| Iron John: A Book About Men |  | Author: Robert Bly
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Category: eBooks
In Stock
Rating:  100 reviews
Sales Rank: 7,385
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.31
ASIN: B0010NZKRY
Publication Date: December 31, 1989
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Product Description
Here, using the Grimm Fairy tale "Iron John" as a vehicle, Bly explores the myths and cultural underpinnings of a distinctly vigorous male mode of feeling, a combination of fierceness and tenderness long since sacrificed to the demands of the industrial revolution.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 100
 must reading for every woman who... July 30, 2010
Susan J. Ciccantelli (Mt. Airy, USA)
...REALLY wants to understand men --- not just "catch" one, though it could help you with this, too, if you pay attention.
Love this old book! July 6, 2010
C. Roy Argall (New York NY)
Love this book which has been around for quite some time. It changed my thinking about men, masculinity and many things male.
Marilyn July 6, 2010
Marilyn
Excellent reading for men or women, about men! Some songs Jack Johnson put on his To The Sea CD, came to him after reading this book. Very interesting.Iron John: A Book About Men
A must read for males April 27, 2010
Ray Savant (Venica, Califnornia, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Such truth and such vivid images of masculinity.
I am not surprised to see it get some negative reviews, especially by women and men out of touch with manhood in this gender neutral society we now live in. Ignore them and read this. We men need it.
 Some dross, some silver. March 25, 2010
D. Kimball
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
When a Jungian begins to contemplate the _Evangelium nach Deutschland_ (Gospel according to St. Germany, as transcribed by the Brothers Grimm), he generally gets misty-headed and soft-eyed, to the point of theorizing based on free association and not seeing anyone else's traditions for the cataracts.
Bly's interpretation here is pretty representative. His core narrative might be viable (I'm still analyzing it), and I like his seven archetypes of masculinity (although there are cultures in which one or more of these do not appear to exist, so I'm wondering whether they're really archetypes); but he moves too quickly. He quotes any poet who says what he wants to hear as if the poet in question were the Gospel (and he burdens the reader with his own truly awful poems as well -- now I know how many people feel when reading _The Lord of the Rings_); but he has not a word for anyone who disagrees with him, and does not offer any explanation of how he came by his theory. Nor does he even consider how his theory could be true or false; it just sits there, near enough to the truth to be postulated but not near enough to be debated. (Now I understand why physical scientists feel so much contempt for psychologists.)
Fairy tales are not infallible insights into the human psyche, they're fairy tales; they convey as much historical accident as anything else, and "Iron John" has historical accidents and accretions that almost approach the level of "The Juniper Tree." One swallow does not make a summer; one fairy tale does not make an insight into the human psyche. And the theory behind using fairy tales is that they've been anonymized and distorted over time, so that they fit archetypes more or less perfectly; anything with a known author, considered in the form in which he published it, has not been anonymized in this way, so why is Bly quoting William Blake's poems and _Star Wars_?
So, I think the book is worth reading for its model, maybe, but you'll have to investigate the truth of the model yourself.
(This is without mentioning his historical, mythical and theological howlers (Christian and otherwise: Cuchulain as pure berserker? Shiva as an avatar of heedlessness and impetuosity?), his bat-out-of-1968 model of history in which opposing Communism is a mark of an underdeveloped psyche, his hatred for Augusto Pinochet, and his fondness for quoting Reiner Maria Rilke. On that last offense: as a serious Catholic, I am entitled to say, "Ick.")
Showing reviews 1-5 of 100
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