THE TROUBLE WITH MEN

A sharp-eyed collection of bits and pieces that will appeal, at least in part, to readers on both hot and cold sides of the intimacy spectrum.

He may be breaking no taboos but what gives the book its frisson is the sound of an intellectual talking dirty. One minute he's quoting Dostoevsky, the next he's asking his wife if he can share her vibrator. High/low, private/public: the demarcations disappear. And for all his talk of being miserable and pathetic (“The only music I've ever really loved is lamentation”), he takes a certain pleasure in the performance, with a good number of jokes (“Did you hear about the Scottish woman who loved her husband so much she nearly told him?”). Above all, there's his curiosity and openness, and his gift for collecting memorable quotations. The book comes with fulsome advance praise: “A great book such as no one has ever written”; “The most boldly naked book I've ever read”, “The most original, insightful and heartbreaking book about sexual desire since Roland Barthes's A Lover's Discourse”. Shields, less extravagantly, calls it “much the most self-mortifying” of his books. What will his wife think? She once told him that what he regards as his weakness she sees as his vulnerability, “which I love”. And Shields's truth-telling is certainly vulnerable. Some room for hope, then, that their marriage might survive publication. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/23/the-trouble-with-men-david-shields-review

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/books/review-trouble-with-men-david-shields.html?login=email&auth=login-email Read more...

“A brilliant writer's look into male toxicity. Revealing and confessional to the point of exhibitionism, personal to the point of shock. [Shields's] book is addressed to his wife about the most private things one could imagine, but he's doing something incredibly rare in this book and doing it in a way that is undeniably powerful and thoughtful. Here [is a writer who has] found a way to face a tortuous historical moment squarely and with neither cowardice nor confusion.”—Jeff Simon, Buffalo News https://buffalonews.com/2019/02/22/jeff-simon-brilliant-writers-look-into-male-toxicity/

The provocative essayist contemplates the precarious mechanics of human intimacy. In this bold mixture of stark honesty and humor, Shields (Other People: Takes & Mistakes, 2017, etc.) ponders how sex, love, attraction, and power all coalesce to both fortify and complicate the human mating experience. Snippets and subdivisions of thought, critiques, and inspired scenarios abound as the author's entertaining musings range from confessional—he unmasks facets of his own marriage and imagines a love letter to his wife or a novel about their exchange of sexual fantasies—to examinations of oddities and taboo aspects of sexuality. The author explores intimate relationships through personal examples and experiences as well as copious references and allusions (presented in a collage style similar to that of the author's Reality Hunger) drawn from a spectrum of well-respected writers, poets, journalists, and medical professionals; most reinforce Shields' ideas and assessments and add zesty commentary to an already fiery topic. The book is separated into five sections, each one progressively more explicit. An introductory chapter of bite-sized observations on human togetherness as seen through the lens of popular culture heralds further introspections on the author's own emotional landscape. Personal anecdotes on his awkward adolescence and family life and scenes of both romantic love and explicit sex interweave with outtakes from an ensemble of opinionated voices—e.g., utterances from a pre-presidential Donald Trump and a piece by sexologist Pepper Schwartz that psychoanalyzes Bernie Madoff's behavior. In the opening pages of a graphically descriptive chapter on sexual fantasy and pornography (“the world's one true religion”), Shields asks, “is sex really that awful?” The answer, found in a dizzying array of explicit and racy perspectives, will depend on the reader's reactions to the author's revealing adventures, each buttressed by a supporting chorus of sex-positive cheerleaders and damning naysayers. Entertaining and contemplative, Shields offers focused philosophy and effervescent wisdom on some of society's knottiest topics. A sharp-eyed collection of bits and pieces that will appeal, at least in part, to readers on both hot and cold sides of the intimacy spectrum.

“Shields is our elusive, humorous ironist, something like a 21st century Socrates. . . . He's a master stylist—and has been for a long time – [his work is] a textbook for contemporary creative nonfiction: erudite, soulful and self-deprecating like John Jeremiah Sullivan; freewheeling and insatiably curious like Geoff Dyer; hilarious and precise like Elif Batuman; and always fresh, clean, vigorous and clear . All good writers make us feel less alone. But Shields makes us feel better. He takes some of the bad of our everyday life and our culture and the whole inescapable mess of being human and sends it back to us as good.” —Clancy Martin, The New York Times Book Review

"„The Trouble with Men“ (2019) ist eine Art Brief des Schriftstellers an seine Ehefrau und eine Analyse des eigenen Masochismus, die diese Variante des Sexual- und Seelenlebens mit einer literarischen Energie in das Licht des Sagbaren und Anschaubaren zieht, die an Baudelaires „Mein entbloesstes Herz“, an Roland Barthes' „Fragmente einer Sprache der Liebe“ oder an die Vivisektionen der maennlichen Eifersucht in Prousts „Recherche“ erinnert." Read more...