Marked Men - by Sally Robinson (Paperback)

About the Book

A study of post-Vietnam American literature and culture focusing on narratives of bodily trauma evident in a wide range of texts by and about other white men.

Book Synopsis

White men still hold most of the political and economic cards in the United States; yet stories about wounded and traumatized men dominate popular culture. Why are white men jumping on the victim bandwagon? Examining novels by Philip Roth, John Updike, James Dickey, John Irving, and Pat Conroy and such films as Deliverance, Misery, and Dead Poets Society--as well as other writings, including The Closing of the American Mind--Sally Robinson argues that white men are tempted by the possibilities of pain and the surprisingly pleasurable tensions that come from living in crisis.

Review Quotes

Marked Men: White Masculinity in Crisis is an intelligent, wide-ranging, clearly argued and thoroughly femnist book about the shifting meanings of dominant masculinity in American culture....Robinson makes appropriate but not heavy-handed use of other theorists and literary critics, often developing their insights in original directions....Robinson is an astute critic of cultural images.--Judith Kegan Gardiner "The Women's Review of Books"

White men have it all, except the hardship of having to live in a world dominated by white men. Sally Robinson argues, with shocking originality... that they now want that too: Through victimization, we find the tensions that make us most alive.--Jonathon Keats "San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle Book Review"

About the Author

Sally Robinson is associate professor of English at Texas A&M University and the author of Engendering the Subject: Gender and Self-Representation in Contemporary Women's Fiction.