Stumbling back to Orthodoxy

The Year in (A Book) Review

Like most people, I am not a book critic, but also like most people, this doesn’t generally stop me from expounding on what sort of things I like to read. To actually be a good book critic, it seems to me, requires being (a) generally well-grounded in a reading of the classics, and, additionally, to (b) be the sort of person that reads new books within a reasonable time period of when they come out, as this generally results in an opportunity to write reviews of books that the general population is more likely to actually read. I think we can all agree that there’s a larger market, in any context outside of an English class, for reviews of Harry Potter and the Home Equity Loan, or whatever Rowling’s writing now, than there are for master’s theses that analyze themes in King Lear.

So far, I don’t think that I really do either (a) or (b) well enough to take myself seriously as a book critic; consequently, I can’t really expect expect anyone else to, either. Regardless, these sorts of limitations aren’t going to keep me from churning out some sort of completely subjective list of my favorite books that I have run across this year, though very few of them are going to be classics or recently released best-sellers.

This is somewhat intentional: if nothing in life (such as, for example, your literature professor in college) has convinced you to read Crime and Punishment, for example, odds are poor that one badly edited article on this blog is going to make any difference in convincing you to do so. (However, just in case it does: please go read Crime and Punishment.) If you’re trying to figure out what classics that you should read, there are better resources than me to find a list of the classics, virtually all of them written by people who fit more easily into the previously mentioned category (a) than I do. Furthermore, I’m still busy enough reading classics (not to mention the books that were recent when I bought them but are still sitting, unread, on my shelf) that I can’t exactly be depended on to review anything that came out recently enough for me to write a review about anything at the same time that you’d see it reviewed in the New Yorker, for example, not that they’re exactly waiting for my contributions, anyway.

One of the enjoyable things about putting together a list of books that I like is that exempts me from one of the more unpleasant jobs of criticism, and that is attempting to explain to people why something they enjoy is not very good. (Alas, as the rise of democratic ways of thinking about everything seems to render even serious criticism irrelevant anyway, this doesn’t really seem to accomplish much good, even from professional critics: Twilight, last time I checked, is still not getting very good reviews, and this seems to make no difference to the people that continue to pay money to see or read it.) Certainly, pointing out flaws of a particular book can be a valuable exercise in that it helps those who are actively trying to improve their taste and judgment by giving them a different perspective to consider, but it’s far more likely to just make them mad. Even my limited experience seems to suggest that a better way to help people judge between good literature and bad literature is to encourage them to read good literature carefully. The most important role of a critic, I suspect, isn’t to explain why bad literature is bad, but to explain why good literature (or music, or whatever is being critiqued) is good, what makes it appealing, and why it was enjoyable to read. (Or, perhaps, why it should have been enjoyable to read, in the entirely likely event that everyone’s tastes are still a work in progress.)

With that in mind, here are my favorite books that I ran across over this last year, and a brief description of why I enjoyed them. We’ll start with fiction:

*****

Drew Magary, The Postmortal. Magary is a familiar name for readers of Deadspin (and a couple of other websites that report sports news), but most of the columns that he’s written that I’ve run across have been a bit heavy on the poop jokes, off-color observations on the NFL, and columns that you would, under no circumstances, want to read with your mother. If that’s the impression that you’ve gotten of Magary so far – and, if you are, you’re not alone – you probably aren’t interested in a novel you’re thinking is likely to be 360 pages of poop jokes and juvenile humor. Fortunately, The Postmortal is a departure from Magary’s typical fare.

The Postmortal is the story of society’s discovery of the cure for aging (and, later, disease) as told from the perspective of John Farrell. This sort of development, as you can probably suspect, does not go well, and by the end of the book Farrell is living in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world that’s vaguely reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. If anything, Magary’s take on future dystopian society is more terrifying than McCarthy’s, as it shows a plausible way of society’s journey to get there.

This is not a happy book, and Farrell is not, by the end of it, a happy person, but it makes this list because of its observations about the way people are capable of treating each other, and what sort of catastrophes that can develop if we all get what we think we want. It’s also in the minority of few science fiction novels that I’ve run across in that it portrays certain aspects of technology as something that society would be better off without having. This is, I suspect, rather unusual: science fiction, by its nature, is generally optimistic, and one of the assumptions that most science fiction authors make (along with the rest of our society) is that technology is, in nearly all circumstances, a good thing, and any unpleasant side effects of an existing technology are solvable problems for whatever technology is coming next.

