Mousiness Garry Wills

Manliness man and against men in general. Harvey Mansfield by Harvey C. Mansfield. The fact that her man is probably Yale University Press, 289 pp., $27.50 no worse than any other she can I once described in these pages a meet- find may induce her to be resigned to her fate, or it may not. Either ing or the Women's Caucus of the American Bar Association at San Fran- way she cannot be happy in the cisco in 1992. The woman presiding society that was supposed to bring began by asking attendees to stand if the liberation of women. they were the first woman to be an ed- Well, no improvement of society itor of her law school's journal-or the brings perfect bliss in an imperfect first woman to be made senior partner world. But I know few if any women of her firm, to become a law school who would like to go back to the con- dean, to become a judge on her bench, dition of women before they won their and so forth. There were hundreds and recent rights. hundreds of women standing by the Mansfield gives no evidence for time she went through her list. That his certainty that woman "cannot be scene is one of many things that both- happy" in this society. There is one ers Harvey Mansfield-"tbe willing- rough measure of happiness. imperfect ness of women to claim solidarity with too, but better grounded than what other women." He claims that "a man's Mansfield asserts (he calls "assert" "my movement would be more divided favorite word"). Professor Edward Lau- against itself, each individual looking mann of the University of Chicago, out for himself and caring less for the with a team of other respected schol- general cause of his sex." He proves ars, surveyed 27,500 adults in twenty- his point by writing a whole book pro- nine countries on satisfaction with moting "the general cause of his sex." their sexual relations from age forty to Mansfield objects to claims of women's eighty. They found a great gap between victimhood by issuing his own lament "gender-equal regimes" and "male- for men's victimhood. People are try- centered regimes." The happiness in ing to prevent him from using the very the fanner was greater than in the lat- word "manly." It is enough to make a ter, and not only among women.' John man cry. DeLamater, the editor of the Interna- Mansfield, the WiUiam R. Kenan tional Journal of Sex Research, who Professor of Government at Harvard, was not part of the team doing this sur- is a translator of Macchiavelli and vey, says that other factors besides Tocqueville. He is a Straussian guru in gender equality can explain the results neoconservative circles and the men- -for instance, the difference between ing noble ones) and entailed property that was sealed off from them by the tor of Willlam Kristol at Harvard. developed and underdeveloped coun- rights, tbings far less important in a double standard, according to which President Bush gave him the National tries, the former having better educa- democratic society. "Bastardy," if it men feared that a life "in the world" Humanities Medal in 2004. He was the tion, health, information about sex, etc.' occurs now, does not incur the same would make them less certain that only member of Harvard's faculty to But Japan, which had the lowest satis- opprobrium as it did when countries their wives' children were tbeirs. vote against establishing a program of faction rate, is a developed country. had to know that rulers and heirs and S. Also, behind Johnson's explana- women's studies, and he became one The gender-equal variable seems estates were "legitimate." tion for the double standard, there was of the most strenuous defenders of the best one-though Mansfield claims 2. Besides, bastardy is not the great always the male anxiety expressed in Harvard's outgoing President Larry that feminism makes women less sexu- fear now that improved contraceptive classical and medieval concern about Summers when he suggested that ally attractive: "Sex they would do devices and legal abortion are available. "insatiable" women. The biological women may be underrepresented in dutifully for tbe sake of the whole especially for the middle class affected basis for that was stated by Mark Twain science and engineering in the acad- movement, perhaps, but as women by feminism. with his customary clarity. Woman, be emy because of intellectual inferiority. they sbow themselves to be very 3. Smaller families have also re- said, is at every age "as competent as Mansfield's new book can be read as a unerotic." This goes against common duced the bastardy problem, since the candlestick," whereas man's "can- scholarly gloss on the controversy over sense as well as against the Laumann urban life and tbe need for extensive dle is increasingly softened and weak- Summers's remark. survey. Mutual respect is the basis of education for the young has cut down ened by tbe weather of age, as the years rewarding human contact. As the sur- tbe number of children ("legitimate" go by, until at last it can no longer stand, The Double Standard vey puts it: "The ideal of companionate or not) being sought. Many children and is mournfully laid to rest in the relationships tends to value positively The book has a weird remoteness from are no longer required to work the hope of a blessed resurrection which is sexual competencies, interests, and the real world. Like many a professor, family farm. This may not be true of never to come .••2 Viagra, the attempt performance between intimate sex Mansfield sees nothing at work around the poor, but Mansfield himself says to remedy this situation, is a testimony partners. In other words, sex in com- him but theories. He thinks tbat tbe that feminism affects only the middle to the validity of Twain's comment, or panionate relationships serves not double standard in sex is disappearing class. the drug would not be as commercially only reproductive purposes, but also because feminism "wants to create 4. Mansfield partly stumbles on a successful as it is. It needed no femi- equality by lowering women's morality reason for not sequestering women nists to point out the situation. lEd ward Laumann et al., A Cross- to the level of man's." Even if that exclusively for breeding and nurturing National Study of Subjective Sexual were true of "ferninism't-c-a term he purposes. He says that feminism may Are Feminists Unhappy? Well-Being among Older Women and usually equates with a few extreme be simply an expression of boredom: Mansfield indulges a typically "manly" Men: Findings from the Global Study of theorists-it would not have had much "For us, perhaps, an argument for Schadenfreude about feminism-that Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors, avail- effect on real women's lives but for women's equality merely adorns and women got what they want and are able at economics.uchicago.eduJdown- a concatenation of many real-world conceals the fact that modem progress loadlfinaISWB_1SAprOS.pdf. Laumann, suffering for it. It has not made them events. Samuellohnson explained the has not left much for women to do at whose updating and correcting of Kin- happy after all. It has simply deprived logic of the sexual double standard by home." That sentence shows, again, sey's studies was praised by scholars, them of what tbey enjoyed earlier- noting that if a husband cannot count how tittle traffic he has with the real is George Herbert Read Distinguished manly men: on his wife's fidelity, he cannot know world, with the many challenges in Service Professor of Sociology at the that her child is his: "The man imposes what "women do at home." But it is Today it seems generally admitted University of Chicago, former chair of his department, former provost of his no bastards upon his wife. "I However true that women who have fewer chil- that gender neutrality is the only university, and on the board of its true that may have been in his day, it dren, and send them off to college, are legitimate way to live-yet we are much-respected National Opinion Re- has become less important now. left with a great part of their lives not not living that way. This means search Center. His study was funded 1. In a hierarchical society like John- given over to full-time motherhood. that every woman has, or is enti- by Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, but it son 's, beredity involved titles (includ- And the costs of college for all middle- tled to, a grievance against her was carried out under standards as class children increase the need for the strict as his own and his peers' schol- 'Boswell's Life of Johnson, edited by extra income, as well as for the extra "Mark Twain, Leiters from the Earth, arly credentials guarantee. George Birkbeck Hill et al. (Oxford satisfaction, of work outside the home. edited by Bernard DeVoto (Harper "Del.arnater as quoted by the Associ- University Press, 19S0), Vol. 3, p. 406. Women can now claim the equality and Row. 1938), p. 40. ated Press, April 19,2006. .d

14 The t ""York Review expresses the quality of the relation- pect. He thinks that the Greek word it out of political debate, which be recognized and promoted through ship." And greater satisfaction for for manliness is thymos-which more henceforth would be conduced ex- an educational system that does the women increases the satisfaction of properly means "animatedness," of var- clusively among scientific hypothe- manly job of self-assertion for them by men. ious degrees. Mansfield wants the word ses. Social science does not as a giving them honors they do not have to have as its central meaning "aggres- rule listen to prejudice. With such to claim or fight for." "Chivalry" siveness," which is better covered by terms as stereotype it prejudges the 5. Commercialism. "Commerce is Mansfield claims that manliness has hybris+ Aristotle's term for manliness truth of nonscientific opinion. It unmanly because it is materialistic. respect for women. but for him this is andreia, a noun formed from the has a prejudice against prejudice. willing to settle for gain rather than vic- turns out to be a condescending re- word of man, aner. That will not serve tory, for trade-offs rather than justice. Science brings rational control by spect, a chivalrous protection of tbe Mansfield, since be wants manliness to The commercial life rejects sacrifice eliminating chance, risk, and all the weak. "Most of the time the gentle- be unreasonable, and andreia is the and rests on calculation of advantage." things that manliness requires: man conceals his superiority with very reasonable mean struck between 6. Modernity. Commercialism bribes chivalric irony; he pretends to defer to timorousness, phoboi, and reckless- In the state of nature everyone has us with what it offers as the advantages his inferiors." This ironic gesture gave ness, tharrhe, Thymos is unreasoning. the right to be a manly aggressor of modernity. "Modernity in its devo- women a kind of equality- ••the sort says Aristotle, and therefore not a against everyone, but in civil soci- tion to self-interest does not care much of equality tbat might result from being man's virtue. A beast has thymos- ety (or Commonwealth, Hobbes for manliness with its thirst for risks." superior at home if inferior at work." and does not have manliness. But the calls it) everyone has the duty, "The entire enterprise of modernity, But manly man. the gentleman, bas unreasoning aspect of thymos is what having signed away this right, to however. could be understood as a proj- now given way to the "sensitive male ." Mansfield admires. forget his manliness and become ect to keep manliness unemployed." who lets himself be intimidated by fem- sociable. or sensitive, or rela- 7. Democracy. Mansfield claims that inists. "As opposed to being manly. a Rational Control tional, or unmanly. "democracy, too, can be understood as defense of manliness requires that a anti-manly," since "democracy is anti- What does Mansfield have against rea- So Hobbes gets the blame for "having man look a woman in the eye and tell manly insofar as it cooperates with son? He thinks that "rational control" created the sensitive male." Darwin her that she is inferior in certain im- modern progress in rational control." portant respects. Men cannot do that ~ "The goal of modern liberalism was today." Mansfield yearns for the certi- ~ the rational state." tude of Spinoza, who equated might with :: 8. Rational control offers itself as a right, and told women that, lacking the ~ triumph of democracy. "Rational con- former, they had no claim on the latter: ~ trot is afraid of exposing itself and "Here is a man," Mansfield comments, thereby being compelled to take re- "willing to look women in the eye and sponsibility for its rule; so it claims tell them what they deserve." only to represent those whom it con- This realism is the basis for Mans- trols." "Rational control prefers rou- field's romanticism. Once women admit tine and doesn't like getting excited." their inferiority, "gentlemen" are will- Rational control is the exact opposite ing to rush to their defense. The hero of thymos, and therefore it is the spe- of bis book is Edmund Burke, saying cial villain of this book. that swords should have leaped from their scabbards to defend the impris- "Feminists" oned Marie Antoinette. What does all this denunciation of the Mansfield defends his position by modern world have to do with femi- searching through literature and philos- nism? Mansfield caUs feminism a new ophy, both of them studied through a thing, but he denounces the increasing lens focused on "manliness." The bogus importance, over many centuries, of nature of Mansfield's manliness is indi- rational control, going back at least to cated by the juvenile nature of the liter- Machiavelli. The people he blames for