Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line
by Calvin Thomas
Category: Social Science

Calvin Thomas's Male Matters reveals the act and production of writing as a bodily, material process that transgresses the boundaries of gender. Wise and quirky, sophisticated and coarse, serious and hilarious, this look at male identity and creativity and dislocation at the end of the twentieth century definitely will not assuage male anxiety! "An excellent and important book. . . . By mixing high and low, by speaking candidly about what we usually keep in the (water) closet, while simultaneously engaging the 'highest' philosophies of language and culture, Thomas calls the entire enterprise of criticism into question." -- Jeremy Earp, Journal of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity "A brave, indispensable exercise in writing the male body, and a tour de force of theoretically informed close reading." -- Kevin Floyd, Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association "Both analyzes and performs our anxieties about masculinity. . . . This experiment in criticism transgresses boundaries of theory, gender, and academic taste in ways sure to delight and infuriate its readers." -- Gregory Jay, author of America the Scrivener: Deconstruction and the Subject of Literary History "Calvin Thomas is able to hint at a way out of the prison-house, as he puts it, of straight male identity." -- Kathy Acker, author of In Memoriam to Identity