Men and Apparitions

A Novel

audio cd

Published March 13, 2018 by HighBridge Audio.

ISBN:
978-1-68441-132-0
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5 stars (1 review)

"The time is now, and Ezekiel Hooper Stark is thirty-eight. He's a cultural anthropologist, an ethnographer of family photographs, a wry speculator about images. From childhood, his own family's idiosyncrasies, perversities, and pathologies propel Zeke, until love lost sends him spiraling out of control in Europe. Back in the U.S.A., he finds unexpected solace in the image of a notable nineteenth-century relative, Clover Hooper Adams. Zeke embarks on a project, MEN IN QUOTES, focusing his anthropological lens on his own kind: the "New Man," born under the sign of feminism. All the old models of masculinity are broken. How are you different from your father? Zeke asks his male subjects. What do you expect from women? What does Zeke expect from himself? And what will the reader expect of Zeke--is he a Don Quixote, Holden Caulfield, Underground Man, or Stranger? Kaleidoscopic and encyclopedic, comic, tragic, and philosophical, Men and Apparitions …

4 editions

Review of 'Men and Apparitions' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I do understand where all the critical/underwhelmed reviews are coming from and I was/am not sure if I liked reading this book, but as a whole it is a great reflection of how much there is still to do in regards to actual gender equality, how binary thinking along core identities as either man or woman gets us all into more mysery and how postmodern thought loops leave people confused, unsettled and trapped in the same old same old.

Exercising this along the (breadcrumb-style) discussion of photography brings in a nice meta layer of how focusing on a subject excludes other aspects and always comes from a certain perspective, which is important and consequential for both photography and the discussion of all kinds of equality issues.

Not a fun book, but definitely a great book and elaborate picture of a certain status qou.