Manhood in the Making

Manhood in the Making: Cultural Concepts of Masculinity
272 pages
© David Gilmore 1991

What is it to “be a man”?  Manhood in the Making  reviews various ethnographic studies that focused on sex and gender roles, throughout the world.  In it, the author argues that despite the general variety of specific male roles, there’s enough overlapping expectations that a ubiquitous – if not universal – vision of man emerges. Common to all is the belief that Manhood is earned,  not assumed.   Preindustrial – that is, traditional – cultures prescribed rituals to graduate mere young males into the canon of Men,  and these rites were not mere words spoken with gravity. Rites of passage often demanded trials in the wilderness, or trials of pain administered by their elders. Strength was demanded: strength in body, strength in character. Strength in character manifests itself slightly differently based on the culture, but a commonality is the ability to endure pain and hardship.  This stoicism does not extend to social interactions, as perceived insults are responded to forcefully. Aggression,  both against one's fellows and against women -- by trying to seduce them --  is a given. Even in societies that were not militaristic, like agricultural tribes, men were still expected and required to be active -- to spend their leisure time in the public sphere, competing with other men.

  In some societies, to be a Man was not a permanent achievement, but a temporary status that could be imperiled by shirking. The most common image here is of one as man the warrior -- defining and enforcing borders,  risking his life to procure food in the wild or resources from other tribes.  The author's conclusions are drawn from a survey of global cultures: around the Mediterranean, several spots in Africa, India, Japan, China, South America, and various islands.  The author notes that some island cultures are outliers, with no perceptible gender roles; these societies also seem to lack strong perceptions of personal boundaries or property, freely allowing visitors to roam their houses and flirt with their partners.   The author doesn't speculate whether this is purely cultural on their part, but an interesting comparison may be drawn from another isolated group of social primates, the bonobos: they, too, are not nearly as aggressive as their chimpanzee cousins across the river.  Gilmore pans evolutionary/biological  explanations in general, favoring a Freudian interpretation that all society is role-playing, and that the role of the aggressive Leader is one most pre-industrial societies promote for their men. 

Although there's not a strong evolutionary psychology component, the survey in general indicates that manliness is not a cultural veneer that can be scraped off or dispatched, but an elemental part of the male character.  I appreciated the connections Gilmore drew to gang cultures and traditional male behavior, as well as the ambiguity he pointed out as far as manly character goes. For instance, while many societies measure men by how much alcohol they can consume without falling over,  or by how many women they can pursue, other moral cultures abstain from alcohol and restrict sexuality to the pair-bond.  As  the technological mass state continues to develop,  this authentic if volatile part of being human remains, and will go increasingly against the grain.


Related:
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham

The Hemingway Patrols

The Hemingway Patrols: Ernest Hemingway and his Hunt for U-boats

© 2009 Terry Mort

272 pages

For some people, getting involved in the war effort meant collecting cans. For Ernest Hemingway, it meant patrolling the waters between the Florida Keys and Cuba and looking for U-boats.  The Hemingway Patrols  mixes World War 2, biography, and literary reflection to interesting effect. Although Hemingway's attempts to identify U-boats, Nazi supply stashes, and potential spies never bore any military fruit,  the very idea is so audacious as to make a good story in itself. (Hemingway must have thought so, as he incorporated some of his experience in a story about men hunting for a U-boat..)  Hemingway Patrols largely focuses on the character of Hemingway himself, his values and approach to life as expressed in both his actions and in his stories.  His own life was a story that he intended to drive with gusto. It wasn't enough for Hemingway to write about the war as a journalist; he actively hated fascism and other authoritarian movements. (In a crisis, he is quoted, he would look to himself, his family, and his neighbors. The state  could go hang itself.) The author compares Hemingway's patrol for u-boats to his long fishing expeditions, in which one man and a little tackle would try to wrest a great fish from the sea, exposing himself to the elements as he did.  He lived for that moment when the marlin emerged from the sea, fighting, and even if it escaped that moment itself was worth all the waiting.  Had Hemingway encountered a U-boat he would have found a great fish, indeed, and one unlikely to  allow him to throw grenades inside as he planned. Fortunately for him and his later readers, the equipping of planes with sonar ended the worst days of the U-boat peril.

