From the author of Reality Hunger comes an honest, explicit look at one man's marriage and the view it affords for examining relationships between men and women across our culture.
... a blistering and brilliant quintet of reportage and observations from the forefront of the five parts of our lives suggested by its subtitle. It's not explicitly political in the sense that any leaders are mentioned. We know the names of leaders who have fallen on the sharp swords of temptations offered by sexual and political indiscretions, and the seduction of power to abuse it to one's own sexual gratification, and their narratives stay with us as we read these essays ... Shields knows that his readers aren't looking for socio-political commentary so much as creative non-fiction essays that are distinctly in his voice. He's a master deconstructionist, a visceral confessionalist ... While many of his past titles have flirted with the five themes in The Trouble With Men, never has it seemed so intense and concentrated. The confessional explosions that play themselves out in this book are equal parts terrifying, edifying, and beautifully troubling ... a difficult book to embrace, a problematic book to pin down, but that's the point. Shields might be a literary boxer, jabbing at us as we try to spar with him, a tender shot to the kidney or a harsh connection to the jaw, but at times he's also a master patchwork quilt artist ... Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power are the eternal quintet that has burdened and uplifted us, and in the masterful hands of David Shields they're illuminated in a dangerous, brilliant, eternal light.
Despite the broad diagnosis promised by the title, the focus is narrow, personal — and frank. Shields breaks the sound barrier for indiscretion ... In the past, I found Shields’s project occasionally impressive and more often exasperating. He’s fatally attracted to the manifesto and strident pronouncements on life and literature. But in this latest work, some of his masks and bombast fall away. He is wry and self-deprecating ... For the first time, this writer becomes good company — thankfully, for we have to travel a long way with him, deep into the labyrinth of his past ... The Trouble With Men is unabashedly queasy. Reading about Shields’s lust for Pippa Middleton ranks among the more depressing literary experiences of my life. But it’s curious that he doesn’t reckon more with what it means to expose himself (and his wife) so openly ... I often found this book beguiling, and moving. There is always the temptation, in writing about sex, to sound superior, arch, immune to its power. But Shields writes from a place of genuine curiosity and confusion. He is ridiculous and brave, he never conflates sincerity with genuine candor, and he poses the kinds of questions that only ever bring trouble...
By linking his thoughts and predilections with those of others, Shields offers the reader proof that other men feel as he does, want what he wants ... This interlinking takes getting used to, but the payoff can be huge when it’s the poignant examples from Shields’s own life ... By book’s end, we realize that Shields himself is a collage, coming to us in bits and pieces, slipping in and out of the words of others, offering up questions but few answers, forcing us to read between the lines. Many men operate this way, elusive, mute, masked. But Shields wants to be unmasked, to be real even if that means appearing weak or ugly.