Whether or not future technology will cure the problems that the current technology causes is, of course, at the cornerstone of the current debate about climate change. (See, for example, Lomborg’s arguments in Cool It! explaining why climate change, while a serious problem, isn’t a problem that we need to deal with now.) Excepting debates about climate change, though, faith in technology may still be the current zeitgeist – in which case Magary is to be commended for taking a shot at the prevailing wisdom – or the current zeitgeist may in the process of changing, in which case Magary has his ear closer to the ground than the rest of us do. In either case, it’s a science fiction novel that doesn’t feel much like any other science fiction novel I’ve run across.

*****

Graham Greene, The End of the Affair. I’ve only just started reading Graham Greene’s novels this year, and The End of the Affair was the most recent one that I’ve read. It’s also been the one that I’ve enjoyed the most, but I’m not entirely sure that’s because it’s the best one, or if it’s because it took me a few novels to warm up to Greene’s writing.

Greene was a British novelist (among other things) that happened to be Catholic, and several of his novels deal with explicitly Catholic themes. The End of the Affair is the last of these. The main character – Bendrix – is loosely based on Greene himself, and Bendrix is having an affair with Sarah, the wife of Henry Miles, who is an acquaintance of Bendrix’s. Bendrix is nearly killed when a bomb hits his apartment, and Sarah breaks off the affair without any sort of explanation. Sarah eventually converts to Catholicism, and the contrast between her ways of thinking about the end of the affair as opposed to how Bendrix feels about it makes for the most interesting part of the book.

Greene preferred to be thought of as a novelist who happened to be Catholic, and not a Catholic novelist, and it becomes more clear why after reading something like The End of the Affair. His novels are in no way propaganda for the church, and offended some Catholics. (Members of the Vatican, at one point attempted to censure Greene, before being (incredibly) overridden by Pope Paul VI.

Greene’s novels, in general, seem to involve less action and more internal thought processes than what the average American is likely to want to read. If The End of the Affair sounds tedious, give Greene’s antiwar novel The Quiet American a try before plunging into this one.

*****

Shusaku Endo, Silence. I’ve been meaning to read this for awhile, now, mainly on the recommendation of some family members, but when I picked it up for the first time, there was a reference on the back cover to Endo as “the Japanese Graham Green,” so I took a detour into Green’s novels before starting Endo’s. This may have been worthwhile for other reasons (see the review above), but the detour only really helped me understand the quote on the back of the book. It’s not necessary for understanding Endo’s work: it stands on its own.

Like Green, however, Endo is an introspective Catholic novelist whose works tend towards the darker side of things. Silence, while fictional, is set in a very definite historical time: the end of what is now known as Japan’s Christian century – when the church was forced underground by persecution – and one of the characters (Ferreira) is based on an actual historical figure.

Most of the novel is in the form of letters from Sebastian Rodrigues, who is a Portuguese priest. Rodrigues has learned that Ferreira – one of his former professors and mentors – has renounced his faith while a missionary to Japan. Rodrigues, unable to believe that he would not choose to be martyred, travels to Japan to investigate. He is eventually betrayed to the hostile Japanese authorities by a man he has attempted to befriend, and confronted with a horrible moral choice.

Endo doesn’t finish his books with the happy ending that is so treasured by American readers, but given how he’s telling this story, there’s not really a happy resolution that exists. Endo does not write to show that God will eliminate suffering – a dubious (at best) position that seems so treasured by advocates of prosperity theology – but, as William Cavanaugh noted in his review of Silence, is much more concerned with showing how God, though he may be silent, suffers with us.

*****

And one more novel, this one just for fun:

Charles Portis, True Grit. Given the fame of both movies that bear the same name, the book is a relative unknown. Like most people, I suspect, I didn’t even realize that the movie was based on a book until I sat through the credits of the 2010 remake. When finally was able to procure a copy, I was surprised to find that what I had assumed was quirky dialogue from the Coen brothers was actually not original with them: the style of the dialogue is all Portis, and a pretty high percentage of the memorable lines from the movie have been lifted almost directly from the novel.

The book, like the movie, is recounted from the perspective of Matty Ross, who is recounting the story years after the events take place. In summary: Matty’s father has been murdered, and she hires a U.S. Marshal to apprehend the killer, and the majority of the book is taken up with the resulting adventures. Portis is able to relay this all using a unique balance between a realistic and satirical western – it strikes me as a western that is aware of the genre, if that makes any sense.

