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A review by jaclyncrupi
All That Man Is by David Szalay
4.0
This is fundamentally a book about existential angst told through nine very different European men. These men age progressively (from 17 to 73) and are all in crisis, in motion, adrift. They share an inflated sense of self-worth and disabling desire. As one character observes, 'life is not a joke.' Neither is this book. Szalay gives a damning critique of these men and their shortcomings. They are flawed and unlikeable and complex and lonely and real and ludicrous and awful. They come from an observed truth and humanity that I found completely fascinating to read. I pitied them and I reviled them but they felt extraordinarily real and honest to me. The prose is perfect, it's alive and full of energy. This would have been an uncomfortable book to conjure and write and I applaud Szalay for exploring these depressing depths with such brutal honesty and force.
I've seen three main criticisms made of this book:
1. It's short stories and not a novel. My take is that it's neither a novel nor short stories but a new hybrid. It doesn't read like short stories. But it's also not exactly a novel. To me this is not a criticism but something exciting about the possibilities of form.
2. Most of the men are sexist and most of the women in the novel are objectified by them. Correct. BUT Szalay is offering a skewering critique of these men and their sexism. They're sexist because Szalay has observed many men as sexist. As one woman states, 'Stop thinking about your thing.' Indeed. As a female reader there is definitely discomfort as you read these men and their thoughts on the women they encounter. Women are often described (by the characters) in terms of their beauty and body shape. Yet you feel Szalay doing this with critique (or at least I did) as though he's uncomfortable, too. The reader is meant to feel uncomfortable. I want fiction to make me feel uncomfortable. Something interesting happens in discomfort.
3. The men are all white and mostly hetero. True. This is a book about nine white hetero cis men that in no way engages with race (it does interrogate class but never race). It's true that this book does not offer a portrait of diversity.
I've seen three main criticisms made of this book:
1. It's short stories and not a novel. My take is that it's neither a novel nor short stories but a new hybrid. It doesn't read like short stories. But it's also not exactly a novel. To me this is not a criticism but something exciting about the possibilities of form.
2. Most of the men are sexist and most of the women in the novel are objectified by them. Correct. BUT Szalay is offering a skewering critique of these men and their sexism. They're sexist because Szalay has observed many men as sexist. As one woman states, 'Stop thinking about your thing.' Indeed. As a female reader there is definitely discomfort as you read these men and their thoughts on the women they encounter. Women are often described (by the characters) in terms of their beauty and body shape. Yet you feel Szalay doing this with critique (or at least I did) as though he's uncomfortable, too. The reader is meant to feel uncomfortable. I want fiction to make me feel uncomfortable. Something interesting happens in discomfort.
3. The men are all white and mostly hetero. True. This is a book about nine white hetero cis men that in no way engages with race (it does interrogate class but never race). It's true that this book does not offer a portrait of diversity.