Crispin’s byline has long made me sit up straighter ... All over the place, riffing bitterly on heteropessimism, consumerism, the military, parasocial paternity and paleo diets ... Crispin is clearly sympathetic to men unmoored by changing norms and scornful of those who would dismiss the whole sex as toxic. Her tone is free-associative, irritable and rat-a-tat. Her book is a gas, in a dark-cloud-moving-quickly kind of way. Sometimes the reader feels swirled and dizzy.
Surprisingly acute and intelligent ... Crispin suggests that the problem with white men is a problem of national identity, an inability to let go of the myth of America as the greatest nation of all time.
The author’s preoccupation with Douglas’ portrayals often distracts from rather than reinforces her argument, which can itself be winding and overgeneralized. Nevertheless, Crispin’s adept cultural synthesis is delivered with amusing snark and an undertone of increasing anxiety, pontifical concern, and moral urgency designed to confront the current moment. A fiery synopsis of a formative period for American masculinity.