ary texts he turns to for illustrating it. rational control were not women, or We are served up second-class insights women's advocates. What he thinks be from second-class literature, from The is explaining is the emasculating cul- Old Man and the Sea, King Solomon's Nancy Phillips and Chester Conklin, from an undated silent film ture that made men give in to femi- Mines, The Jungle Book, Dr. Jekyll and has sapped the manliness of our cul- does not escape blame, either. Natural nists. It took a long time for rational Mr. Hyde, An Ideal Husband, and A ture. It has turned men into mice. "No selection follows a female principle of control to perform its castration. But Man in Full. It is odd that he accuses men of our time had the nerve to make adaptation rather tban manly defiance: when at last the feminists arrived on feminists because "they favor obscure fun of the feminists as men did of the "Although men survive by attacking an the scene, they found no men willing authors rather than great names like suffragettes a century ago." "The domi- enemy, species survive by being 'adap- to stand up to them. There was imme- Jane Austen and Edith Wharton." He nant patriarch was overturned and he tive' ... the fittest are the most flexi- diate capitulation. The men could not must not know any feminists. readily succumbed." The admiration ble ." Even Machiavelli had too much help it. Their manliness had been ra- But he is, in any case, no one to tell for the real man has given way to sym- science in his makeup. "With Machi- tionally controlled out of existence. others they are reading second- raters. pathy, to the "sensitive male." We have avelli the modern idea of 'security' was The irony, Mansfield claims, is that The few times he turns to great lit- lost the hero. "While admiring him [the born. the very antithesis of manliness." the manliness surrendered by the men erature. what he says is distorted by hero], we come to admire ourselves, 2. Technology. Science uses tech- had migrated into the women. Their his preconceptions. We learn about since we have someone or something to nology to secure its own preeminence inspiration was the one person whose Achilles' concern for Briseis, but it is look up to." The leveling of society has in our lives. "No longer does science manliness even Mansfield cannot ac- his love for Patroklos that brings come about through a combination of have to coexist with chance, and thus cept. Thymos, being irrational, does Achilles back into "manly" combat and bad things-science. technology, pro- tolerate the limited relevance of sci- need some check, and it must come death. For one so interested in classi- fessionalism, meritocracy, commercial- ence to human life, but with technol- from outside itself, since thymos is not cal ideas. Mansfield is oddly silent on ism, modernity, and democracy-that ogy it can now overcome chance and self-regulating. like Aristotle's andreia. the subject of homosexuality. The most all add up to the rational control of life. achieve genuine control and full rele- Only Nietzsche, in Mansfield's view,let manly of ancient warriors were the 1. Science deals in the faceless aver- vance to human life." thymos rage entirely unchecked. And Spartans, who fought with their male age, not the heroic and exceptional 3. Professionalism. Professionalism yet he is the one women took as their lovers by their side. Are they Mans- "The scientific studies looking at the qualifies people by rules, rather than by leader. They could bave made wbat field's ideal of manliness? [f so, why is average overlook the best." In this, manly initiative-that is how, Mansfield Mansfield considers a wiser choice. They be silent about them? If not, be sbould "science earns its reputation for bene- says, the woman police officer in the could have taken guidance from John tell us why they do not qualify. He fiting humanity by opposing common movie Fargo beats the men at their job: Stuart Mill's The Subjection of Women: speaks often of Plato and the erotic sense." Of all the sciences, social sci- Generalizing to all trades and oc- Yet what did feminists do? They charms of philosophy, but never men- ence is the worst: lions Plato's concept of homosexuality cupations. we could say that pro- turned down this sensible, sensitive as a step on the ladder to that high Social science invented the very fessionalism makes it possible to male-a wimp when you come ideal. idea of stereotypes in order to im- transcend manliness in the sense down to it-and went mad for When the great Aristophanes is cited, pugn common prejudice. It wanted