Mantalk

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Kurtz is familiar to readers of Cosmopolitan's ``Agony Column.'' In this collection of essays, although she purports to interpret mantalk, she dwells as well on womantalk, frequently professing herself to be critical of both sexes. The text covers idiosyncratic perceptions of how men and women contrast in their wishes for and/or expectations of home, marriage, sexual relations, food, etc., including vices they indulge in. On the subject of parenting, Kurtz is provocative: ``Women will mother: cats, a cause, aspidistras. . . . '' But men, she claims, have no drive to fatherhood; they share in childbirth as ``an act first of spontaneity, then of generosity.'' The author writes from the perspective of a determinedly single person, ``a free agent among the males.'' (February 14)