The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power
by David Shields
The Ohio State University Press, 2019 Paper: 978-0-8142-5519-3 | eISBN: 978-0-8142-7676-1 Library of Congress Classification PS3569.H4834A6 2019 Dewey Decimal Classification 814.54
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
David Shields’s The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power is an immersion into the perils, limits, and possibilities of human intimacy. All at once a love letter to his wife, a nervy reckoning with his own fallibility, a meditation on the impact of porn on American culture, and an attempt to understand marriage (one marriage, the idea of marriage, all marriages), The Trouble with Men is exquisitely balanced between the personal and the anthropological, nakedness and restraint. While unashamedly intellectual, it’s also irresistibly readable 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 reader, leaves everything on the page.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
David Shields is the internationally best-selling author of twenty books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors’ Choice selection). The film adaptation of I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel was released by First Pond Entertainment in 2017. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published essays and stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Believer. His work has been translated into two dozen languages.
REVIEWS
“I often found this book beguiling, and moving. There is always the temptation, in writing about sex, to sound superior, arch, immune to its power. But Shields writes from a place of genuine curiosity and confusion. He is ridiculous and brave, he never conflates sincerity with genuine candor, and he poses the kinds of questions that only ever bring trouble (and are the only kind worth reading about).” —Parul Sehgal, TheNew York Times
“By book’s end, we realize that Shields himself is a collage, coming to us in bits and pieces, slipping in and out of the words of others, offering up questions but few answers, forcing us to read between the lines. Many men operate this way, elusive, mute, masked. But Shields wants to be unmasked, to be real even if that means appearing weak or ugly. . . Shields’s brave honesty stands alone.” —Sibbie O’Sullivan, The Washington Post
“Some books you hope will never end. This wasn’t one of those. Some books you wish you never began reading. This wasn’t one of those either. ‘Do you love this book? Do you hate it?’ you ask in the closing pages. Yes, I do. . . . It isn’t the book’s toxic masculinity I hate. Masculinity is most toxic when it’s in denial. Your book denies nothing. It’s the fidelity of the mirror that it offers to a reader like me: that’s what I love and hate. . . . Your book is an invitation: shall we be companions in misery? Of course some readers won’t accept the invitation, but I suspect that is their loss. The Trouble with Men is not for polite company, but the company that actually sustain us is rarely polite since it turns on being frank.” —John Kaag, Los Angeles Review of Books
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I Let’s Say I’m Writing a Love Letter to You
II The Four People in Every Bedroom
III This Is the Part Where You’re Supposed to Say You Love Me
The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power
by David Shields
The Ohio State University Press, 2019 Paper: 978-0-8142-5519-3 eISBN: 978-0-8142-7676-1
David Shields’s The Trouble with Men: Reflections on Sex, Love, Marriage, Porn, and Power is an immersion into the perils, limits, and possibilities of human intimacy. All at once a love letter to his wife, a nervy reckoning with his own fallibility, a meditation on the impact of porn on American culture, and an attempt to understand marriage (one marriage, the idea of marriage, all marriages), The Trouble with Men is exquisitely balanced between the personal and the anthropological, nakedness and restraint. While unashamedly intellectual, it’s also irresistibly readable 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 reader, leaves everything on the page.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
David Shields is the internationally best-selling author of twenty books, including Reality Hunger (named one of the best books of 2010 by more than thirty publications), The Thing About Life Is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (New York Times bestseller), Black Planet (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), and Other People: Takes & Mistakes (NYTBR Editors’ Choice selection). The film adaptation of I Think You’re Totally Wrong: A Quarrel was released by First Pond Entertainment in 2017. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and a senior contributing editor of Conjunctions, Shields has published essays and stories in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Esquire, Yale Review, Salon, Slate, McSweeney’s, and Believer. His work has been translated into two dozen languages.
REVIEWS
“I often found this book beguiling, and moving. There is always the temptation, in writing about sex, to sound superior, arch, immune to its power. But Shields writes from a place of genuine curiosity and confusion. He is ridiculous and brave, he never conflates sincerity with genuine candor, and he poses the kinds of questions that only ever bring trouble (and are the only kind worth reading about).” —Parul Sehgal, TheNew York Times
“By book’s end, we realize that Shields himself is a collage, coming to us in bits and pieces, slipping in and out of the words of others, offering up questions but few answers, forcing us to read between the lines. Many men operate this way, elusive, mute, masked. But Shields wants to be unmasked, to be real even if that means appearing weak or ugly. . . Shields’s brave honesty stands alone.” —Sibbie O’Sullivan, The Washington Post
“Some books you hope will never end. This wasn’t one of those. Some books you wish you never began reading. This wasn’t one of those either. ‘Do you love this book? Do you hate it?’ you ask in the closing pages. Yes, I do. . . . It isn’t the book’s toxic masculinity I hate. Masculinity is most toxic when it’s in denial. Your book denies nothing. It’s the fidelity of the mirror that it offers to a reader like me: that’s what I love and hate. . . . Your book is an invitation: shall we be companions in misery? Of course some readers won’t accept the invitation, but I suspect that is their loss. The Trouble with Men is not for polite company, but the company that actually sustain us is rarely polite since it turns on being frank.” —John Kaag, Los Angeles Review of Books
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I Let’s Say I’m Writing a Love Letter to You
II 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)
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC