Making Men out of Boys
“As a busily growing animal, I am scatterbrained and entirely lacking in mental application. Having no desire at present to expend my precious energies upon the pursuit of knowledge, I shall not make the slightest attempt to assist you in your attempts to impart it. If you can capture my unwilling attention and goad me by stern measures into the requisite activity, I shall dislike you intensely, but I shall respect you. If you fail, I shall regard you with the contempt you deserve, and probably do my best, in a jolly, high-spirited way, to make your life a hell upon earth. And what could be fairer than that?”
—Ian Hay, Housemaster
Being a man is tough. Becoming a man is tougher.
In the last decade, numerous articles, books, and online commentaries have addressed the subject of the adolescent male adult. Physically and legally, he is a man; he can grow a beard, buy whiskey, join the Army, and make babies. He can lay pipe, wield a hammer, deal in stocks, sell real estate, and manage a restaurant. He can do all these things and more, yet in some key respects he remains a teenager. He still regards himself as the center of the world, primarily concerned with his own wants and desires. When not working, he dresses as he did in high school. His love of toys and amusements is little changed from the time he was 12. He defines commitment to marriage and children as obligations to be avoided. Duty is not a word in his dictionary.
Concurrent with this social trend are the dismal statistics regarding male education. Males now make up only 43 percent of our nation’s college students, with the balance in some universities having become so lopsided that admissions officers quietly recruit male applicants. With the exception of engineering and mathematics, females dominate graduate-school enrollment. The National Center for Education Statistics recently noted that for the last 27 years the number of female graduate students has exceeded the number of males. Nearly 50 percent of the students admitted to medical and law school are female.
That boys have fallen behind girls in elementary and secondary schools is common knowledge. In 2010 the Center on Education Policy released data showing boys reading at a level ten-percent below that of girls. In the same year the Department of Education concluded that, while all student reading scores are falling, for the last 30 years boys have scored worse on these tests than girls in every age group, every year.
That we are failing to educate boys is apparent to all but the most doctrinaire feminists. In May 2008, when the American Association of University Women disputed any “boys crisis” in education, parents and teachers alike reacted with caustic incredulity. Even at the AAUW’s own website, the report aroused a negative reaction. Typical was the response of Adrianne, a self-described “sad and mad professor and mom,” who summed up the report as “stunningly short-sighted, myopic, and irresponsible.” (U.S. prison administrators, directors of the world’s most populous penal system, would have choked with laughter at the AAUW’s claims, as 1 of every 73 American males is currently incarcerated.)
This decline in male learning and maturity is the result of a 50-year assault on the old virtues of manhood. Uncle Sam has been vanquished by Aunt Samantha and her “nanny state,” whereby government has infantilized both men and women. The widespread use of the Pill and other contraceptives have freed men from the obligations once associated with fatherhood. Forty years of high divorce rates have damaged marriage and created millions of matriarchal households, allowing fathers to evade their duties while simultaneously stripping young men of the example of masculinity and fatherhood. A heavy emphasis on female education, brought about by fears that girls were being denied opportunities available to boys, has made classrooms less friendly to boys, ended most all-male educational institutions, and brought about an attitude of reverse chauvinism. Television and movies—think Seinfeld, The Big Bang Theory, Community, Dumb and Dumber, and the like—have made the bumbling father and adult teenagers models of manhood.
Some academics and writers contend that the alterations in the definition of manhood simply reflect the sea change in our culture. The code of manliness—how antiquated that word sounds, even to those who treasure it—is, these critics argue, superfluous. The manly virtues that once carried men across oceans in tiny ships, and soldiers into battle, no longer serve a purpose. Technology, social safety nets, sexual equality, a kinder and gentler society: These are replacing the masculine attributes of independence, hard work, courage, duty, and honor. These same critics make their prophecies self-fulfilling by brushing aside what they view as patriarchal alternatives in education: bringing back trade and vocational classes to high schools, teaching boys in all-male classes or schools, restoring discipline to the classroom.
On a grand scale, the outcome of this war on tradition and manhood looks bleak. The flags come down these days without a shot being fired. You want to open a public school in Detroit for young black males, a campus stressing discipline and hard work? No way. You’re discriminating against females. Want to fill the need of young boys for more physical activity? No can do. Insurance costs for playgrounds are prohibitive. Besides, recess takes away the opportunity to teach students that the environment is going to hell and that George Washington was an oppressor.
Having spent 50 years educating boys as if they were girls, we now gape in wonder at their failure, their frustration, and their anger.
Yet we must remember that ours is the age of little wars, guerilla wars, and it is by becoming guerilla fighters ourselves that we may find our hope. We can refuse the blandishments of certain educators and the government, the solecisms that pass for truth, the culture working to make males second-class learners and citizens. We—mothers and fathers, grandparents, teachers, mentors—can do battle against these enemies of manhood and give boys the tools they need to grow up.
We begin by teaching boys from an early age the romance and adventure of life. How did the adolescent who played a high-minded knight-errant evolve into a sullen, nihilistic teenager? How did that same adolescent become the 30-year-old who wears his baseball cap backward, plays more video games than the teenager, and lives with his parents? Boys who come of age watching sex and violence in movies, or the cynicism offered by most television comedies, who listen to loveless music drenched in ugliness and despair, who possess no sense of responsibility or consequence, will likely join Peter Pan’s tribe of Lost Boys. To buck this trend, we must keep a vigilant watch on the culture. To grow men, we must teach our boys heroism, taking our models from literature, movies, and living examples.
We must also raise our expectations of boys. Here in Asheville I offer seminars in Latin, literature, and history to homeschooled students. Faced with sons whose academic performances have fallen behind their sisters or their female peers, and taught by experts that boys develop more slowly than girls, some parents I know buy into the excuse that “boys will be boys,” and that they mustn’t be pushed too hard. The same mother who urges her daughters to excel and who delights in their accomplishments will excuse her sons’ lack of diligence because “they are boys.”
These lowered expectations cause enormous and unnecessary damage. The game is lost before it begins. Imagine a basketball coach saying to his team, “All right, guys. We’re playing Central today. They’re bigger, tougher, and better than we are. Just go out on the court, and I’ll be proud of you.” That coach should earn the contempt of every young man under his charge. They look to him to light a fire in their bellies, and he gives them a bucketful of water. It is one thing to recognize that most boys do indeed learn at a different pace than girls in some subjects. It is quite another to diminish our expectations to the point of guaranteeing failure.
