that they eventually send themselves to be euthanized?
It was *that* disturbing to know that men and women are two different things, and they occupy different spaces.
Really?
It's a good thing that this lady didn't reproduce before she made her check out.
*******
Environments:
1. Bowling league
2. Titty Bar
3. Monastery
4. Door to door salesman (quasi multi level marketing)
5. Hokey Men's Retreat/ support group (complete with rituals and African drums and all sorts of "emotional release").
Quotes:
(p.88): "Gratification kills desire. And constant gratification kills it permanently until even naked, willing women seem made out of cardboard."
(p.44): "Girls can be a lot nastier than boys when it comes to someone who stands in the way of what they want. They know where to hit where it'll hurt the most and their aim is laser precise."
(p.38): "The idea of telling one of these guys that smoking or drinking to excess was bad for his health was too ridiculously middle class to entertain..... The idea that you would try to prolong your grueling, dead end life, and do it by taking away the few pleasures you had along the way, was just insulting."
(p.24): "..... and you understand in some elemental way that the male animal is definitely not a social construct."
Verdict: Recommended at the price of $3. And not a penny more.
Vocabulary:
vigils
lauds
vespers
niblick