Although  World War 2 in the Carribean and Gulf Coast is a rarely-explored area, the chief appeal here is for Hemingway fans.  I've only read one of his books and a collection of short stories, but was captivated by the idea of a man in a wooden boat hunting for submarines. What a character Hemingway was! 

I, the Constable

I, the Constable
© 2017 Paula M. Block and Terry Erdmann
150 pages

Deep Space Nine once made a throwaway reference to the Mike Hammer novels of Mickey Spillane,  and featured Constable Odo reading I, the Jury.  I, the Constable,  plays with that a bit more by having Odo play detective on Ferenginar, searching for a missing person.  Odo fills his spare time on the flight writing 'letters' to Kira and reading more detective fiction -- Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett are named -- and arrives on Ferenginar slinging a mix of 20th century detective slang. The trail will lead him to dead bodies and scheming women, and culminate in a local stumbling around in a trench coat and fedora trying to help. If one likes straight mysteries and can tolerate the Ferengi, this is an amusing read. I was hoping the narrative voice would evoke Hammett and Chandler's style more, beyond a little slang. ("Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead.")

Caves, Columbia, and Canyons (oh my)

What a weekend! I've been on the road,  using Decatur as a camp to visit several spots in north Alabama the past few days.  That included some natural wonders -- Cathedral Caverns and Dismals Canyon --as well as a few cities I've never been to, like Decatur and Florence. I also spent time in Huntsville, which I haven't visited since the early Clinton years.  One highlight: my first experience with Persian cuisine, in the form of kabob bakhtiari! I'll be putting a few pictures together (and shopping for a wide-angle lens...) later in the week. Here are some sneak previews, though..

Saturn V, Huntsville

Cathedral Caverns

Florence, Al

Dismals Canyon

Conquest of the Skies

Conquest of the Skies: A History of Commercial Aviation in America
© 1979 Carl Solberg
441 pages

If ever you wanted a history of commercial aviation in the United States, Conquest of the Skies is it. Beginning with the origins of flight and culminating in the 747, Conquest artfully combines business, social, and technical history. That distinguishes it from other books in this vein, like the tech-focused Turbulent Skies. Written for lay readers, Solberg brackets his history with reflections on how the romance of flight became – through persistent tinkering, reckless adventurism, war, and ambition– a perfectly ordinary form of transportation that shrunk the world, opening global vistas to the multitude.

In the beginning, there was the Post Office. Solberg’s first chapter, of course, is about the Wright brothers’ achievement and the rise of airplane manufacturing in the Great War. The story of commercial aviation picks up in earnest, however, after the war, when the US Postal Service began using the US Army airplanes created for the war to deliver mail. Delivering mail sounds tame and routine, but the early airmail service was anything but. These pilots were still flying by sight, looking for landmarks. In fog they were helpless; in turbulent weather, their canvas-and-wood frames were torn apart. (In 1934, a particularly bad winter caused nearly a crash a day.) Yet the Post Office saw the potential in this sort of delivery, and from this service grew the first commercial air companies. As infrastructure and technology for flying improved – as artificially –lighted “lanes” were created across countrysides, and the problem of aerial radio communication nailed down – a growing number of companies bid for airmail contracts and began creating their own fleets.

Modern readers may recognize the names of companies formed in those days: United and American Airlines are two survivors, and most adults can remember TWA and Pan-Am. Although the airmail contracts allowed for a commercial air company to get started, other opportunities for revenue – like passengers – were required for real expansion. In these days, a flight might carry only a handful of people. Even the larger planes of the pre-jet perio were carrying only 35 at most. In the 1920s, the appeal of air travel was largely in its novelty and speed. No one did it for comfort: in those days, passengers had to suck oxygen from tubes throughout the flight, and were constantly jostled amid turbulence. (The first stewardesses were required to have nurses’ licenses.) As the technology improved, however, the airlines strove to imitate the quality of service aboard Pullman coaches, with meals served on actual plates, and liquor on the house.