Here we need to remember that boys often require a sharper discipline than girls. Because my son played basketball for the Trailblazers, our local homeschool team, I have spent a good amount of time watching various teams at practice and at play. This past year, the coaches of both the girls’ and boys’ varsity teams were male. The girls’ coach, whose chief problems on the team were bickering and personality conflicts, rarely raised his voice and spent much time soothing hurt feelings. The boys’ coach, confronted by a lack of discipline and a spirit of rebellion on the part of a few players, had no difficulty shouting at the players, yanking them from the floor if they wouldn’t listen, and running the entire team through suicide drills for infractions. The boys grumbled, but gave him their respect. And like the girls, they won games.
Boys require this same fire and sense of discipline from their parents and teachers in their academic work. They must be pushed to excel in their studies just as we push them to win games on the soccer field or basketball court. It is useful to understand, and to point out to them, that their competitors aren’t girls, of course, or even other boys, but themselves and their own ignorance.
Finally, boys must be brought to books. They must be lured, cajoled, pushed—if necessary, shoved—into becoming readers. Poorly developed reading skills torpedo a student’s chance for success in the classroom and in life. For two years I taught GED classes in a state prison. When asked, my prison students recalled losing interest in school in the third or fourth grade, those same years when reading and writing become vital to a student’s classroom success.
Our current abuse of technology, a plague that has killed off more readers than the Black Death killed souls in Europe, deserves special mention. It is no coincidence that the 30-year decline in boys’ reading scores begins in the 1980’s, when home video games first became popular among adolescent males. From their inception, these games appealed almost exclusively to boys—that’s why Nintendo marketed a Game Boy—and even during that digital stone-age teachers were complaining about the nefarious influence of such entertainments on reading skills. When I first offered my seminars in Asheville in 1998, not one of my students owned a cellphone. No one arrived in class plugged in to an iPod. Several lacked access to a computer. Facebook and texting had yet to enter either the language or the marketplace. Computer games existed, of course, but these were played almost exclusively by male students.
The last decade has radically changed this situation. Many of my students are now on Facebook, all have iPods, all text with their cellphones. Games for boys remain a high priority. My middle-school writing students keep a journal. With each passing year, more boys write about their gaming exploits while at the same time confessing to the page how far behind they are in their schoolwork. Never in these journals has a female student mentioned computer gaming except when at a party and in the company of males.
If nothing else, this conflict between electronics and print becomes a question of time management. The equation is simple: The hours spent watching television, texting, or blowing away bad guys with electronic weapons means fewer hours available for reading books. The remedy for such a situation is simple in concept and difficult in execution. To make better readers of boys, parents and guardians must bring under control the firestorm of electronic entertainment that surrounds all of us today.
Whenever possible, the books selected for adolescents and teenage males should provide models of manly behavior. In their attempt to attract male readers, some pragmatic educators and publishers have pushed books that do well in the marketplace but offer little to lift the hearts and minds of readers. The worst of these books focus on bodily functions—farts, burps, and so on. Sales are up for these “grossology” books, and even a distinguished publisher like Penguin offers such titles as Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger.
Advocates of Sir Fartsalot or the Captain Underpants series claim that it makes no difference what a boy reads, as long as he is reading. Yet what would we think of a parent who said of her son that “whatever he eats is good as long as he is eating”? And where is the payoff? At what point does the adolescent male magically segue from The Day My Butt Went Psycho to The Yearling or Sounder or Treasure Island? And what does it say about a boy in the 21st century that he must be lured to reading by such squalid stuff? In an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “How to Raise Boys That Read,” Thomas Spence, president of Spence Publishing Company and a father of boys, wisely remarked that, “if you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn’t go very far.”
Parents can help their sons strive for this level of excellence by providing books worthy of them. For elementary-school readers, books like Calvin and Hobbes and the TinTin series contain extensive vocabularies and attract the interest of most boys. Authors such as Richard Scarry and Roald Dahl remain perpetually in vogue. Books from the Landmark Series and from the Childhood of Famous Americans series can lead boys into deeper reading of history and biography. Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, the Hardy Boys and Sherlock Holmes mysteries, the Westerns of Louis L’Amour, the fantasies of the Lightning Thief mythologies or the Harry Potter stories: These can pull readers to classics like The Red Badge of Courage, Johnny Tremain, and The Count of Monte Cristo. Certain magazines, too, can appeal to boys. The feature stories in Sports Illustrated, for example, contain some of the finest writing done in magazines today.
Reading does more than prepare students for academics. Great literature of all kinds as well as the best of movies—Master and Commander, Secondhand Lions, and others—teach lessons for real life. To learn to love, to learn to stand up for what is right, to learn to suffer—these are the lessons of manhood and require real-life experience, but boys can use literature and history as the training grounds for these battles.
You want to rear a boy properly? Limit his time with games and gadgets. Provide him with good books. Push him to excel. Guide him with a firm hand. Cast a vigilant eye on what he sees and does outside the home. These will require great effort and willpower on your part, but in the end you’ll have not only a reader, but a student. Maybe even a man.
Jeff Minick writes from Asheville, North Carolina.
This article first appeared in the September 2012 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
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Just yesterday, I walked into the 5th grade classroom in my school. The teacher pointed out that some wasps were attempting to build a nest between the screen and the panes of the window. She was afraid that they might find a way into the room itself. I assured her that the wasp patrol would be around before the end of the day. Then, I told the pupils a story from my life when I was about their age.
On the hottest of summer days, long before air conditioning, after our chores were done - working in the garden, mowing, washing the car, helping to fix fences - a gaggle of boys would spontaneously appear at one house or another and set out on some enterprise. Among the enterprises most frequently chosen was "the war of the wasps." We would arm ourselves with sling shots, homemade rubber band guns, and a fresh pine limb. Our objective was manifold: find a wasp nest, the bigger the better; attack the nest and stir the wasps up with our sling shots; hone our shooting skills with our rubber band guns by killing or attempting to kill wasps as they, not unlike Japanese Zeros off a carrier, swarmed out of the nest; defending ourselves with the pine limbs if the wasps went on the offensive; and eventually, if we killed enough of them or drove them off, robbing their nest of the larvae with which we would go fishing. Wasps often got through the pine-limb defense and delivered a pop or a do-pop (two stings). Getting do-popped was a "badge of courage." We would the go fishing, usually catching sun perch and frying them right on the creek. (Boys cannot just go to the creek anymore and fish, for the commons is gone.) With each battle across the summers, we were not unlike the wasp larvae; we were emerging ever so slowly from our nest and becoming adults.
