Where Men Hide (2006)
My barber recently retired and it was more traumatic than I expected it to be. This was a female barber, but with the profane tongue and crusty persona of an old buzzard. When she moved away she sold the business to a younger guy, who hired an older woman to run a second chair, and entering their shop was a tension-filled experience. The first look around was reassuring. There were still combs and stuff in blue Barbicide jars. The magazine rack was filled with sports, car, and hunting mags. The smut was up on the counter, where the kids can't get at it too easily. The daily paper was still the Union-Leader. They hadn't gotten rid of the R2-D2 vacuum with which to suck your neck clean after your cut. There were no women customers. And, best of all, the price was still under $10--though not the blessed $6 it had been for years. Despite these comforting signs, my trepidation returned when the next open chair was the lady's. We kept it light on the conversation, but as she finished up, and was trimming the back of my neck, she grumbled: "It's like sheering sheep back here." And all was right with the world...
Why was this seemingly simple and routine excursion so fraught? It's because men have so few places we can escape to nowadays where the atmosphere is wholly masculine. Women have forced their way into most of the institutions that used to be our private preserves. We have more child-care responsibilities than we used to, so there are often kids about in places where they were never seen before. Homosexuals, metrosexuals, and other PC sorts are likely to take offense on behalf of womankind even when we can mange to exclude the ladies. It grows harder and harder to find the spots, as in the title of this wonderful book, "where men hide."
James B. Twitchell is a professor of English at the University of Florida and has written a number of books on consumer culture. But an odd confluence led him to this topic--on the one hand he was struck by the images of Saddam Hussein being yanked out of his spider hole in Iraq and, on the other, came across a photo essay in Esquire featuring pictures of distinctively male spaces that were taken by Ken Ross. Where Men Hide features a generous selection of Mr. Ross's photographs and text by Mr. Twitchell that explores the meaning of the places pictured and why they're in decline. The photos are marvelous and it's easy to see why they captured the author's fancy. Mr. Twitchell's commentary is always provocative and informative and frequently fascinating--as befits an English teacher, he takes particular delight in examining how the origins of words reveal deeper meanings behind the terminologies we use today. However, his overall conclusions are pretty sketchy and there's a dichotomy that runs throughout the book -- and apparently his prior work -- that may explain why he doesn't tend to follow where his insights seem to lead.
In a radio interview about the book, you can hear Mr. Twitchell talk about how the places men hide are uniformly dank and dreary, but in the next breath say how inviting and comforting they are to him. The former would appear to be a socially proper feminized view, while the latter reveals his genuine feelings. No normal male would look at these images and be struck first by a feeling of revulsion. The instinctive reaction is certain to be: "Cool, I wish I was there." As the book goes on and Mr. Twitchell both demonstrates an obvious love for the places he's describing and then condemns them and the male attitudes that inhabited them somewhat harshly, the reader gets the feeling that he's just saying what he thinks he's supposed to say. It's like he's trying to say one thing -- a politically incorrect thing -- to fellow men and another to intellectuals -- one that won't get him run out of the Academy on a rail. He becomes the kind of untrustworthy narrator we're more used to in fiction, like Pale Fire or Debt to Pleasure.
The interesting this about this dichotomy is that it may be characteristic of the Professor's work. In the past he's set out to write a critique of consumerism and ended up penning a paean instead and I found this interesting comment in a review of another of his books, REVIEW: of Lead Us Into Temptation by James B. Twitchell (GAVIN McNETT, Salon):
It might be hard for the proper readership to find Francis Fukuyama's "The Great Disruption" or James Twitchell's "Lead Us Into Temptation," since neither is destined for the New Age section. But make no mistake: these are treatises of inner striving -- subtle and powerful documents of the soul's grappling with the ineffable. Fukuyama's book is an attempt by a prominent intellectual to demonstrate that community values can flourish under market capitalism; Twitchell's is a slick-jacketed paean to consumer culture by a curmudgeonly English professor. Underneath, though, both are desperate attempts to unravel a Zen-grade contradiction at the root of modern conservatism: How is it possible to want society to go forwards and backwards at the same time?One would hardly call Mr. Twitchell a political conservative, but he would certainly seem to want to conserve the men's places he describes in this book. So when he slips in the condemnatory bits he does appear to be hoist on that Zen contradiction of valuing the old but wishing to be "progressive."
One of the judgments that Mr. Twitchell gets very wrong may or may not be a function of this tension. He writes that women have an easier time getting together and getting along, as reflected by things like their innumerable book clubs, while men have to go out of their way to schedule things like golf dates in order to even see one another. However, no one who knows any women thinks they generally get along very well. They have falling-outs and feuds that are inexplicable to men and don't have places to congregate specifically because they're ill-suited to random socializing. That, after all, is why they have to have rigidly structured groups. Men have places to go to for the very reason that given a place to gather they can bond with one another regardless of whether they were initially friends or not. Nearly any group of men sitting around a poker table, watching an NFL game on tv, fishing, hunting, or golfing can engage in some male bonding with no difficulty. Women don't bond--there isn't even a term for it because it doesn't happen (which you'd think the English teacher might have noted). The disappearance of male hiding places is sad because it deprives us of these easy opportunities to bond, but doesn't reflect anything broader about the gender. And, if men tend to stay home more these days--their new "places" being the Lazy-Boy recliner, the Widescreen tv, and the computer terminal--it's as much because they can hide at home -- since the wife is out of the house -- as because the other hiding places are fewer and farther between.
Now, don't get me wrong--there's so much to enjoy here that the book is highly recommended. Indeed, if you approach it properly, the structural flaw seems to be an oddly post-modern demonstration of Mr. Twitchell's own point. if you met him in a bar one night he'd likely tell you and the fellas just what he really thought, but a university press book is no place for a guy to hide.
(Reviewed:06-Aug-06)
Grade: (B)