of leaving it behind .... But again. crazy. manly Friedrich Nietzsche. it is to say that his Ekklesiazousai-s-ui not only to deny prejudice the sta- can we replace manliness with a It was Nietzsche in drag, as Simone PhD in crowd control? Can manli- de Beauvoir, but Nietzsche it was. which men are forced to court old and tus of common sense but to wave ness be professionalized? How many of the hundreds of women ugly women-"perhaps gives us a 6It is a vulgar error to think that hybris glimpse into the future of affirmative is the "fatal flaw" in Aristotle's theory 4. Meritocracy. Another aspect of I saw standing at the American Bar action." In fact, Mansfield's acquain- of tragedy. That is hamartia (Poetics professionalism is meritocracy, the Association meeting were carrying tance with classical literature is sus- 53A 7). Hybris, in law, is "physical as- credentialing of the professional. Thus Spoke Zarathustra in their sault" and often "rape" (Aristotle, "Meritocrats are unmanly to the ex- purses? When Mansfield says that 'Laumann, Cross-National Study, p. 22. Rhetoric 1373a35). tent that they think their merit should (continued on page 20)

16 The New York Review (continued from page 16) modem society. Where bave we seen that patriarcby reigned in every time iug "Are we men or mice," he quietly women's equality has for the first time before this denunciation of science and and culture and therefore should not slips over into the mousy ranks. Ad- replaced patriarchy in our world, he liberalism and modernity? Richard Hof- be abandoned-feminists, after all, mitting that there is no way to reverse does not look at the actual women stadter described this very thing when "do not explain why patriarchy held the equal rights movement, he says who have accomplished this, but at a he discussed the anti-intellectualism of sway everywhere until now." He is the that we should cede the public sphere few theoreticians who have little if any frightened people in the 1920s: very type of the anti-intellectual intel- to women and try to retain some hold effect on the women we are married to lectual and of the frightened "be-man." on private life. While knowing that One can now discern among them or the parents of. At one point, he ad- He proves the latter point at the women are not equal, we will just have the emergence of a religious style mits: "The radical feminism I have very end of the book. Conservative re- to pretend they are in the public sphere, shaped by a desire to strike back discussed .is not what most women viewers have praised Mansfield for his against everything modem-the since "men are by nature more single- believe or practice, but it is the only courage in facing up to raging women. higher criticism, evolutionism, the minded, hence more public-spirited, feminism there is" (empbasis added). Christina Hoff Sommers, a resident than women, but let's not say tbat in social gospel, rational criticism of No it is not. It is tbe only feminism scholar at the American Enterprise In- law." When it comes time to take his any kind. In this union of social and there is if it is the only one you choose stitute, describes him tbus: "Into this theological reaction, the foundation final stand, it is a stand for hypocrisy, to look at. Mansfield would rather world strides Professor Mansfield, for nonassertion. Thymos? 0 was laid for the one hundred per scare himself with visions of mad Nie- loaded for bear, and lethally armed with cent mentality.' [emphasis added) tzscheans than look at the ideals of all the powerful stereotypes thought to claims that "many women will be justice and equality being vindicated Mansfield is 100 percent against ev- be banished from bien peasant soci- charmed by his effrontery, and grate- ful for the truth and wisdom in Mans- throughout our society by women erything modem. He offers a carica- ety." But after beating his chest for field's elegant treatise." The reviewer leading richer lives and thereby en- ture of the conservative who thinks hundreds of pages of Manliness, shout- in National Review is also awed by riching men's lives. nothing should change, when he says Mansfield's courage: "Clearly, Mans- The real irony of this book is that 'Christina Hoff Sommers, "Being a field is no stranger to manly deeds." Mansfield thinks nothing hut ideas "Richard Hofstadter, Arui-Irueilectualism Man," The Weekly Standard, April 10, Charles R. Kesler, "The Male Calling," matter, yet hates all the ideas related 10 in American Life (Knopf, 1963), p. 121. 2006, p. 38. Ms. Sommers implausibly National Review, May 8, 2006, p. 45.

