So, sometime during the summer of '07 I purchased a copy of "The Average American Male" by Chad Kultgen. The prose was simple and the subject matter dead-on accurate. The story is about...well, it's about the average American male. Why would I read this (seeming) crap? Well, that would require me to give an account of how I feel towards the average American make, which is namely this:
My view of the average American male is that he never grows beyond a frat boy mentality; he wears backwards baseball hats and loves football; he frequents (or at least talks endlessly about) strip clubs and how many "chicks" he's fucked (or what have you).
Now, because I loathe and detest that type of individual, I thought it would be interesting to read a book where I absolutely have no sympathy for the character. It was, and I didn't.
Now, I have in my possession Kultgen's latest book (to be published March 3rd) titled "The Lie". I would imagine that the subject matter is similar, yet more exploratory. We shall see.
Don't mean to sound like some sort of an in-house polemicist, but I don't believe in "the average American male." Even if we forget about the racial minorities and consider just white American men they will be completely different from one region of the country to another, from one economic strata to another. An American male in the Pacific Northwest is going to be different from his brethren in the Midwest, South, and the Northeast. Must of the stereotypes around white American males are based around college-bound upper middle class kids, but not all of these act a like and not all men fit that category at all.
ReplyDeleteA good non-fiction book about American males is "US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man" by Charlie LeDuff.