Matty makes for an enjoyable and quirky narrator, and the book – like the movie – is genuinely funny. Portis is a master of dialogue, and the humor comes not only front he situations his characters find themselves in, but also the idiosyncrasies of his characters: Matty is the personification of the stereotypical Protestant work ethic with some extra determination (or, as Portis would probably put it, “grit”) on the side, wrapped up in much younger package than anyone would expect. Cogburn is an overweight, one-eyed, hard-drinking Marshal (Jeff Bridges’s portrayal of him is more true to the book than John Wayne’s), and LeBeouf is a Texan in just about every sense of the word.

Portis, it’s been pointed out by multiple commentators, has a lot in common with Cormac McCarthy (think All the Pretty Horses, though, not The Road), and could have more in common with him if he wasn’t too busy being funny. The result, though, is a joy to read.

True Grit is not the only one his five novels to be made into a movie – in 1970, Norwood made it to the big screen, as well. After reading True Grit, I suspect that any one of his novels are probably worth a read.

*****

Continuing onto the non-fiction:

Wilfrid Sheed, The House that George Built. The majority of my favorite books, I’ve noticed, are ones that I’ve had recommended to me as opposed to ones that I’ve just found wandering around a bookstore, and The House that George Built falls into the category of those that someone had to tell me to read. Not only was this one recommended to me by another bibliophile, but in this particular case, it was recommended by someone that was also a music lover, and given both the quality of Sheed’s writing and the obvious love he has for his topic, this isn’t a big surprise.

If the Golden Age of American Song could have been an actual individual, Sheed would have written his (her?) biography. This wasn’t the case, so Sheed settles for brief biographies of most of the major players, and more importantly, perhaps, discussions of their work. The “George” in the title, of course, refers to George Gershwin, and that’s more or less where the book starts. Sheed – via the songwriters and musicians he’s writing about – meanders out from the George’s songs to Broadway, and from there to California, where less famous songwriters were scoring films.

Reading Sheed’s writing, as Garrison Keillor points out in his review of the book, is the literary equivalent of jazz. There are riffs on related topics, and fascinating rabbit trails that are reminiscent (at least to me) of a slightly more in-control version of David Foster Wallace. For those of us – like me – whose knowledge about this era of American music was somewhat dim, this is an ideal place to start. If you don’t want to go investigate the music that Sheed writes about after reading this, it’s probably worth checking to make sure you still have a pulse.

*****

Joseph Ellis, Founding Brothers. I’ve run across a couple of great biographies of some of the founding fathers over the last year – McCullough’s John Adams is every bit as good as you’d expect, as is Hitchens’s much shorter (but perhaps even more beautifully written) biography of Thomas Jefferson. The problem with any singular biography of any of the founding fathers, though, is that their lives are so closely intertwined that their actions, motivations, and lives in general make little to no sense if analyzed in isolation: reading about only one in an attempt to gain a perspective on the American revolution is a bit like trying to appreciate Beethoven Symphonies by listening only to the violin parts. Clearly, there’s much that can be learned from the perspective of one player, but however rich the perspective from that point of view, there are limits to what can be concluded about the overall achievement.

Ellis’s book is the best remedy to this conundrum that I’ve found so far: it’s a summary of the high points of the revolution, with autobiographical background given to whichever founding fathers were involved with the high point that he describes. Covering as many individuals as he does leads to necessarily brief biographical sketches, but I think the book functions beautifully as something designed to whet the readers’ appetite for exploring, in more detail, the lives of the founding fathers. I can’t help but suspect that Ellis probably sees this book in the same light.

This may not be the best introduction to the American Revolution that I’ve seen (for that I’d have to give the nod to McCullough’s less choppy but slightly longer 1776), but it is the best introduction that I’ve found to the lives of its participants.

*****

Seth Lipsky, The Citizen’s Constitution. Most Americans seem to agree that the Constitution is, to a certain extent, the Bible of political dialogue in the United States, in the sense that it’s supposed to be the basis of the system it establishes. (Unfortunately, it also resembles the Bible in other ways, namely, that everyone knows about it, is expected to have read it, but the average citizen’s knowledge of its contents is generally lacking.) Lipsky’s book is a great way to remedy this: it’s an annotated guide to the constitution that provides enough historical background to put it in context, and, as a result, make it more meaningful than just reading the original document. As most of us that have tried to read the actual text of the Constitution can attest, it’s not exactly a page-turner, and knowing the historical background helps to answer questions about why a particular part is in there or why it’s phrased the way it is. Lipsky covers both the historical background for why it was written the way it was, and also gives a history of how the law has been applied since then, primarily by discussing the major court cases that reference specific parts of the constitution.

