Men Adrift
Cynthia Fuchs Epstein
The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi, William Morrow & Co., 1999 662 pp. $27.50
Scores of men, their wives and partners, friends and kin, and the sharks that have exploited them come alive through Faludi’s keen reporting. The men she writes about are presented as prototypes of the generation of baby-boomer men who have experienced layoffs, broken promises of upard mobility, the Vietnam War, meaningless work, and new definitions of “what it means to be a man” in contemporary America. A further “cause” of their plight, she writes, is the emphasis on celebrity in American culture. The narratives in Faludi’s book are woven through with themes of loss and the substitution of superficial values for the “real” values of meaningful work.
Faludi asserts that many men today feel “shipwrecked” in a service economy, but that this is only the start of their troubles. Victims of downsizing and de-skilling, they no longer play breadwinner roles in their families and develop difficulties in their marriages. In some cases, wives they once supported now support them.
Through this book she hopes to make men conscious of their condition and to encourage them to mobilize in ways approximating the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s. This is a commendable task, but it is doubtful whether men will either accept its premises or identify with the individuals Faludi refers to in making her case.
(Adapted from https://www.dissentmagazine.org)
De acordo com o texto,