At the end of the story, one little guy raised his hand and said, "My mom gets wasps with "Stingex!" Another said that he did not play outside in the summer because it was too hot. However, I saw the faces of two boys light up; they wanted to know how to make a rubber band gun. I told them, probably breaking federal and state law in the telling. Maybe there will be some wasp fightin' this weekend, and a bit of boy will become a bit of man.
What about returning to sex-segregated schools?
Three of Rosemary Sutcliff's books - The Eagle of the Ninth, The Sword at Sunset and the Lantern Barriers - are now published as a sequential trilogy. Boys who encounter them love them. Several of the boys in last year's sixth grade read them. This year they are reading The Marsh King. One of the boys, already having finished The Marsh King, noted the parallels between a Christian Roman Britain in its twilight in the Lantern Barriers as they struggled against the inexorable encroachment of the pagan Saxons and the plight of the Christian Saxon King, Alfred, as he struggled against the pagan Vikings four hundred years later.
Don't we ever consider that the beta-male is usually hopeless in ever becoming an alpha-male? That even if anyone were to push him into all the standard alpha-male manners and responsibilities, through either a drill camp or a close watch on his tastes, the beta is always going to remain a beta?
Just the way some people are born to grow very tall and some people are born to grow very short, or just the way some people are likely from birth to have a very high IQ, or even just the way some people are born straight and some people are born gay - so it is that alphas will be alpha and betas will be beta.
I remember some of the sissies from my school and my neighbourhood. The sort who broke down and cried at harmless insults, who never showed any backbone, and who would prefer to be with the girls than with the boys. By all accounts, all us kids had the exact same upbringing in the exact same environment. I didn't think anyone's parents were much different from mine, having met them. But those ones of weak, effeminate habits did not change from when we were 7 years old to when we were 8, or 9, 10, 11, or 12.
It's like these things are set in stone very early and just can't be changed. For the same reason, we knew that the tall parents had tall children and short parents short children, and the tall ones always win fights against the short ones.
Mr. Sanjay, your problem is that 1. you overestimate the nature-nurture split (even a genetically loaded trait such as eye color assumes certain environmental inputs), 2. you underestimate the power of bad education to mask a good genome (perhaps not uniformly, though there are some boys in bad schools who have good parents and this makes a world of difference for them), and 3. as a non-occidental you simply cannot appreciate the level of decadence and effeminacy we have sunk to in recent decades. The decline of focused, responsible manhood has been so precipitous that it cannot be attributed to genetics.
In any event, you can still tell the difference between the alphas and the betas. The contrast has simply grown less striking as they have grown more degenerate. The beta is an effeminate weasel who cannot put in any effort and who won't even do much as look up to more competent men (who are difficult finding in any case). The alpha is now a sex-crazed boor who has no sense of dedication and at times no sense of social veneer.
I agree with Mr. Peters that one thing boys have to undergo is a tempered thirst for danger. The other day my oldest boy (5) started riding his bike down our front yard hill. He had a blast, even though he fell off several times. And at the recent fair, when he saw there was a Haunted House, insisted on going through it five times in a row (he was very disappointed that he had to sit in a car the whole time, he was hoping to walk through it so that he could fight the ghosts and skeletons hand-to-hand).
And I think the discussion of Alpha vs. Beta is really only pertinent if we pretend that man is just like a gorilla. Like most modern distinctions (Right vs. Left, Radtrad vs. Novus Ordo, Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic) it needlessly narrows the discussion. Was St. Thomas Aquinas an Alpha or a Beta? Would Bl. John Cardinal Newman be considered effeminate? Does anyone argue that these men weren't men? Like the article says, it's about discipline and duty, not bravado and swagger. As much as I love John Wayne movies, I know that someone like Karl of Austria was more of a man than he could ever have been even if Wayne was the faster draw. It's not about genetics - the DNA only supplies us with the unique tools and obstacles our souls must use and overcome in order to be what we ought to be.
I have to say, though, that the one complaint I have about the article is that I just didn't like the movie "Secondhand Lions." While the story was fun, I remember it being such a poorly made movie that the fun was overcome with irritation at the director. It's been a long time, though, so perhaps I should revisit the film.
Prateek Sanjay: homosexuals are not born "gay". The bulk of evidence (conveniently ignored by the decadent media and leaders) is that an overwhelming percentage of male homosexuals have domineering mothers and/or missing/abusive fathers. If they were "born that way" we would have to call it a birth defect and no one wants that!
The effeminate children you (and we) grew up with perhaps inherited personality traits of gentleness, sensitivity and non-aggressiveness which made them uncomfortable among their rambunctious male peers so they preferred girls. Many musicians and artistic types find themselves in this situation and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Given decent parents and good social and religious training, they have always developed normally. Given the social breakdown, missing fathers, over-protective/domineering mothers and rampant homosexual propaganda we see today -- no wonder so many boys never mature as men.
If homosexuality were purely genetic, wouldn't this trait have bred itself out long ago?
Education of young males is such an important topic. I fall back on Dr. Fleming's advice. A classical education is so important. One thing that I think might have been only broached in the article is the importance of adventure to young boys. When I was a kid, we had several acres of forested land and a creek behind my home. That was our area of adventure. We built forts, swung on vines, and swam in the creek. Now, this land has been plowed under and there is a subdivision on the land. The creek now runs through culverts for several miles. No child growing up in my former stomping grounds could have the experiences that my buddies and I once had. Its a shame. In most areas of modern American, I don't know how these experiences could be replicated.
This was an excellent issue of Chronicles. They are mostly excellent, but this one was floating above the sea. Mr. Peters, your stories are golden.
I read through this month's volume as I kept an eye on my boy on the porch, who was busy working the tongs and tasting charcoal and moving the briquettes around the porch and weber before I was ready to light them.
My sister was lamenting to me recently how one of her boys, a very smart 7 year old who had become a reading fanatic despite his alpha ways, had been stopped nearly in his tracks by a school reading list that had him reading all sorts of girlish books like Little House on the Prairie and some others I forget. After not being able to put down the Harry Potter and previous books, he was forging his way through these tomes over the summer like an old horse pulling a plow through caked mud. It had gotten so bad that my sister had tried to set page goals for him per night so he could hit his marks and at least accomplish something. But as she knew, that was not good reading or education for such a young guy -- not to say that education is always self-led or breezy.