This is, alas, probably the least exciting book on this list, and of all the books here, probably took me the longest to read. That shouldn’t be seen as a strike against it – there’s no way to make this material like this read like a Tom Clancy thriller, and by no means to I mean to imply that it’s poorly written. Lipsky’s book is about the only way you’ll find a copy of the Constitution that’s not either (a) just the actual text, or (b) a multi-volume saga that you’re likely to want to read all the way through only if you are in the process of submitting job applications to the Supreme Court. Not only is this book important because it’s well-researched and nicely written, but it’s also important because there doesn’t seem to be any other book that covers this topic that’s written for a similar audience.

This is also probably the only book on this list that you should keep around your house even if you have no intention of reading it cover to cover: the way the book is organized makes it easy to go look up a specific part of the constitution or any of the amendments to it. All the amendments are included, and they’re all annotated, as well.

*****

Anne Heller, Ayn Rand and the World She Made. Reading Heller’s book was part of a larger pile of books by and about Ayn Rand that I read over the last year as an effort to become more familiar with objectivism. Heller’s book was the only one from that pile to make this list – it’s the best of the books I read about Rand, and is a nice balance of being both a biography of Rand’s life and a summary (and, to an extent, critique) of her philosophy.

Objectivism has been in the news more recently in the last few years than it’s been for awhile, and Heller’s book is one of two new biographies of Rand that’s been released recently, the other being Jennifer Burns’s Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Heller and Burns follows a similar pattern, but Burns more interested in what sort of impact objectivism has had (and is still having) on American political dialogue.

Burns sees Rand’s philosophy as a gateway drug, as she puts it, to the American conservative movement, which as far as I can tell is an observation that will annoy virtually all objectivists and a pretty large percentage of thoughtful conservatives, in addition. Burns may be onto something, though, as “I am John Galt” signs seem to be a pretty common occurrence at anything related to the Tea Party, not to mention the Tea Party’s willingness to plug the recently released movie version of Atlas Shrugged. For a political movement that purports to encompass mainly religious conservatives, this is something of a surprise. A movement that tries to claim, as its philosophical basis, both Rand’s atheistic objectivism and conservative evangelicalism is going to be, at the very least, interesting to watch. My own suspicion that the inability of anyone to reconcile these diametrically opposed philosophies is at least partly responsible for the seemingly schizophrenic intellectual basis for the Tea Party movement, to the extent that it has any intellectual basis exists at all.

In any case, Heller is a capable biographer, and the book doesn’t lack for detail. Nevertheless, Heller is not a philosopher, and a word of caution is in order: Rand is an original enough thinker that it’s worth reading at least one of her novels to listen to her explanation of objectivism. Her two big novels are The Fountainhead and her magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. Of the two, I would recommend Atlas Shrugged, though if you’re concerned about your ability to plow a 1000+ page novel, you may want to opt for Fountainhead if for no other reason than it’s somewhat shorter.

Atlas Shrugged stands out for a few reasons: first, it contains Rand’s clearest presentation of what objectivism is outside of her philosophy books. There are lessons imparted in the narrative and characters arguing with each other, but the most detailed explanation comes in the form of a lengthy speech given by John Galt, one of the heroes of the novel. (Galt’s speech, by itself, is worth a read and can stand apart from the rest of the novel with only cursory background information.) Additionally, Rand’s predictions about American society in Atlas Shrugged seem almost prescient given the events of the last few years: the Occupy Wall Street protests, for example, seem like they could be a scene right out of the book, as does recent “spread the wealth around” political rhetoric. Finally, there’s a (widely panned, admittedly) movie version of Atlas Shrugged that’s been made recently, so there’s always the option of trying to absorb the lessons of the book via a different medium. So far, Part 1 of what was originally planned to be a trilogy has been released. There’s some doubt as to whether or not Parts 2 and 3 will be made due to the fact that Part 1 did not turn a profit.

Pondering the irony of this seems as good a place as any to end our discussion of Anne Heller and Ayn Rand, and move onto the next book.

