4,3
Audio Book Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man with Free MOBI EDITION Download Now!
A journalist’s provocative and spellbinding account of her eighteen months spent disguised as a man.Norah Vincent became an instant media sensation with the publication of Self-Made Man, her take on just how hard it is to be a man, even in a man’s world. Following in the tradition of John Howard Griffin (Black Like Me), Vincent spent a year and a half disguised as her male alter ego, Ned, exploring what men are like when women aren’t around. As Ned, she joined a bowling team, took a high-octane sales job, went on dates with women (and men), visited strip clubs, and even managed to infiltrate a monastery and a men’s therapy group. At once thought-provoking and pure fun to read, Self-Made Man is a sympathetic and thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism.
At this time of writing, The Mobi Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man has garnered 10 customer reviews with rating of 5 out of 5 stars. Not a bad score at all as if you round it off, it’s actually a perfect TEN already. From the looks of that rating, we can say the Mobi is Good TO READ!
Audio Book Self-Made Man: One Woman's Year Disguised as a Man with Free MOBI EDITION!
I bought this book several years ago after reading about it—I forget where.I read it during a period when I was reading many books per week and my reaction to it then was fairly dismissive—it didn't ring true, I thought, and the men that she selected to associate with were all drawn from what I considered to be trite sterotypical environs of male privilege and pathological maleness. And underneath it all, I thought it didn't ring true because I just plain didn't believe that anyone could be fooled like this. "A woman passing herself off as a man in these situations? Come on. Features? Voice? No way. No, this has got to be essentially made up or at the very least heavily embellished. Not a bad job of embellishment, and I appreciate the effort by a woman who must have some sympathy for men, or at least who nods toward such sympathy in net effect, but it's obviously overdone and overwrought."I haven't looked at the book in ages and honestly hadn't thought about it in years. Then recently I stumbled, thanks to the vagaries of the Internet, across a YouTube video of the author from the period of the book's release. And I was shocked. Here was a woman who did, indeed, look like a man when she wanted to, sounded like a man when she wanted to. I'd had to admit that I would have been entirely taken in after all.This sparked a renewed interest, and I sat down this afternoon to read the book again. Interestingly, now that I believe she could have passed, my reaction to the book is entirely different than it was the first time around. Shockingly so. The level of insight shown here is remarkable, and I can now forgive her for selecting environs in which "the worst or most margnal of" men are often to be found. This enables her to get to the crux of things rather more quickly and efficiently than she could have tagging along with suburban husbands for a few years. On re-reading, I think that it is a difference of degree, rather than of type, and one that makes the project logistically plausible.And now I come to the book in a way that I didn't before—as the father of a growing son, who is now old enough to be in school and coming into his own as a little person, with the confusing tension between his biological impulses and social mores, as well as between competing emotional impulses (toughness and aggressiveness on the one hand, tenderness and neediness on the other) almost always just below the surface and clearly in evidence. As men, we don't get to see that struggle play out in ourselves when we are young, but we can see it later on as it plays out in a son trying to reconcile opposed things, both of which he intolerably feels very deeply and all at once.In the end, there is a story here that needs to be told, one that I wish more women could and would read—though as a man with certain experiences that many other men probably share, I doubt whether many women would give this book the time of day. I haven't read or even looked at the Amazon reviews before writing this one, but I can only suspect that there are a decent number of very hostile reviews, from both men and women, and for opposite reasons.There are some things, too, that she doesn't experience over the course of her research. Most notably, the way in which interactions between wise, fully realized men can be very expressive and nurturing yet also very strong, as if they are made of warm, wise granite. She speaks of life as a man as having to be conducted in "only three notes" whereas women have many octaves at their disposal. This is by and large true, but there are several other hidden notes, available only to the masters, the true "elders" of the world, outside the range of much hearing for men and women alike. And sadly, they are disappearing in our world of broken homes and broken culture—but I was blessed with an exceptional and caring father and to have known some very wise men, even if it took me until well into adulthood to hear their "notes." Once I could, it made all the difference. The author seems at time to catch little glimpses of this register—in the monastery, for example, with one or two of its members. But she didn't entirely pick up on the music. I'll be controversial and say that I'm not entirely sure a biological woman could, or at least not in the same way. But then—I've been wrong before. QED.I appreciate the way in which she grapples openly with the tensions that exist between the social psychology, individual psychology, and biology of gender in our world, granting this tangled web the complexity that it deserves and in particular not seeking to minimize or dismiss the role of biology, which I suspect many men feel (though can't say it these days without sparking unneeded and unwanted hysterics) is far more important than the present culture grants.In the end, I'm also fascinated by the way in which my belief in the author's ability to pass herself off as a man so deeply changes my reading of the book for the better. I wonder what she'd have to say about that. Certainly I can't help but sense that there's a resonance in there somewhere with the very themes that she's writing about, though it would take more reflection on my part to unpack it. Likely something to do with the deep compulsion to draw an intuitive, foundationally-felt line between fit maleness and unfit maleness that she speaks of so evocatively and that is to central to the experience of being a man, even as it is infuriating and insufferable at times. There exists a need, for no reason that I can explain (and I suspect that many other men feel the same way) to identify, understand, and hold this line with fierceness. Perhaps it has something to do with evolutionary biology and, ultimately, remnants of a social mechanism to ensure collective fitness for battle in the interest of protecting the group. Yes, all the old stereotypical accounts, etc. But as I age, I grow less and less prepared to immediately dismiss them. Who knows—it bears reflection on my part. And that is perhaps one of the best things that you can say about a book.In any case, coming back now to apologetically write this review, I can at least give the book and her project its due by rating it five-stars and suggest that anyone who doubts ought to do a YouTube search and actually watch video to see that it's plausible and even likely that she did everything that she said she did. I endorse the book and encourage any who are considering it to in fact choose to read it and reflect.A belated five stars.
Post a Comment