The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power
The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power
Audio MP3 on CD(MP3 on CD - Unabridged)
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Overview
While unashamedly intellectual, it's also irresistibly accessible and extremely moving. Over five increasingly intimate chapters, Shields probes the contours of his own psyche and marriage, marshalling a chorus of other voices that leaven, deepen, and universalize his experience; his goal is nothing less than a deconstruction of eros and conventional masculinity. Masterfully woven throughout is an unmistakable and surprisingly tender cri de coeur to his wife. The risk and vulnerability on display are in the service of radical candor, acerbic wit, real emotion, and profound insight - exactly what we've come to expect from Shields, who, in an open invitation to the listener, leaves everything transparent.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781978689176 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Brilliance Audio |
| Publication date: | 05/07/2019 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Product dimensions: | 5.25(w) x 6.75(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Let’s Say I’m Writing a Love Letter to You
Let’s say I’m writing a love letter to you. I’m just trying to be as truthful as possible. I’m not thinking, How is it going to affect you? Ultimately, of course, I’m aware of trying to create an intimate connection between you and me, but in a way it’s the last thing on my mind.
It’s so perfect that you don’t want me to write this book (because you don’t want to read it); therefore, I have to write it. So, too, if you were fine with me writing it, I’d have no desire to write it.
—knowing how boring this book would be if you were willing for it to be written (if, for instance, you were Catherine Millet); it’s your unwillingness to sanction it that makes it necessary.
You, my darling, are the perfect muse, a ceaseless spur; I truly love how little you like any of my books—including this one? Maybe you’ll love this one. Maybe you’ll hate it. (How do you share an entire life with someone who feels the way she does about your work, Whitney Otto asked me, and is this only about the work?) The only reason it’s being written—or at least one of the main reasons it’s being written, the reason I started writing it—is to talk, finally, to you.
Or: I still don’t know you at all; hence this letter. (It would be such a relief to be honest, for once. I’m dying for everything to get out in the open, but it never does.) Or: This letter has slept so long at the bottom of my gym bag that it seems less like a message than an artifact. Perhaps that’s why I put it to sleep in the first place. Even while writing it, it seemed to belong to the ancient past or, more exactly, to another lost day in this lonesome city. I’ll send it along, though, because I can’t really remedy my old impressions.
A letter always arrives at its destination. [Barbara Johnson]Beware what you say, you say to me. It has a way of getting found out.
Or: Idea for a novel— A husband and wife talk to each other for the entire night about their sexual fantasies.
When, many years ago, I presented this idea to a literary agent and explained that I wasn’t sure I could imagine my way into the woman’s half of the dialogue, the agent pushed her chair back, uncrossed her legs, and said, “If you want, I’ll be her for you.” I’ll never forgive myself for not getting down on my hands and knees and crawling across the floor to her.
I remember saying once, I can’t understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems; it’s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife. Whoever I was talking to said, “They’d do that, too, if their agents could fix it.” [Philip Larkin]
Intimacy holds the fascination of a car wreck, the sickening promise of voyeurism. Can the author possibly realize just how much he betrays of his life, his psyche? The content of the “novel” is so clearly and completely drawn from the author’s experience that although Intimacy was published as fiction it was received, venomously, as fact. [Kathryn Harrison]
—that whole question of what it means to set another person before the camera, trying to extract something of his or her soul. When are we exploiting? When are we caressing? Are they, maybe, the same? Maybe it’s impossible not to do both. Maybe that’s the truth of human relationships. [Ross McElwee]
If there’s one word about me in the book, I’ll never speak to you again. Really—one word? Just one?
The threat this poses to your marriage is what worries me. Is it a masochistic book because it might cost you your marriage? I’d say it ain’t worth that. [Otto]
Table of Contents
I Let’s Say I’m Writing a Love Letter to YouII The Four People in Every Bedroom
III This Is the Part Where You’re Supposed to Say You Love Me
IV Porn: An Interlude
V Life Is Tragic (Everybody Knows It)
Interviews
General readers, writers, professors, and students in nonfiction, memoir, essays, personal writing, cultural studies, American culture.