We are short good men, for sure. The disappearance of habitat for young male exploration is a big problem, both within school and outside of it.
My sister was lamenting to me recently how one of her boys, a very smart 7 year old who had become a reading fanatic despite his alpha ways, had been stopped nearly in his tracks by a school reading list that had him reading all sorts of girlish books like Little House on the Prairie and some others I forget. After not being able to put down the Harry Potter and previous books, he was forging his way through these tomes over the summer like an old horse pulling a plow through caked mud.
Just a remark: I'm not sure Harry Potter is a much more appropriate point of reference for a young boy than is Laura Ingalls...
It had gotten so bad that my sister had tried to set page goals for him per night so he could hit his marks and at least accomplish something. But as she knew, that was not good reading or education for such a young guy -- not to say that education is always self-led or breezy.
Time to quit the summer reading program! And if summer reading of that sort is compulsory, time to quit the school.
Actually, I've been reading the Laura Ingalls series on-and-off to my two older children for a year and they love it. Pa Ingalls is a great, masculine figure if there ever was one. And the book about young Almanzo Wilder is a favorite of my older son.
Harry Potter I cannot stand or endorse. The hugh & cry about magic and occult stuff may have merit, but it's not my chief concern. My concern is that Harry lies, cheats, steals, breaks his promise, and defies authority at PRACTICALLY EVERY OPPORTUNITY. The books give a perfect lesson on how to teach your boy that the ends justify the means. That and the books aren't terribly well written, either.
I enjoyed the article very much. One thing that would help young men more than about anything else in our time would be to see their parents stay married and even struggle to keep the promises they once made to each other about good and bad times, sickness, health, etc..
On a similar, but not the same, topic I would recommend Dana Milbank's recent Washington Post article as a demonstrative symbol of what is wrong with American men. Folks like him and Tom Brokaw have the accidental but not essential qualities of courage. That is to say, they do not know what to fear and what not to fear. With friends like Milbank defending you, it would be better to simply attempt to defend ones self against all odds. And of course as Tom Fleming has said elsewhere, lefties need to make a living too --- even when they are wrtiting as conservatives.
Actually, I've been reading the Laura Ingalls series on-and-off to my two older children for a year and they love it. Pa Ingalls is a great, masculine figure if there ever was one. And the book about young Almanzo Wilder is a favorite of my older son.
I tend to agree, though for a very young boy it might be difficult to get into the most of the books written as they are from the perspective of a young girl. Although, at least as a child Laura wasn't an "uber" girly girl and there's a lot of adventurism and a good cross-section of what the frontier experience was "really" like off the sets of John Ford movies.
Still, I am skeptical that "summer reading lists" make kids any more literate...
Harry Potter I cannot stand or endorse. The hugh & cry about magic and occult stuff may have merit, but it's not my chief concern. My concern is that Harry lies, cheats, steals, breaks his promise, and defies authority at PRACTICALLY EVERY OPPORTUNITY. The books give a perfect lesson on how to teach your boy that the ends justify the means. That and the books aren't terribly well written, either.
Initially I avoided a sharp commentary on the subject as I have categorically refused to read any of the books or see any of the films, since the very beginning. I will say that you are far from the first person I have heard lodging that particular complaint.
I will also say I have always found it impossible to get past the ludicrous, banal and indeed pornographic premise: ordinary children able to manipulating supernormal forces to conform the world to their own desires. Yes, I realize these are children's book, but indulging that kind of childish fantasy certainly does not stoke imagination or intellectual or spiritual (much less physical) growth. This is quite apart from the complaint that it may drive children toward the occult: on a more base level, it satisfies a puerile fantasy to have everything exactly the way one wants it.
Again without having read the books, I would conjecture that that might explain Harry's bad behavior: the whole series is a pleonexic (is that a good derivative word) play to our diabolical side in which we want to play only by our own rules.
Will James is a good writer and illustrator. Most of my sons enjoyed his books. He knew horses so well he could draw them from the inside out. In fact most, if not all, recent movies about horses and horse whisperers are a footnote to Will James and his stories. Andy Adams wrote about cowboys too but Will James was, for me, the thing itself -- even to the point of almost drinking himself to death when the yankee finally took control of things out West and turned it into profitable show business back East. A lot like Dick Cheney and George Bush did for the GOP.
I'm not sure that's the right approach, if there is one. First off, kids learn more from lessons taught by their parents than from lessons taught by literature. It's not as if the reading list is unwholesome trash, in which case I would approve of withdrawing, but is more a case of perhaps being overly general if not feminist. What lesson would it teach a child, that because they decided they didn't like something they could simply not do it?
I am pretty sure at some point in time during my coed grade schooling, we had some books the whole class read, and then some books that just the girls read and just the boys read -- a fine distinction and the point of the article and comment. When I entered high school, which was all male, I had the choice of reading Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn (each of which I had already read) or Great Expectations. I chose G.E. because I couldn't fathom the idea of reading a book twice. I then realized that the book was dreadful and didn't want to finish. Oh well. Better than the alternatives in my mind -- limping into a new environment or quitting.
Pa is a very sympathetic character in Mrs. Wilder's books, but he is more than a little bit of a loser, who fails at everything and by his dreams exposes his family to hardship and even serious danger (from the Indians). It is a brilliant portrait by a writer who needs to be taken seriously.
Yep, it's a good stream-starter as well as a good magazine article. It makes me all the more pleased to have met Mr. Minnick at this year's Rockford Institute Summer School.
