Critical Essay | Critical Review by Sam Fussell

Critical Review by Sam Fussell

SOURCE: “The Trouble with Guys,” in Washington Post Book World, October 10, 1999, pp. 3-5.

In the following review, Fussell summarizes Faludi's observations in Stiffed about the contemporary American man.

“Welcome to Testosterone Country!” says a Promise Keeper to Susan Faludi at the all-male convocation at Anaheim, Calif. Overhead, a plane trailing a banner buzzes the packed stadium; the banner reads “PROMISE KEEPERS, LOSERS AND WEEPERS,” and is paid for by feminists.

With Stiffed, Faludi, herself a feminist, dives straight into the belly of the beast, Manhood. Her testosterone tome has been six years in the making. It’s Brobdingnagian in scope, Bunyanesque in sheer size. Her prose and pose are not in the hysterical, shrill, histrionic '60s style of Mailer, Wolfe and Thompson, but she is working the same vein of ore. She's a miner in search of stones.

Why a 650-page meditation on masculinity? After all, “nobody roots for...
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