A Portrayal of the World of Men Skims the Surface

In a Man’s World: Father, Son, Brother, Friend, and Other Roles Men Play by Perry Garfinkel (New American Library: $14.95)

This is the first book-length treatment accorded to a subject of obvious importance: how men relate to each other as fathers and sons, brothers, mentors and friends. We are largely ignorant of what Freud called “the most primitive organization we know, the association of men.” Journalist Perry Garfinkel interviewed several hundred men from all walks of life to gather information for the work.

The world of men portrayed here is a bleak one, with men isolated from their fathers, brothers, children and just about everyone else. We hear from men whose fathers never expressed affection or really talked to them except to criticize, from men unable to talk personally or feel close to their brothers and friends. The sadness comes across poignantly in some of the quotations. All the now-familiar themes are here: competition, fear, inability to express emotion verbally, and emphasis on achievement and action.

There is material worth reading, and the book may be a useful introduction to some, but it is seriously flawed. It’s too superficial, trying to cover too much in too few pages. Ironically, the book suffers from the same affliction that the author says many men exhibit with one another: a tendency to skim the surface without getting to the substance. Time and again, a section or chapter ended just as I was getting involved in it.

Example of Brevity

As an example of its brevity, the section on the reconciliation of fathers and sons after the sons have rebelled is barely four pages long. And surely there is much more than two pages’ worth to say about the effect on sons of the death of their fathers, which Freud called the most important event in a man’s life.

The book is also marred by Garfinkel’s penchant for one sidedness and hyperbole. The picture painted is too negative. Garfinkel notes in passing that there are positive relationships among men, but that’s the last we hear of it. It’s fine to focus on problems, but the way it’s done gives the impression that males have almost no positive interactions. Balance is also lost because women are almost entirely missing from the book. It’s fine to focus on men, but one should at least mention that a lot of what men don’t get from other men, they do get from women. Otherwise, the impression left is that men live in an emotionless, loveless world, which is not the case.

The hyperbole is evident throughout. The author says that “our fathers are our first male oppressors,” and elsewhere mentions that the system oppresses men. Yet I know many men who don’t feel oppressed either by their fathers or the system. Garfinkel goes off the deep end when he discusses circumcision, painting this now almost universal practice as evil incarnate, leaving the boy “fired by revenge for the humiliation of circumcision.” What is the point of such hyperbole?

Gets Into Trouble

Garfinkel also gets into trouble by belittling anything that doesn’t fit his ideas on how men should relate. He criticizes men’s clubs and fraternities for not teaching men to be intimate with each other and glosses over the good they do. Who said it is the role of men’s clubs to teach intimacy? Similarly, he finds fault with “benign” male friendships--the prevalent kind, according to him--yet glosses over the value they do have.

Yet another problem is that Garfinkel seems not to recognize that much of what he complains about is not unique to fathers and sons, for example, but are staples of the human condition, the result of the fact that we all start out small and ignorant. If many boys grow up feeling inadequate and with low self-regard, why blame Dad when it is also true that many girls grow up with the same feelings?

How men relate to each other is crucial to an understanding of men, but we’re going to have to wait for a more balanced, more sensitive book about the subject.