Mr. Reavis, anent your remarking that Will James nearly drank himself to death when "the yankee finally took control of things out West and turned it into profitable show business back East", the imp in me spurs me to ask whether, among those yankees turning the West into show biz, you refer to Buffalo Bill Cody. He was a childhood idol of mine, mostly through the Classics Illustrated comic book about his life. Ditto, Wild Bill Hickok. From those comics, I continued to biographies of other Old West figures, such as Judge Roy Bean, Bat Masterson, John Wesley Hardin, Cole Younger, and the Wild Bunch, by authors including C. L. Sonnichsen and James D. Horan. If a lot of those fellows were outlaws at one time or another, they were also brave and often chivalrous. I also was first informed about King Arthur and the Round Table by Classics Illustrated, though I don't recall pursuing the Matter of Britain with any fervor until well beyond boyhood. As has been pointed out, TV and films for kids were more edifying back then (the Fifties) than they are now. My earliest TV hero was Hopalong Cassidy, joined shortly by Davy Crockett and later by Paladin and Matt Dillon in my private media hall-of-fame. I also recall watching Victory at Sea and any other WWII documentaries that were broadcast--there were a lot. Such programs translated well into group play with the neighborhood boys and during recess at school. Perhaps most important in my experience with TV is that I watched less and less of it after age 12, and what I did watch was mostly old (1930s and 1940s) movies. I was always bookish and definitely no alpha male, but I learned unambiguously that men are supposed to be honest, loyal, brave, courteous, reverent--in a word, responsible. That many men failed to live up to that standard was never denied, but their failure did not negate the standard. During the 1960s, it seems to me, Americans generally decided that the exception, far from proving the rule, as the old counterintuitive says, negated it. The fact that some marriages failed proved that marriage was unworkable. The fact that some adults mistreated children proved that no adult was to be trusted with children. The fact that some clergy broke the moral code proved that all clergy were hypocrites and also that moral codes were spurious. And so on and so on.
As the father of a daughter only, and the grandfather of a granddaughter only, I won't pretend that I know about raising boys to be men. But I did have the experience of being so raised.
I am not rallying against the Ingalls' series, just suggesting it may not be as appealing to young guys as other books. I'm guessing there are several good male roll models in Little Women as well. I fondly remember the LHotP tv show as a kid and can understand why kids would like the books so much (also, there is some difference between solo reading, especially at an age where you are planting and nurturing an important habit, and having your Pa read you and your siblings a book outloud -- a great idea and practice by the way).
I have not read the Harry Potter books and am not suggesting they are classics. I have seen the movies though and of the many things I think of the character of Harry, a bald-faced liar is not one of them. The series is predominantly an adventure, and Harry, coming of age, is constantly working to separate good from bad and is doing so while adjusting to revelations that the truth of the world around him is more complex and dangerous than he might have thought as a younger child, not an easy task. Was Huck Finn also such an unfit liar? I seem to recall him getting into (or wriggling out of) a fair amount of trouble, mostly of his own making, conning other children, lying to teachers, rafting down the Mississippi, etc. Harry, to his credit, also struggles with accepting the increasing responsibility his talents give him and the duty that accompanies.
I can see the potential problem that magic could lead to when it is used in a story, especially if it is used as a surrogote heavenly or demonic power, however I think in the case of the Potter series, magic is part of the world they live in, not apart from it or super normal. And it is also as equally unreliable as the non magic parts of reality -- the kids are not "magically" always getting what they want and in many cases find themselves in trouble for their actions. Despite the fantasy and magic it presents to real children, the stories hand out real consequences for actions and in many ways could be more realistic than books like the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It would be difficult to make such distinctions if one had not seen any of the movies or read any of the books.
Ray,
Good to hear from you as always. It liked watching Daniel Boon run his trap lines on television too but I liked running my own before school much better. I think what I was saying is this period of our history didn't actually last that long and the Aristocrats who really knew that life or the timocrats who actually lived it, were few.
You certainly have the type down and know it when you see it or read about it :
"If a lot of those fellows were outlaws at one time or another, they were also brave and often chivalrous."
" I was always bookish and definitely no alpha male, but I learned unambiguously that men are supposed to be honest, loyal, brave, courteous, reverent--in a word, responsible"
"As the father of a daughter only, and the grandfather of a granddaughter only, I won't pretend that I know about raising boys to be men. But I did have the experience of being so raised."
Once you get down to plutocrats and democrats,there is not much appreciation for the things you describe above.This lack of appreciation has always been most peculiar to Yankees, although it has indeed spread South too. Mitt Romney may have heard of cowboys, his ancestors no doubt saw some or perhaps were Riders On the Purple Sage but today he is Yankee through and through and about as pitiful as an old cowboy can ever become. He is in a phrase, " all hat and no horse". Of course Yankees have always been more lucky than good, and he is lucky to have Obama as his opponent. We Americans have been mostly hatless for a long time now anyhow, so I am not picking on any party in particular.
But as Doc Holiday said with his last earthly words, " This is funny."
I don't think I can find the heart to call Pa Ingalls a loser. It takes me forever to cut down a tree and chop it up into firewood, and I've got a chainsaw. Pa would cut down trees and split logs like it was going out of style and all he had was an ax. When you consider all that he could do, from play the fiddle to make a rocking chair from scratch for his wife to custom fish traps, home-built houses, and putting fresh meat on the table - I may not be able to understand his insane wanderlust, nor can I really condone leaving the family alone in Indian Territory that one time, but Pa grabbed life by the horns and lived it, all without shirking his duty. Besides, it was not that long ago that I escaped from the Indian Territory of Alexandria to the relatively more civilized land south of the Quantico line, so I can relate to making unsound real estate location decisions.
I don't know if a Huck / Harry Potter comparison is fair. Huck is a likable fellow, but he's not the same kind of protagonist facing the same kind of "evil" as Harry is. Harry is clearly painted as a figure for boys to emulate whereas Huck strikes me as a figure boys can relate to while knowing that he's not always a model citizen (at least that's how I always saw him). And I don't deny that Harry has some good qualities. If a lie every now and then to get out of scrape was his only fault, then, like Tintin, I could forgive him as I think the total package outweighs the flaw, but with Harry the lies are only an icing on a morally relative cake. He constantly gives his word to professors that he will not do X so that he can turn around and then have to do X to save someone's life or some such business. He even cheats in the grand tournament in book 4. Rowling shapes these situations and never (or rarely ever - I confess that I gave up the chase after book 5 and only skimmed parts of the last book) makes Harry face the consequences of a bad moral decision. My guess is because she herself does not consider it a bad moral decision.
I'm glad someone brought up Narnia. I cannot recomend enough the audiobook series that features British actors reading the unabridged books. Michael York does the first one, Derek Jacobi does the Dawntreader . . . we listen to these on our long commute home from Mass on Sundays and the kids (and myself) have been enthralled. While I grant that the world and consequences of the books may be more removed from reality than something like Potter, the moral touchpoints are much more sound with characters being rewarded for showing virtue and suffering for giving in to vice. I appreciate the allegorical aspects much more as an adult, too, and use them, gingerly, as teachable moments with the older kids.
That and I have an incurable love for the Marsh Wiggle Puddleglum.