World War 2 propelled planes to greater heights, concentrating fifty years of advancement into five. The second world war was an air war, beginning with Stukas and ending with the Enola Gay. From the war came radar, legions of pilots, improved navigation, and steadily-improving aircraft design. More important, however, were the airstrips. In the 1920s, Pan-Am could only cover as much of Latin America as it did through flying boats – “clippers” in a more literal sense than its later landplanes with that name. Boats didn’t need airstrips, just a stable body of water and a dock. But the war had freckled the globe with airstrips, saw airlines other than Pan-Am work the overseas routes, and created interest in what lay beyond the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. When jets entered the picture and airlines began experimenting with an “air coach” model -- carrying a lot of lower fares instead of a few expensive ones -- air travel descended from the clouds of fancy into the real world, a miracle rendered mundane…like automobiles, electricity, radio, and trains before it.

Conquest of the Skies is outstanding popular history, uniting three areas of interest; the birth, growth, and evolution of various airline companies, including their involvement with the government; technical advancement; and the actual experience of flying, from the cramped quarters and head injuries of the 1920s to the cozy comforts of the fifties and sixties. I only wish it went beyond 1963, so Solberg could have documented the flight of the Concorde. While Solberg doesn’t footnote his text, the book concludes with an extensive bibliography.

Tex

Tex
© 1979 S.E. Hinton
224 pages

Most of S.E. Hinton's novels share a central drama: the main character is groping to find himself, usually in circumstances that don't make it easy.  That Was Then, This is Now was built around the growing-apart of two friends who were like brothers, for instance, their choices straining and breaking their bond. In Tex,  another young guy with a penchant for making trouble is looking to the future.  The past has already taken away his mother in death, and his father -- as the man is still sowing wild oats in the rodeo circuit. But the future threatens to take away his older brother Mason, who is desperate to get out of town and is on track for an athletic scholarship at several universities.   Tex loves two things: his horse, Negrito, and his best friend's sister, Jamie.  But Tex and Mason's poverty forces Mason to sell the horse, and Tex' already rowdy behavior pushes him to the brink of expulsion and threatens the good left in his life.

I read every S.E. Hinton novel I could get my hands on in high school, and three of them --  That Was Then, This is Now; The Outsiders; and Rumble Fish -- I have read so many times my copies are falling apart.  I could barely remember Tex, however, outside of a shooting, and Taming the Star-Runner is similarly lost to memory.  Although Tex's climax is nothing like the big rumble of The Outsiders -- it nonetheless drew me in instantly, with the tension between the brothers, and Tex' hope for the future running aground against his own confused feelings

Purim Ball: Admit no Livestock!

You know it's gonna be a wild party when  they insist on "no livestock" up front:

The Harmony Club building was built at the turn of the 20th century by members of Selma's then-burgeoning Jewish community. The lower floor housed businesses, while a men's lounge was upstairs.  The building also contained a ballroom on the third floor.   In the late thirties, the building found new stewards in the Elks Club, but they closed it in 1960.  In 1999,  a man from Georgia named David Hurlbut purchased it and began restoring it; it has housed several businesses since then, in addition to his living space upstairs.  These days the ground level is occupied by a thriving restaurant called Charlie's Place, as well as an bar where people drink Heineken and admire antiques. Hurlbut maintains a website with a virtual tour, but the interior photos are not current.  Also see this article from the New York Times about Hurlbut's restoration.  There's also an interview with Hurlbut on Youtube, in which he explains his desire to save beauty when he finds it, describes himself as a steampunk designer, and asks a question that involves the Federal government and the word 'anus'.  

This photo was taken by me in 2010 and does not reflect recent restoration work, either on the building or on the street. The City of Selma has been beautifying the street (Water Avenue) to capitalize on its status as one of the longest historic waterfront streets in the southeast. 

Also, as part of this "Yesterday's News" post, here is the most polite advertisement I have ever read. Or ever will read, I suspect.