Reviews for A Man's Game: Masculinity and the Anti-Aesthetics of American Literary Naturalism

The average rating for A Man's Game: Masculinity and the Anti-Aesthetics of American Literary Naturalism based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-01-14 00:00:00 Sergio Cabezas I have had this book for a number of years and satisfied myself with just leafing through the photographs of the writers contained within, occasionally reading the accompanying extract from a piece of their work, or a poem. So a while ago I decided to just read it through cover to cover, a few every day, and this way I discovered many writers who I had not really heard of (they are mostly American, so many won't have been published in the UK). It is often anthologies that can encourage us to delve a bit deeper into a writer's works, so I shall be trying to do just that. The author/photographer Robert Giard took, I think, took all of the photos in the 1980s and 90s, so there is a sense of history to the book even now. Michael Cunningham had only recently started being published when his portrait was taken. May Sarton had died just two years before the book came out. Authors familiar to us now had not been published at all. The layout of the book adds to this idea of a progression, starting with authors involved in the Gay Rights Movement, the extracts reflecting their lives and hopes, then moving through the years as things improved, before AIDS wreaked its havoc in the '80s. Then follows a more upbeat outlook from the '90s, a settling down almost where personal, intimate lives become the focus. It is a quite extraordinary book really, and is pleasingly accurate and representative of both female and male authors from many ethnic backgrounds.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-16 00:00:00 Harold Skidds Robert Giard's photography project of Gay and Lesbian writers succeeds not only as a documentary project but also artistically on its own photographic quality. My only wish is that the book was longer to include even more of his photographs (his NY Times obituary stated that he had completed nearly 600 portraits in this series.)