And, Robert, my thanks for the mention of Will James. I am not famliiar with his work, but my oldest is a big fan of cowboys. I will see if I can get a hold of a few of his books and take them out for a ride.
Perhaps some of the loss of manhood among the young has to do with the forced kowtowing to minority groups and with the destruction of all sense of ancestry. There are now no heroic forebears to aspire to.
Dr. Wilson,
I saw today where the club at Augusta National broke from their traditions and invited two distinguished women to join their ranks. Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey must certainly feel left out now that things have changed so much for the better down South. It's getting where the only minority that nobody feels a need to conserve is the old unreconstructed type who once formed their own private clubs and defended them as,... well, private clubs. I guess everything is part of the public sector these days.
I notice all the educational correctives that gentlemen have mentioned are fictional. What happened to Robert E. Lee and Charles Lindbergh and Audie Murphy? Or even Thomas Edison and Babe Ruth?
Our young have been deprived of their history and identity---deliberately, systematically, and with malice aforethought. We have to admit, however, that self-centered American "culture" is highly receptive to the attack. It used to be that even if a boy's father was missing or inadequate, he could still find real examples.
Dr. Wilson,
Respect for Robert E. Lee is alive and well with my 6-year old daughter. I wish you could see her eyes whenever his name is said. At the last homeschooling conference we went to, I said the children could each pick out a book, and, believe-it-or-not my daughter actually found a paper doll dress up book with Robert E. Lee and his family.
My boy is a big fan, as well. We have a few good kids books about Lee, and I'm looking forward to reading Henty's "With Lee in the Mountains" with them at some point in the near future.
I'm no historian, so the rest of my comments are what they are, but it seems to me that the professionals have spent a great deal of time tearing apart the historical figures of old. Just like modern tabloids, they do their best to try to find any fault and blow it up larger than life. If they can't find a fault, they just make one up. No one, really, seems safe from this trend. Public personalities, sports and movie stars and soldiers, can expect their tiniest misstep broadcast worldwide (there must be armies of vultures lined up for Tebow's first scandal, however small it might be - I think some have even put bounties on him to see if they can dig up dirt). Historical figures are suddenly discovered to have been gay or racist or cowards. Even the superheroes of old are destroyed, with good old Batman now a modern psychopath and Spider-Man being so incapable of dealing with the death of his good Aunt May that he sells his marriage to the devil to bring her back to life. If that's not unmanly, I don't know what is.
I'm of the opinion, much like the article suggests, that the Culture War is over. We lost. It's time for "Guerilla" tactics. Good families can be pockets of closed in resistance and to hades with the professional historians/journalists/teachers . . .etc.
That's a worthy observation, Dr. Wilson. The real-life heroes I had as a boy, even as early as the Fifties, were Wild West figures. At least, entertainers meant nothing to me and my peers. Actors were liked because of their roles, that's all; did we really think of Fess Parker rather than Davy Crockett? No way. And did any kid look to Elvis Presley as a hero? We just liked the sound of his voice (early on, he was a very playful singer, capable of changing tone-color on a dime: listen to "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Cry over You" or "Blue Moon of Kentucky") and that he was having fun. That
kids of that age nowadays are, I'm told, looking up to entertainers rather than enjoying what they do is, as we said in the Fifties, sick, just sick.
Going a little off the current thread, isn't part of the problem of educating boys the fact that there is no vision of what one is educating them for? By this I mean that there simply aren't very many manly jobs available, and the ones there are are considered "bad" (i.e. blue collar). For example, the vast majority of boys who go to college to get a degree hope to one day be some form of white collar, corporate or government weenie. Whether it's as a computer programmer, financial analyst, LEAN Six Sigma expert, or whatever - you go to a little building, sit in a little cardboard box, and stare at a little screen so that you can do work that often is not in any way significant (i.e. if you were not there, someone else would do it) and rarely allows room for decision making. In fact, many boys grow up so they can be men who work for women supervisors. Some might work for a wishy-washy, indecisive supervisor, male or female, that has no leadership skills whatsoever. The corporation or government entity doesn't really know you exist and any sense of personal belonging to the community is fabricated, often intentionally (I went through an elaborate and bizarre initiation ritual when I first started working for a private contractor, complete with "mythological" stories of corporate heroes of old). In this type of world, Wally from Dilbert becomes a role model, and that's not a healthy thing.
The few manly jobs that are left that aren't blue collar (and, for whatever reasons, blue collar = bad in our society) are ruined by other factors. Doctors now have to deal with having their honor and integrity removed by government mandated immorality. Lawyers have to try to survive in an environment that is toxic. Scientists are, in many cases, asked to renounce or at least completely hide any religious beliefs they might have. And now soldiers have to deal with women in combat or on submarines and as superior officers and, of course, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
So, even if my boy is enthralled with Custer from "They Died with Their Boots On" or even Audie Murphy - in the end I can't encourage him to join the Army.
It is, indeed, tough to become a man in today's world.
I agree with you about fictional characters vs historical figures, Dr. Wilson. Of course, that makes it easier for the modern mind to believe that old heroes were something else. As I recall, Boys Life magazine, which I read in my youth, was filled with stories of real American heroes. Are there any publications like that today?
I didn't know that alpha males were not readers. That's not my experience. I consider myself to be an alpha male (documented evidence can be provided on request), but I've always been a voracious reader.
My heroes, men who lived with my friends and me in that we became them in play, were Robert E. Lee, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Andrew Jackson and even Ol' Jean Lafitte. General Lee was the most problematic; we almost always worked him into our play, but when we played war - cowboys and Indians, Kentuckians and Red Coats, Texans and Mexicans - we never played "War Between the States" because no one wanted to be a Yankee. We once conspired to get some girls to play Yankees, but they turned us down. The other problem with General Lee was that we intuitively understood that none of us could ever be "him" in play. I suppose that intuitive understanding came from statements adults had made. My maternal grandmother, who led a very hard but quite happy life, said on more than one occasion "When I go on to Glory, I want to meet Jesus and Robert E. Lee." We are not only lacking historical heroes; we are lacking parents and grandparents who have historical heroes.
Mr. Cornell: I'm sure most of the respondents here have never heard of "Lean Six Sigma" but you certainly made my day!! Of all the corporate BS we had to put up with, that was the ultimate insult. These fools from Harvard Business School and Peter Drucker's progeny sold a pig in a poke to big corporations about how to solve the problems that they (HBS and Drucker) themselves had created. "Quality" under their watch became a process instead of a product and the process became the goal instead of the product. My God, but I laughed out loud at your comment. You nailed it!
