What do you think?
Rate this book
Write like a Man: Jewish Masculinity and the New York Intellectuals
How virility and Jewishness became hallmarks of postwar New York’s combative intellectual scene
In the years following World War II, the New York intellectuals became some of the most renowned critics and writers in the country. Although mostly male and Jewish, this prominent group also included women and non-Jews. Yet all of its members embraced a secular Jewish machismo that became a defining characteristic of the contemporary experience. Write like a Man examines how the New York intellectuals shared a uniquely American conception of Jewish masculinity that prized verbal confrontation, polemical aggression, and an unflinching style of argumentation.
Ronnie Grinberg paints illuminating portraits of figures such as Norman Mailer, Hannah Arendt, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Mary McCarthy, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and Irving Howe. She describes how their construction of Jewish masculinity helped to propel the American Jew from outsider to insider even as they clashed over its meaning in a deeply anxious project of self-definition. Along the way, Grinberg sheds light on their fraught encounters with the most contentious issues and ideas of the day, from student radicalism and the civil rights movement to feminism, Freudianism, and neoconservatism.
A spellbinding chronicle of midcentury America, Write like a Man shows how a combative and intellectually grounded vision of Jewish manhood contributed to the masculinization of intellectual life and shaped some of the most important political and cultural debates of the postwar era.
In the years following World War II, the New York intellectuals became some of the most renowned critics and writers in the country. Although mostly male and Jewish, this prominent group also included women and non-Jews. Yet all of its members embraced a secular Jewish machismo that became a defining characteristic of the contemporary experience. Write like a Man examines how the New York intellectuals shared a uniquely American conception of Jewish masculinity that prized verbal confrontation, polemical aggression, and an unflinching style of argumentation.
Ronnie Grinberg paints illuminating portraits of figures such as Norman Mailer, Hannah Arendt, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Mary McCarthy, Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, and Irving Howe. She describes how their construction of Jewish masculinity helped to propel the American Jew from outsider to insider even as they clashed over its meaning in a deeply anxious project of self-definition. Along the way, Grinberg sheds light on their fraught encounters with the most contentious issues and ideas of the day, from student radicalism and the civil rights movement to feminism, Freudianism, and neoconservatism.
A spellbinding chronicle of midcentury America, Write like a Man shows how a combative and intellectually grounded vision of Jewish manhood contributed to the masculinization of intellectual life and shaped some of the most important political and cultural debates of the postwar era.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published March 26, 2024
10 people are currently reading
199 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
July 2, 2024
Heard of this book when Grinberg was interviewed on the Know Your Enemy podcast.
It's kind of three books--one focuses on the intellectuals' obsession with masculinity and from where it came, how the resulting misogyny affected the women in their circle, and how the combo platter factors into neoconservatism (because Norman Podheretz and Midge Decter are featured). It also distinguishes the neocons of the W. Bush administration and the originators.
If any of this has ever confused you, you might want to read this.
It's kind of three books--one focuses on the intellectuals' obsession with masculinity and from where it came, how the resulting misogyny affected the women in their circle, and how the combo platter factors into neoconservatism (because Norman Podheretz and Midge Decter are featured). It also distinguishes the neocons of the W. Bush administration and the originators.
If any of this has ever confused you, you might want to read this.
September 2, 2024
Many books have already been written on the New York Intellectuals, a largely Jewish group based in NYC centered around intellectual combat and Cold War Liberalism. But this is the only book that frames the story of the New York Intellectuals in terms of gender, especially in the way that they created a new form of secular Jewish masculinity in America. This masculinity was not based on the old trope of the Talmudic scholar nor on the all-American football player at an Ivy League college, but rather argumentation as masculinity.
In the Cold War era, many Jews gave up their leftist radical politics, like support for Stalin, in exchange for middle-class respectability and a defense of Cold War liberalism. Many Jews who first came to America got involved in crime because it was a way to be seen as masculine, although some people saw Jews as being too physically weak to be criminals. Then those Jewish kids went to schools like the City College of New York, where people that supported Stalin would debate people who supported Trotsky. It was mostly male exercise, but a woman could gain respect if she wrote like a man, meaning that if she was assertive and combative.
The first major figure talked about in this book is Lionel Trilling, who was not as combative as the others, and was an English professor, and the book also talks about his wife, Diana. Diana was offended if she was called a lady writer or a woman writer, and she proved that she could write like a man by being super anti-communist, although some men became Marxist to be seen as masculine radicals. The magazine commentary was founded to be a hub of Jewish thought, and the name came from the commentary that would go on in the Talmud. The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was an intra-Jewish conflict of leftist Jews, claiming antisemitism and liberal Jews claiming anticommunism. Irving Howe was a leftist intellectual that formed dissent magazine.
Many New York intellectuals thought that Jewish mothers were emasculating forces that coddled their boys. Jews were overrepresented in both the New York intellectuals and the new left, which was the clash of fathers and sons, with the NYIs preferring verbal combat and the new left preferring street demonstrations and violence. NYIs were Freudians that saw essential gender differences. most of the women resisted feminism because they believed in gender essentialism, except for Diana Trilling.
Midge Decter was anti-feminist, but she was not as famous as Phillis Schlafly because the anti-feminist movement was mostly white evangelical women in the suburbs, but she was a Jewish urbanite. Freudian anti-feminists saw feminists as rejecting their natural place and emasculating men. Decter attacked lesbians for not knowing their natural place, which she viewed as having children with men.
Norman Podhoretz, Decter’s husband, attacked gay men. He saw gay men like Alan Ginsberg and James Baldwin as pushing meekness rather than warlike strength. His neoconservatism was tied to his insecurities over manhood. He often wrote book reviews, which were considered masculine because of its criticism, and was also a good source of income in the 1950s. He saw black Americans as having a weak intellectual life compared to Jewish Americans. Israel’s victory in the Six Day War made the country a symbol of masculine Judaism and a symbol of the triumph of the liberal world. This came especially as the US lost in Vietnam. The New York intellectuals mostly avoided Zionism until 1967. Jewish neocons wanted to have America defend Israel. Neocons spread to other places, like Midge Decter being the editor of the Christian magazine first things. Many new magazines like n+1 and The Point are the successors of the New York intellectuals.
That’s the end of my summary. As for how I feel about this book, I think that the author did a great job showing just how much these intellectuals perceptions of masculinity affected the way they wrote and acted, and how female authors were also able to shape a respectability for themselves through writing like a man. Although sometimes I think this book goes too far and trying to draw a connection between something and either masculinity or femininity. Not everything that happened necessarily involves the discussion of gender.
In the Cold War era, many Jews gave up their leftist radical politics, like support for Stalin, in exchange for middle-class respectability and a defense of Cold War liberalism. Many Jews who first came to America got involved in crime because it was a way to be seen as masculine, although some people saw Jews as being too physically weak to be criminals. Then those Jewish kids went to schools like the City College of New York, where people that supported Stalin would debate people who supported Trotsky. It was mostly male exercise, but a woman could gain respect if she wrote like a man, meaning that if she was assertive and combative.
The first major figure talked about in this book is Lionel Trilling, who was not as combative as the others, and was an English professor, and the book also talks about his wife, Diana. Diana was offended if she was called a lady writer or a woman writer, and she proved that she could write like a man by being super anti-communist, although some men became Marxist to be seen as masculine radicals. The magazine commentary was founded to be a hub of Jewish thought, and the name came from the commentary that would go on in the Talmud. The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was an intra-Jewish conflict of leftist Jews, claiming antisemitism and liberal Jews claiming anticommunism. Irving Howe was a leftist intellectual that formed dissent magazine.
Many New York intellectuals thought that Jewish mothers were emasculating forces that coddled their boys. Jews were overrepresented in both the New York intellectuals and the new left, which was the clash of fathers and sons, with the NYIs preferring verbal combat and the new left preferring street demonstrations and violence. NYIs were Freudians that saw essential gender differences. most of the women resisted feminism because they believed in gender essentialism, except for Diana Trilling.
Midge Decter was anti-feminist, but she was not as famous as Phillis Schlafly because the anti-feminist movement was mostly white evangelical women in the suburbs, but she was a Jewish urbanite. Freudian anti-feminists saw feminists as rejecting their natural place and emasculating men. Decter attacked lesbians for not knowing their natural place, which she viewed as having children with men.
Norman Podhoretz, Decter’s husband, attacked gay men. He saw gay men like Alan Ginsberg and James Baldwin as pushing meekness rather than warlike strength. His neoconservatism was tied to his insecurities over manhood. He often wrote book reviews, which were considered masculine because of its criticism, and was also a good source of income in the 1950s. He saw black Americans as having a weak intellectual life compared to Jewish Americans. Israel’s victory in the Six Day War made the country a symbol of masculine Judaism and a symbol of the triumph of the liberal world. This came especially as the US lost in Vietnam. The New York intellectuals mostly avoided Zionism until 1967. Jewish neocons wanted to have America defend Israel. Neocons spread to other places, like Midge Decter being the editor of the Christian magazine first things. Many new magazines like n+1 and The Point are the successors of the New York intellectuals.
That’s the end of my summary. As for how I feel about this book, I think that the author did a great job showing just how much these intellectuals perceptions of masculinity affected the way they wrote and acted, and how female authors were also able to shape a respectability for themselves through writing like a man. Although sometimes I think this book goes too far and trying to draw a connection between something and either masculinity or femininity. Not everything that happened necessarily involves the discussion of gender.
November 12, 2024
Kind of an amoeba of a book. There's a living center in the idea of "Secular Jewish Masculinity," but the term floats as a signifier invoked in all kinds of different situations: from the sectarian struggles in New York (mostly Jewish) intellectual life of the 1920s and 1930s to the Cold War and on to the emergence of neoconservatism. At times, especially when Grinberg turns to the women whose stories are a significant part of the picture that's often been undervalued, it can seem that anyone who writes "writes like a man." There's a fair amount of information that I hadn't seen put together in anything like this way, but it finally didn't cohere.
Add to that the utter failure of the Princeton University Press editors to eliminate the repetition--often closer to verbatim--that bogs down the prose. And some unfortunate errors of fact such as the claim that Norman Mailer hadn't written any novels between The Naked and the Dead and the 1960s; in fact there were two. And historical "misses" such as the use of Trotskyist and Trotskite as synonyms; Trotskyite was basically a political slur, Trotskyist a descriptive term.
Not a bad book, but something of a missed opportunity.
Add to that the utter failure of the Princeton University Press editors to eliminate the repetition--often closer to verbatim--that bogs down the prose. And some unfortunate errors of fact such as the claim that Norman Mailer hadn't written any novels between The Naked and the Dead and the 1960s; in fact there were two. And historical "misses" such as the use of Trotskyist and Trotskite as synonyms; Trotskyite was basically a political slur, Trotskyist a descriptive term.
Not a bad book, but something of a missed opportunity.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews