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Overview
One of the most talked-about books of last year, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Backlash now explores the collapse of traditional masculinity that has left men feeling betrayed. With Backlash in 1991, Susan Faludi broke new ground when she put her finger directly on the problem bedeviling women, and the light of recognition dawned on millions of her readers: what's making women miserable isn't something they're doing to themselves in the name of independence. It's something our society is doing to women. The book was nothing less than a landmark. Now in Stiffed, the author turns her attention to the masculinity crisis plaguing our culture at the end of the '90s, an era of massive layoffs, "Angry White Male" politics, and Million Man marches. As much as the culture wants to proclaim that men are made miserable—or brutal or violent or irresponsible—by their inner nature and their hormones, Faludi finds that even in the world they supposedly own and run, men are at the mercy of cultural forces that disfigure their lives and destroy their chance at happiness. As traditional masculinity continues to collapse, the once-valued male attributes of craft, loyalty, and social utility are no longer honored, much less rewarded. Faludi's journey through the modern masculine landscape takes her into the lives of individual men whose accounts reveal the heart of the male dilemma. Stiffed brings us into the world of industrial workers, sports fans, combat veterans, evangelical husbands, militiamen, astronauts, and troubled "bad" boys—whose sense that they've lost their skills, jobs, civic roles, wives, teams, and a secure future is only one symptom of a larger and historic betrayal.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
What's Wrong with Men?I won't tell you too much about the purpose of Stiffed; the excerpt here that opens the book does an excellent job of laying out the scope of Susan Faludi's research and what motivated her to undertake it. I also will not reveal the evidence Faludi found in her years of research that support her theory that we have evolved a culture and false mythology that damages men and the roles they play in society. Faludi is a meticulous and complete reporter, and any attempt from me to distill into a few short paragraphs the work she packs into 606 pages of prose and 39 more of notes would do a thorough disservice to the book.
I can tell you what I feel about Faludi, however. When I read Backlash: The Undeclared War on American Women back in 1991, I, as a young journalist, recognized it as one of the best pieces of reporting I had ever read. No, Faludi had not risked her life at the front lines of a war, painted a moving portrait of hope in poverty, or performed any of the other tricks the media use to add emotion to the coverage of issues, invariably blurring the discussion. What she had done was much more impressive. Using facts and statistics, reams and reams of them, she painted a shocking and utterly convincing portrait of a culture and an economy at war with 53 percent of the population. She destroyed myths about "the man shortage" as thoroughly as she documented the increasing wage gap between men and women.
Now, and in no small part because of the effect Faludi's own earlier work had on me, I approach Stiffed with some apprehension. Men still run almost all of the nation's largest companies and dominate all of the state and federal legislatures. Men still earn more than women.
But it turns out that these are not really the men Faludi is talking about. Just as, at the time Backlash came out, there were women living lives of success and influence that could be used to refute the general argument, so too are the men who run the country exceptions to the rules Faludi lays out for the lives of the average American male. She looks at the majority of men who have little economic power, little or no public influence, and nothing but falsely constructed images of the successful American man of the past to try to live up to, something they can't do. And once again, Faludi has amazed me with her ability to expose the fault lines of our society.
To detail more would be to try to mirror Faludi's expertise, which I can't. So I'll let her take over. This excerpt is from the opening of the first chapter.
—Greg Sewell
Judith Shulevitz
No one will ever put this book down for lack of vivid scene setting or compassionate observation...— NY Times Book Review
Publishers Weekly
While it offers nothing like the eloquent argument she made in Backlash, Faludi's examination of what she dubs the "masculinity crisis" does present a series of thoughtful interviews and fly-on-the wall journalistic excursions into the company of men. Faludi finds that American men are looking for metaphorical Viagra to cure an impotence beyond the literal kind. And sometimes, she argues, they are looking in the wrong places, becoming the proverbial "angry white males." Laid-off aerospace and naval shipyard workers, magazine editors and football fans, patriots and Promise Keepers are struggling to define manhood. Faludi aims wide in targeting the sources of the masculine malaise, citing everything from "the remote-control methods of a military-industrial economy" to "the feminization of an onrushing celebrity culture." Boomers and postboomers, deprived of the heroic status of their WWII veteran dads and having had their sense of virtue eroded by the chastisements of feminism, are trying to find "a route to manhood through the looking glass." As Faludi exhaustively documents the struggles of incredible shrinking men with the "post-cold-war restructuring of the economy," she suggests that the core of the problem is that men have lost "a useful role in public life, a way of earning a decent and reliable living, appreciation in the home, respectful treatment in the culture." Faludi concludes by exhorting men to stop thinking of masculinity as a quality detached from their humanity: "their task is not, in the end, to figure out how to be masculine--rather, their masculinity lies in figuring out how to be human." This admonition--be a mensch!--is a sensible way to close a book that proceeds less by well-shaped argument than by the accumulation of anecdotes and Faludi's intelligent, interpretive forays into the lives of men. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
In her much-anticipated second book, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award winner Faludi follows her remarkable study of the cultural response to the women's movement in Backlash with a good hard look at American men. Long cast as perpetrators of patriarchy, men, Faludi argues, are actually suffering under the thumb of a cultural oppression similar to the one that inspired feminism's second wave. Victims of our "ornamental culture" that values (and rewards) style over substance, men are increasingly disaffected, emasculated, and frustrated. Through a number of compassionate, objective portraits of men--from displaced workers in a shipyard to disappointed Promise Keepers to porn stars who struggle to get hard-ons, and more--Faludi traces the American male's fall from potent contributor to insecure narcissist. These portraits unite to present a frank picture of just how difficult it can be to be a man in America today. At the "bitter heart" of this crisis, she finds an overwhelming sense of paternal abandonment. Although her conclusion that men and women have an opportunity to move beyond an adversarial relationship to create change together won't surprise anyone who has considered the limits of the gender wars, it cannot be stressed enough. This important book is sure to spark dialog, and all libraries should have it on hand.--Rebecca Miller, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Lillian S. Robinson
Stiffed is an exploration of the individual and collective behaviors—from spouse-battering to militias—that, to Faludi, show American men of the nineties being manipulated and controlled by an entire culture whose trajectory they resent but do not comprehend. From this perspective, the most troubled men are those who best fit Faludi's paradigm of unfulfilled expectations, which is to say, those who had the furthest to fall...Faludi consistently confuses cultural representation, particularly in the mass media, with actual experience, and routinely substitutes a psychological analysis for a political one—both habits of a mediated, middle-class mentality.—The Women's Review of Books:
Smith
In Stiffed, Susan Faludi listens carefully to men's stories and tells them back to us with a distinctive combination of empathy and clarity. She shines full light on her subjects, and at the same time she lets them speak and works hard to understand their points of view...massive and important.—Tikkun
Richard Goldstein
There are richly poignant stories here of working stiffs and superstars, media movers and porno studs. Faludi weaves these tales together in a style that's threaded with empathy.—Ms.