*****

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope. This is the second book of a trilogy that N.T. Wright started writing in 2006. The first book – Simply Christian – has largely been seen as something that fills the same role for our generation that Mere Christianity (or perhaps Stott’s Basic Christianity) did for previous generations. Where Lewis and Stott took an approach to explaining Christianity that seemed to be mostly propositional, Wright is willing to be more narrative-driven: there is still systematic theology, here, but the overall picture of the book is written more for people who would find themselves more at home in narrative theology: Wright is not a postmodernist, clearly, but he’s aware that he’s writing in a postmodern era, and consequently he writes for people whose thought has been steeped in postmodernism.

I’m not exactly the the target audience for a book whose aim is to introduce Christianity, but even considering that, Simply Christian didn’t strike me as a particularly remarkable book. Lewis’s and Stott’s introductions to Christianity may not be as sensitive to the preferences of our current generation, but they’re both short enough to be manageable. Simply Christian, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have a clear target audience: it seems to me that anyone that makes it all the way through this book probably has already bought into what Wright is trying to explain.

If you’re already moderately familiar with the basics of theology, I’d recommend skipping to the second and third books of the trilogy, where Wright really hits his stride. Surprised by Hope is the clearest attempt that I have seen to show how the way we think about theology can impact the way we live. Specifically, Wright shows how eschatology impacts how we think about the church, Wright’s way of thinking about eschatology is a welcome change from the lifeboat mentality that seems to result from the premillennialism that is so prominent in evangelical churches.

The third book in the trilogy: After You Believe is just as good, and is primarily on how Christianity should transform our character. Wright sees Jesus’s claim to be able to change hearts as not only the fulfillment of the Jewish religion, but also the fulfillment of the quest for virtue that has long existed outside of purely Judeo-Christian circles. (Those who covered Plato’s Meno in their philosophy classes will recognize Wright’s inclusion of the concept of arete.) This is a fascinating take on the development of character, and I’d like to know how much Wright’s thinking about sanctification influenced by the new perspective on Paul. Alas, I didn’t get to those books this year, so this answer will have to wait for another time.

*****

Gibson, Green, Pattison, Beyond the Bible. A bit of background: In 2003, Don Miller arrived onto the Christian literature scene with the publication of Blue Like Jazz, a collection of semi-autobiographical essays that ended up, due mainly to word-of-mouth, being an unexpected best-seller. (It’s currently being made into a movie that will be released sometime this coming spring.) Miller has stayed pretty busy since then: he’s continued to write books, he has been involved in starting a mentoring project for children with absent fathers, he is currently serving on Obama’s Task Force on Fatherhood, and he started an online magazine called the Burnside Writer’s Collective. While the BWC has been an interesting magazine/blog in its own right, it’s also interesting in that several of the people involved with it have gone on to publish books, and this is where, as far as I’ve been able to tell, Beyond the Bible has at least some of its roots.

Beyond the Bible is a collection of short, easy-to-digest essays that are reviews of 100 books that, as the authors put it, “have, should, or will create Christian culture,” which is, admittedly, a pretty flexible target, and that’s part of the joy of this book. Some items make the list because they should influence evangelical culture more than they have: works of John Piper and Dallas Willard compose this part of the list. Other works make the list because they have influenced evangelical culture so heavily (even if we all wish that they hadn’t) that it’s difficult to understand evangelicals without having been exposed to them. (The Left Behind books and The Shack come to mind.) Some of the works the authors cite fall somewhere in between.

Happily, the authors are not of the school of thought that Christians should only read books that are written for the evangelical subculture: in order to be able to engage society, there has to be some shared culture, and the list of books function not only as a means for the Christian subculture to understand itself, but for those in it to understand what the outside looks like, too. Additionally, there are profound truths to be found outside of the doors of the church. Abraham Kupyer famously argued that all truth is God’s truth, and if that’s true, Christians shouldn’t have any hesitation about embracing truth wherever it is found.

In any book like this, of course, no two people will pick the exact same books, though I was pleased to find how frequently we agreed on the authors: N.T. Wright deserves a place, but I think I would have picked Surprised by Hope over Simply Christian. C.S. Lewis deserves both his spots (no quibble at all with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, but I would have picked Mere Christianity (or maybe Miracles) over A Grief Observed, though the essay on A Grief Observed is one of the best in the book. I wish there had been room to include contributions from Jim Wallis (God’s Politics, perhaps), or something from Phillip E. Johnson, who still seems to be in the intellectual godfather of the intelligent design movement.

These are minor quibbles. If you’re looking for a guide to reading, or for insightful comments on books that you’ve already read, this should be in your library.