I should add that the real men working in corporations enthralled by "LEAN Six Sigma" learned how to bypass the system. We made things happen the old way and paid lip service to the process. The "Alphas" (male and mostly female) who ran the show never knew better, but our supervisors sure knew who got the work done!
Mr. Cornell, do you know BOY'S BOOK OF ROBERT E. LEE by Stanly F. Horn?
Today's sports stars are hardly hero material,though adored and rewarded beyond reason. And many of the supposed heroes are not really. Does anyone truly think Colin Powell was a great general? But most are automatically ineligible for imitating his career.The pervasive phoniness must make the best young men alienated or cynically opportunist. Also, in most areas of endeavour today, including most business, rewards are not to producers and performers but to clever climbers of the bureaucratic ladder. So American society is functionally and spiritually leaderless. There is only one direction such a society can go, and it ain't up, or even forward.
Jim,
Where I work it's actually gotten worse. Lean Six Sigma is too stale. Now eveyrone goes around with a "black belt" in CPI - Continual Process Improvement. As someone who took a few karate classes in his time, it drives me nuts when someone says, "Yes, I'm a black belt." I will resist, until the bitter end, the addition of any meaningless letters to the end of my name, be they PMP, CPI, or whatever new fad comes next.
Dr. Wilson writes:
"The pervasive phoniness must make the best young men alienated or cynically opportunist. Also, in most areas of endeavour today, including most business, rewards are not to producers and performers but to clever climbers of the bureaucratic ladder. So American society is functionally and spiritually leaderless. There is only one direction such a society can go, and it ain't up, or even forward."
Westward Ho, Diogenes !! Quick to the Carolinas !!!!!! An honest man there still lurks in hiding.
John Allan Wyeth's book, on Nathan Bedford Forrest is a good read for 17 -- 25 yr old soldier types. (Louisiana State University Press) Or at least I always thought so. Robert E Lee was a full Southerner, and when I lived in Virginia I loved to study Lee and visit the places he lived and grew up on as well as the schools he founded and the country he fought to conserve . But having been born and raised in Oklahoma which is only half southern ( the other half is historically outlaw ) I must admit a deep admiration for Nathan Bedford Forrest and his type as well.
I've been following this site for months now, after being directed here by a Conservative political science teacher (I know, a real rarity) at my university, but this is my first time writing. There's a lot of truth in all of these comments, but while on the subject of literature for molding men, I'm surprised no one mentioned Lord of the Rings. After the Bible and Lewis' Mere Christianity, no other books have impacted my life in such a manner. Aragorn, Faramir, Gandalf, and countless other characters were duty bound, honorable men, and along with my Father and a few others, are first to come to my mind when pondering what it means to be a man.
I read only the first Harry Potter book in order to be able to answer questions. My conclusions were that it is, 1) Not a well told story, 2) Not intentionally harmful, but 3) an unending cliche that encourages children to feel special and despise ordinary people and to contemn the authority of adults. On balance, my advice has been to permit children to read it if they really want to but not to take them to the films or bring the book into the house. Compared with Edward Eager's magic books--Half Magic etc., the Potter books are thin gruel.
I haven't reread all the comments so my suggestions may be redundant. Perhaps the best-crafted piece of fiction in the English language is Treasure Island and Kidnapped is second only to Treasure Island. Jim Hawkins is a daredevil, it is true, but all the principal male characters--there's only one female and she's a fine mother and brave woman--display considerable if differing virtues. The squire is a bit of a blowhard, the captain a martinet, Dr. Livesy somewhat moralizing, but each is a good man. Silver is perhaps the finest villain in our literature, brave, noble but entirely ruthless. What a book..
I second the recommendation of Tolkien, as I feel sure most of our readers would, though Lord of the Rings is better read from 12-20 than at the age of 8. Bret Harte and Kipling are good, and I warmly recommend our neighbor to the north, Stirling North--Rascal is a magnificent treatment of what happens to a man and his son when the woman of their life is removed. Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories are meant to be funny and still are. I've been reading them since I was about 11 and they are funnnier now that I am old. At some point every literate English speaker should read George Borrow's Romany Rye and Lavengro. I read them at least three times in my childhood and teens and still, despite Borrow's anti-Catholic mania, enjoy them.
(Long John) Silver is perhaps the finest villain in our literature, brave, noble but entirely ruthless. What a book..
Yes indeed and probably because both Long John Silver and Robert Louis Stevenson desired the same requiem :
Under the wide and starry sky,
Dig the grave and let me lie.
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.
This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Stevenson's Treasure Island, Kipling's Captains Courageous, Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The list brings back so many wonderful memories of my childhood, it is impossible for me to read it without smiling. I would submit Rawls' Where the Red Fern Grows for consideration as well. Having grown up in the Ozarks, it is the one book I remember to have piqued the interest of even the most book-averse of my classmates.
OK, I'll go along with recommending Tolkien, though the only one of his books I like is The Hobbit, which is especially suitable for 9-to-12-year-olds, I should think. Bilbo is a much more three-dimensional character than Frodo (which was apparent in the first of the three Lord of the Rings movies and one reason why, once he'd left the scene, it was all downhill by my lights). Behind the success of that book lie George Macdonald's superb books about the miner-boy Curdy; viz., The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdy, which I remember my daughter being utterly enthralled by when I read them to her, even though they have a--courageous, kind, smart, and finely humble--boy as their main character.
Dr. Fleming's endorsement of Treasure Island I can't second too heartily. When I finally read it as a grandpa, I had the strongest case of feeling self-robbed I've ever had. Whyever did I wait so long to read it? After Treasure Island, I recommend Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner, whose 15-year-old hero is almost as vivid as Jim Hawkins (caveat emptor: DON'T bother with the movie version; there can't be a worse betrayal of a novel in all of film history). I remember enjoying the heck out of King Solomon's Mines and The Prisoner of Zenda when I was about 13, though I'd begun reading adult books by then, too. I don't know when I started reading H. G. Wells's science fiction novels, but there's no finer introduction to antiprogressivism; isn't it downright weird that he made a 180 when he became a socialist--and quit writing science fiction! The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, and The Invisible Man are especially good, though Wells's early, jaundiced view of technology is always bracing--and boys love the stories. Another terrific, boy-friendly sf tale is The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, who made a very enticing, offbeat "role model" in the character of Prof. Challenger; if a boy ever told me he wanted to be just life Challenger, I'd take it as an indication that he was going to be alright. Steinbeck grabs a lot of early adolescent boys; my elder nephew was one. Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and The Grapes of Wrath all show what being a real man entails, and again, the stories are very grabby. I should add that all three of the Steinbeck were made into excellent movies in the late '30s and '40s. The 1935 film of The Invisible Man couldn't be better, though the films of other Wells sf novels range from uninspired to boring. Finally, I read Lord of the Flies when I was about 14, and its presentation of original sin chastened my then and remains with me now. Peter Brook's 1963 film of it I remember as being quite powerful, too.
