Book Reviews
Hold the front page! This is what the papers say. If you’ve come across anything else, please let us know. Apologies for the lack of radio interview sound bytes – coming soon!
Student Direct
3 October 2005
By Josh Loeb
“MEN Speak the Unspeakable”
By Michael Elias and Edward Seeker
There is an annoyingly self-satisfied tone to the ramblings of Michael Elias and Edward Seeker, whose oxymoronically-titled book assumes practically no intelligence on the part of the reader. One is helpfully informed, by way of footnotes, of the meaning of the words spliff, Kleenex and cunt. There is a lot of gimmicky ‘sexing up’; see the italicised phrases (and superfluous parentheses) and liberal changes in font size, all of which, presumably, are intended to distract from the banality of the content.
The blurb on the back lauds this as the first book of its kind, The REALITY BOOK that blows the whistle on WHY MEN DON’T SPEAK. It’s 18+ only. The press release boasts that, “This book contains stuff that a lot of men don’t know. Women will get an insight that they’d never have bargained for”.
In fact, whilst the approach to masculinity is more nuanced than that of British lad culture, there is nothing remarkable about this book save the self-indulgence of its authors. Sure, there are occasional moments of tenderness that will bring smiles of recognition to the mouth of anyone with a penis, but this does not compensate for the fact that this is simply too boring to read.
The problem comes not with the themes but with the way they are presented. Sexuality, oedipal conflicts, gender relations and good old post-modern angst have been popping up in literature since the 1960s – and for good reason, as they are very interesting and entertaining to read about in the novels of American writers like Philip Roth an John Updike. Only British men like Elias and Seeker find these themes risqué, and the way they write about them so clumsily suggests sexual repression and emotional inarticulacy have more to do with bring British than with being a man.