*****

Kay Hymowitz, Manning Up. I first ran into Hymowitz’s writing back in 2008 or so, when someone sent me a link to her column Love in the Time of Darwinism, and ever since then, I’ve been a fan of her books and her columns, which seem to be showing up with increasing regularity in the neoconservative journal Commentary, to which I subscribe. Manning Up, Hymowitz’s latest offering, is about how the rise of women has resulted in a society that has required men to be less mature, and – unsurprisingly, perhaps – men have responded by not being as mature.

This isn’t, it’s worth pointing out, the first book that Hymowitz has published that’s worth acquiring: for the same sort of critique that Manning Up presents with regards to the immaturity of the modern man (dude, bro, or guy), Liberation’s Children (2003) does for postmodern childrearing and Marriage and Caste in America (2006) does for, well, marriage and caste. All of these are worth reading, but a book discussing the lack of maturity in men is, of anything that Hymowitz has written, the one that seems the most applicable to my life at this point in time.

Hymowitz’s basic argument is straightforward, and I’ll do my best to summarize it here: the rise of women in the workplace has resulted in changes in gender roles, and this has resulted in some unintended (and somewhat unpleasant) consequences. Hymowitz points out that a 25 year old woman in the year 2011 doesn’t need a man in her life like she would have had she been 25 in 1950. While this was certainly an intended consequence of the rise of women in the workplace (which, in turn, has contributed to the later age at which couples decide to get married), one of the results has been that men that are the same age are no longer expected to support a wife, pay a mortgage, and start a family. This, in turn, has generated two results that are problematic for society: (a) men that have no reason to grow up, and as a result are generally more immature, and (b) career women, in their constant pursuit of the man who is more an alpha male than she is (the title of Hymowitz’s previously mentioned column is significant, perhaps) have unintentionally contributed to the decline of the “nice guy.”

Trying to answer the question “Where have all the good men gone?” by attributing it to the rise of women may seem misogynistic, but Hymowitz is attempting to describe the world here as it is, and not how reasonable people wished it did: occasionally, reality may be sexist, and attempting to describe reality through the lens of political correctness may not do much to enhance anyone’s understanding. Even though Hymowitz explains how the immaturity of the modern man may be a result of the empowerment of women, I don’t see this is as an attempt to excuse men’s behavior by blaming women as much as I suspect Hymowitz is explaining why: in many situations, clearly, the onus is on men to step up and be more mature. Furthermore, I didn’t come away with this book with the impression that Hymowitz thinks that the empowerment of women has been a net loss to society, or something that we should in any way attempt to undo. Neither do I come away from this book with the impression that Hymowitz is attempting to blame one gender over the other, which, among other things, has made this an interesting book to discuss: quite a few people whose reviews I’ve read or that I’ve discussed this book with have felt as though Hymowitz was attacking a particular gender over the other one – though it’s been more or less equally split between those who feel that Hymowitz is giving men the short end of the stick and those who feel that Hymowitz has a vendetta against her own gender.

Hymowitz, while defending the traditional family, does not seem overly beholden to any particular political ideology, though she generally seems to lean towards the emphasis of personal responsibility and understanding and appreciating the unintended consequences of our actions. If that counts as being a conservative in our current political climate, then so be it: I have a feeling that Hymowitz would say it anyway, no matter where it fell on the political spectrum. I’ve had her columns recommend to me by people whose politics are such that they would be horrified to learn that they are recommending the work of someone who’s a regular contributor to a neo-conservative magazine. (This cuts both ways: I think that many conservatives that have recommended Postman’s excellent Amusing Ourselves to Death would likewise be disturbed by the depth of the observations that come from, technically, the other side of the political aisle. Truth is truth, though, wherever it is found.)

If there’s any flaw in Hymowitz’s argument, here, it seems to me that she’s more willing than is warranted to associate the trappings of immaturity (i.e., poop jokes or playing video games, for example) with the inability to be faithful to one’s wife, hold a job, raise a family, or do anything that she considers to be mature. Things may be different where she lives in New York, but down here I’ve met quite a few men that have a pretty good handle both marital fidelity and juvenile humor. One of her examples for male immaturity, for example, is Dave Barry, whose columns were always the cornerstone of entertainment in my parents’ house when I was growing up. My dad – who is one of the most mature and responsible individuals I’ve met in my life – could be reduced to tears of laughter reading Dave Barry’s columns about setting a toilet on fire, for example, but would also routinely take my mother to symphony concerts.