The Scarlet Letter is probably my single favorite novel of all time, though it is impossible to understand if you are under the age of 20 and/or do not have a good understanding of the development Anglo-American religious culture.
Dr. Wilson - thank you for the recommendation. I will pick up Horn's book shortly. The ones we have are really for the much younger kids, and my children are growing quickly. Their Mom just finished reading Treasure Island to them, and they very much share Dr. Fleming's opinion of the book.
I tried the Hobbit, but Tolkien's style was just a little too thick for them, although they did like the songs which, may Tolkien forgive me, I tried to sing. I think in a year or two they'll be ready.
But Amen to the sentiment that the Lord of the Rings movies are awful. I've had this argument with several folks, and the ground I cannot concede is that while Mr. Jackson may have done a decent job of portraying evil he completely muffed the good. Many of those traits that made Aragorn and crew so manly were gone, replaced with violence and attitude. The scene (only in the "extended" cut of the movie) featuring the Mouth of Sauron is a perfect example. Read it in the book, then watch the clip from the movie. You go from Aragorn, being a virtuous but angry man bringing fear into the heart of the wicked one to Aragorn, being an impetuous thug, losing his temper and chop off the head of someone under a flag of parley.
The sad news is that Jackson not only conned his way into getting to make movies to ruin the Hobbit (hooray for more Elves pretending to be Vulcans), he even convinced them to let him make it into a Trilogy. The good news is that the estate of Tolkien does not like any of his movies and refuses to give him the rights to the Silmarillion (which I have not read).
I'm a fan of the H.G. Wells sci-fi, but I didn't read it until much older. Actually, I didn't read much until I was older, at least not much worth mentioning. I wasted much youth with comic books, Mad Magazine, tv shows, and, alas, even novelizations of tv shows. The comments here have given me much to glean for my own children. I am indebted to all.
Speaking of Nathan Bedford Forrest, I made the mistake of subscribing to the Oxford American to see what it is like. The first issue contained an article (The Young Blood of the South) by Hal Crowther critical of our futile efforts in the Middle East, but he first badmouths Forrest and also makes some derogatory comments about Lee and Jackson. That issue also introduced a new columnist, Jesmyn Ward, who, in her first contribution (Against All Good Sense), writes:. . .reading about the murder of Trayvon Martin and his killer's attempted exoneration by Sanford police in Florida enrages me. (Aparently, thoughtful writing is not valued by the editors.) Then there is a short story about fornicating lovers by Addie Citchens. All this before a short story by Wendell Berry. (What's he doing with these turkeys?) To add insult to injury, the second issue that they sent me was the same as the first!! The cover proudly proclaims: Best of the South 2012.
All this before a short story by Wendell Berry. (What's he doing with these turkeys?)
Are you joking? Wendell Berry sold out pretty darn thoroughly to modern 'respectability' just recently. See his comments on marriage.
Mr. Moses: How about a citation to back up your saying that Wendell Berry "sold out"?
I read that Wendell Berry recently came out in support of gay marriage.
Andrew Van Sant : "but he first badmouths Forrest and also makes some derogatory comments about Lee and Jackson. "
Andrew,
I am sure you know but this is what is called "objectivity" today. It is what I was referring to in Dana Millbanks recent " defense " of James Dobson and Focus on the Family being listed as a hate group. ( I prefer my real enemy with pen and paper engaged in character assasination than the supposed friend coming to my assistance with back handed calumny. It is easier to love the one than the other.) It is quite popular today before one introduces his close friends in public to say something such as " I don't agree with everything he says, but ...." This is called " establishing credibility" and pertains almost always to sophistry; it is a kind of perverted friendship, demonstrates a diminshed capacity for admiration and has nothing to do whatsoever with love. It is a form of manners acquired and probably even required when one is surrounded by diversity instead of neighbors.
I wouldn't trust any writers defending the South today unless they were recommended to me by Clyde Wilson or Tom Fleming, or they are already buried down South and their family memorial is under attack for removal or been desecrated by these roving gangs of vandals posing as party hacks.
Mr. Olson, here is the controversial interview with Wendell Berry: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/312500/jeremiah-everyone-john-j-miller
Wendell Berry, one of the great men of our day, cannot have "sold out," because he has never been a member of whatever you think he has sold out from. He is the same as he has always been and transcends current political categories.
I note that the literature recommended is nearly all British, with just a little bit of American literature and even less American history. What does this tell us?
Dr. WIlson: "the literature recommended is nearly all British...What does this tell us?"
So many of the stories I grew up with are no longer available or considered foolish and hateful etc. ... My Father grew so weary of reading Uncle Remus stories to me in the evenings, he would beg my mother to hide the book. Also fairy tales are considered irrational these days, like Santa Nicholas and the Incarnation or being a Mother when you could be famous, rich or photographed ...etc.
I was disappointed that Chronicles did not celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, since she was such an icon for the "greatest generation" of Americans. Here is a poem written about her called The Fantasy Theater
Whenas in pink pajamas went
the Princess of all Peppermint,
then, then with cinematic stare,
in the darkened Frigidaire,
we dreamed as she did come and go
that we were Joe DiMaggio,
watching her turn North or South,
with that slighly opened mouth
(under dappled damask, dimple)
Goddess excellently ample,
cherry ravishingly ripe
in the ice cream of our night----
and the disconcerting twiches
in our washed blue-denim britches!
Now we have grown old and learned
about the wages that she earned -----
and everyone who climbs
the slippery ladder of the times.
When lovely lady's folly falls
among the intellectuals
then leads the unkindly light that kills
to the dark satanic pills,
Beauty dying like the moths
in that Disneyland of Death's,
that john, though some have called him mighty:
Nightie, nightie, Aphrodite.