Between Comedy and Horror Joan Acocella

The Afterlife something else, murdering the narra- hy Donald Antrim. tor (one of the brothers)-indeed, cut- Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ting out his heart-and he is happy 192 pp., $20.00 about this. The book is horrifying, and even funnier than Elect Mr. Robinson. Donald Antrim, as we know from his novels, has a way with openers. Here You laugh out loud. are the first two sentences of his new In the third novel, The Verification- book, which is not a novel, but a mem- ist (2000), a group of psychotherapists specializing in "Self/Other Friction oir, entitled The Afrerlife: Theory" gather for a meeting at a pan- My mother, Louanne Antrim, died cake house. The protagonist-Tom on a fine Saturday morning in the this time, but they're all the same: out- month of August, in the year 2000. wardly certain, inwardly nuts-threat- She was lying in new purple sheets ens to start a food fight, whereupon on a hospital-style bed rolled up another therapist, Bernhardt, a loathed next to the green oxygen tanks set father figure, grabs him from behind against a wall in what was more or and lifts him by the waist, launching less the living room of her oddly him into a dissociative episode where decorated, dark and claustropho- he imagines himself flying around the bic house, down near the bottom ceiling with a good-looking waitress. of a drive that wound like a rut The episode ends, grotesquely, with past a muddy construction site Bernhardt ejaculating against Tom's and backyards bordered with back. This time the bero doesn't die; chain-link fence, coming to an end he just gets taken to the mental hospi- in the parking lot that served the tal. From book to book, the themes cheerless duck pond at the center are the same: cruelty, masochism, in- of the town in which she had lived faoti1ism. So is the tone, deadpan hi- the last five years of her life, Black larity, and so is the method, fantasy Mountain, North Carolina. entwined with spot-on realism. The di- alogue sounds like something you The second sentence moves like the heard on tbe street a minute ago. driveway, gathering, in its windings, Now, if I were to tell you that tbe jaunty purple sheets and the grim Antrim, having written these three ex- hospital bed, the nice ducks and their cellent, obsessional novels, had now nasty pond, not to speak of the beauti- published a memoir telling us, basi- ful morning and the dead mother. cally, where all that material came Louanne Antrim had moved to Black sentence, and that is the story of this around their houses and shooting from-how be spent his childhood in Mountain five years earlier, after her book: his mother's haunting of him. Stinger missiles at each other in the pity and (error of a raging alcoholic father's death, in order to be near her Antrim bas published three novels, Botanical Garden. In the course of this mother, and how she wasn't the only mother and thereby get control of the and they are of a piece. All are slim novel, two people-one of them a lit- one; how, in his family, he humored money her father had left. Louanne's and elegantly written; all are filled tle girl-are drawn and quartered. The one drunk after another, saying yes, mother died in 1999, whereupon with black humor and cosmic dread. book is extremely funny. Next comes yes, to their crazy notions, all the while Louanne announced tbat she was at As other reviewers have remarked, The Hundred Brothers (1997), my fa- laughing at them and also fearing that, last •.f•r.ee of that woman, now I'm Antrim is a legatee of Pynchon and vorite. Here the political satire drops sucked into their dream world, he going to go somewhere I want to go Delillo, but he is working in an older out and something else drops in: the would never find a proper reality, and live my life." A week later, she was tradition as well. Antrim comes from family. Literally one hundred broth- Dever become a man-if I were to tell told that she had lung cancer. Like- Florida, by way of Virginia (his father) ers, all of them described in one virtu- you this, what would you say? I know wise, when Louanne died the following and Tennessee (his mother). He is part oso opening sentence, convene in the what I'd say: that the memoir would be year, Antrim thought that he would be of our Southern literature: murder decaying mansion of their dead father much less interesting than the novels. released from her stranglehold on him. among the magnolias. His first novel, -a charismatic and terrifying man- And it isn't. It's Antrim'S best book so He would understand her at last, or, Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World to see if they can find "the missing urn far. failing that, just go forth, unstrangled. (1993), portrays a town, in what full of the old fucker's ashes." By the Unlike Louanne, he didn't get a death sounds like Florida, where neighbors end of the long night, they still haven't Apart from our genes, probably the sentence a week later. He got a life are constructing electrified fences found the urn. They are intent on biggest piece of luck, good or bad, that

20 The New York Review