The Average American Male: A Novel
by Chad Kultgen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Chad KultgenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-03-13
ISBN: 0061231673
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of The Average American Male: A Novel
Book Review: "Sex, Lies, and Video...Games"
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one brilliant book. Its spirit recalls Aristophanes, who, in "Lysistrata," ridiculed ancient Athenian men because they were apparently obsessed with something silly, war, but in fact devoted to something even more ludicrous, sex. We post-moderns are still sentimental about sex; Aristophanes and Kultgen aren't.
Kultgen, like his Greek predecessor, sees that Aphrodite in particular often has one big satiric smirk on her face. His unnamed hero wages a species of war when he plays competitive video games, but he lives more for sex 24/7, even though his comically grotesque desires inevitably result, as experience has always taught, in necessarily diminished rewards.
Kultgen, happily, is an equal opportunity offender. Not only does his witty, knavish hero come in for a finally satirical drubbing, but so do the other serial polygamist characters, who include a variety of contemporary straight men and women, along with assorted gays and lesbians. All of them lead hilariously limited lives, for none of them is able to raise his or her head above the belts of the nation. This book is less the send-up of modern feminism some reviewers have indicated than it is a send-up of the low, finally empty values of all the characters.
The hero lives in a narrow world that has, he sadly recognizes at the end, "no escape." Kultgen, as I read him, is gently suggesting the comic emptiness of the world view that all his younger characters share. The only positive value in their world is "bluntness," a trait distinguishing both the narrator and his paramour Alyna. Certainly, such bluntness is preferable to the whiny manipulativeness of the vulgarly too eager-to-marry Casey and her horrible family. At the same time, the narrator and the more sophisticated Alyna are merely just a boy-man and a girl-woman. They are, Kultgen slyly intimates, nevertheless the finest products of modern American child-raising.
Years ago, Dostoevsky in "Notes From Underground," said of his central character that "such persons as the writer of these notes not only may but must exist in our society, taking into consideration the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed." Kultgen is asking his readers to look at the stunted, even if witty, men and women in his novel and contemplate what comic monsters we "caring" American parents have inadvertently wrought.
Summary of The Average American Male: A Novel
Are you ready to meet the average American male?
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