What do you think?
Rate this book
Żelazny Jan
Fascynująca opowieść o istocie męskości i męskiej inicjacji, ale także o problemach i wyzwaniach w życiu współczesnego mężczyzny. Jest nowoczesną, a zarazem bardzo starą wizją tego, co nazywamy męskością. Potwierdza siłę mitów i tradycji w przypominaniu i utrwalaniu odwiecznych prawd.
Robert Bly jest poetą, gawędziarzem, tłumaczem i wykładowcą. Za swoje poezje uzyskał wiele nagród, m.in. National Book Award w USA.
Po opublikowaniu Żelazny Jan przez wiele miesięcy zajmował pozycję nr 1 na prestiżowych listach najpoczytniejszych nowości.
Robert Bly jest poetą, gawędziarzem, tłumaczem i wykładowcą. Za swoje poezje uzyskał wiele nagród, m.in. National Book Award w USA.
Po opublikowaniu Żelazny Jan przez wiele miesięcy zajmował pozycję nr 1 na prestiżowych listach najpoczytniejszych nowości.
312 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1990
1618 people are currently reading
12497 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 - 30 of 746 reviews
June 12, 2008
Having just pushed through the deep lakes of thought Bly makes us dwell in, and having exhausted a lot of energy traveling miles and miles of metaphor I feel short of power to describe this book.
I can say that I am, and few would disagree, the least among you to be found in a drum circle, or even drinking starbuck's. Which is not to say that I am better, only more stubborn about these things. And now further admitting my manhood is not at all comfortable with the idea of needing a "men's movement" and winces at the very thought.
Now, having admitted both above to for your consideration I wish to say only that this book is not what I thought it would be, and I am deeply grateful for that.
It is not a manifesto, or a self help instructional, nor commentary passing as self-aggrandizement. It is not an attack (backhanded or otherwise) at women--though I can understand why some modern thinking mothers may feel it is--in fact I felt too often he wasted repeated qualifying line after qualifying line for the sole sake of comforting his women readers, soon to be attackers.
in any case, despite his verbosity he has a genuine richness of mind and spirit and perhaps his real gift is to free men to think in myth again. Perhaps in time the true value of this meandering philosophical work will be revealed as stealing back some wonder and mysticism in an age of reason.
humans love metaphors because most things that mean anything are not so tame as to fit into a single word. Witness the blandness of the word love, or hate, or orgasm when compared to the complexity and depth of the actual thing. And the metaphor is often the closest an author can get to the real thing in written form, and in many ways its the closest some of us can come to painful parts of ourselves. Through this perhaps Bly has found a language for self interaction that free's us from the clinician lurking within us.
Gone are terms like Self Esteem or Ego or confidence and in come the king, and the warriors who protect them and perhaps we find we still have some fight left in us. Perhaps, freed from science we can use imagination to bridge an otherwise uncrossable divide between where we are and where we need to be.
Bly hands us this and I think it is on us resist its complexity, and our desire to consume it. It's on us to allow it to sink in and become part of our vocabulary for visualizing the world, and ourselves.
I can say that I am, and few would disagree, the least among you to be found in a drum circle, or even drinking starbuck's. Which is not to say that I am better, only more stubborn about these things. And now further admitting my manhood is not at all comfortable with the idea of needing a "men's movement" and winces at the very thought.
Now, having admitted both above to for your consideration I wish to say only that this book is not what I thought it would be, and I am deeply grateful for that.
It is not a manifesto, or a self help instructional, nor commentary passing as self-aggrandizement. It is not an attack (backhanded or otherwise) at women--though I can understand why some modern thinking mothers may feel it is--in fact I felt too often he wasted repeated qualifying line after qualifying line for the sole sake of comforting his women readers, soon to be attackers.
in any case, despite his verbosity he has a genuine richness of mind and spirit and perhaps his real gift is to free men to think in myth again. Perhaps in time the true value of this meandering philosophical work will be revealed as stealing back some wonder and mysticism in an age of reason.
humans love metaphors because most things that mean anything are not so tame as to fit into a single word. Witness the blandness of the word love, or hate, or orgasm when compared to the complexity and depth of the actual thing. And the metaphor is often the closest an author can get to the real thing in written form, and in many ways its the closest some of us can come to painful parts of ourselves. Through this perhaps Bly has found a language for self interaction that free's us from the clinician lurking within us.
Gone are terms like Self Esteem or Ego or confidence and in come the king, and the warriors who protect them and perhaps we find we still have some fight left in us. Perhaps, freed from science we can use imagination to bridge an otherwise uncrossable divide between where we are and where we need to be.
Bly hands us this and I think it is on us resist its complexity, and our desire to consume it. It's on us to allow it to sink in and become part of our vocabulary for visualizing the world, and ourselves.
February 10, 2017
A big "poem" on masculinity, every man should read this book. I don't think I can emphasize this enough. And I guess conjoining the word "masculine" and the word "poem" here is "pregnant" with meaning; that is, so much can be induced here. I'm not saying that poetry is exclusively feminine. It's just that being masculine but lacking the ability to "shudder," as Robert Bly puts it, isn't the real thing—it's the masculine shadow, ungrounded, holding the sword, and swinging it sideways, aimlessly. True masculinity, in other words, is capable of feeling.
The goal of this book is to initiate men from boyhood (or pretence of manhood) into manhood. The journey begins with the mother and father, building the bond, swimming in their pond, breaking away, stealing the keys from under the mother's pillow, meeting the Woman with the Golden Hair, cultivating the garden, winning the battle. And finally, the boy once, a man now, a Golden Man now, proposes to the Golden Woman.
In Iron John's story, these events build up quickly. In real life, however, the individuating man would be fifty by the end.
Iron John, The Wild Man, is a symbol: not for the macho/alpha male we see in popular culture, but for that man in touch with the earth, grounded in his lower body, in touch with his instinct, with the uncanny impulses of the deep waters of the unconscious—spontaneous, vigorous, and alive. In a word, he has a strong emotional body that can endure Life.
All I can say, I love this book! I'm definitely reading it again!
The goal of this book is to initiate men from boyhood (or pretence of manhood) into manhood. The journey begins with the mother and father, building the bond, swimming in their pond, breaking away, stealing the keys from under the mother's pillow, meeting the Woman with the Golden Hair, cultivating the garden, winning the battle. And finally, the boy once, a man now, a Golden Man now, proposes to the Golden Woman.
In Iron John's story, these events build up quickly. In real life, however, the individuating man would be fifty by the end.
Iron John, The Wild Man, is a symbol: not for the macho/alpha male we see in popular culture, but for that man in touch with the earth, grounded in his lower body, in touch with his instinct, with the uncanny impulses of the deep waters of the unconscious—spontaneous, vigorous, and alive. In a word, he has a strong emotional body that can endure Life.
All I can say, I love this book! I'm definitely reading it again!
October 8, 2008
Oh, man. We all know how it's said that we can't judge books by their covers, or at least that we shouldn't...but this book can be judged easily with a quick glance at the back cover. Here is the author.
Note the "ethnic" vest over the button-up shirt and velvet ascot. This sums up, metaphorically, my experience of the contents of the book. A little bit hippie, a little bit new-age fetishist, a little bit ladies-man-of-the-1970's...and a little bit straightlaced and conservative underneath it all. So, he's basically promoting the male version of the "bleeding warriors of peace" women who paint murals of pregnant goddesses growing out of trees.
I tried really hard to give this book a fair chance. After all, Robert Bly has taken the time to suggest that men are alienated from their masculine natures and that this condition is bad for everybody. I can get behind that. But I just can't tolerate sentences like "Men and women alike once called on men to pierce the dangerous places, carry handfuls of courage to the waterfalls, dust the tails of the wild boars". WTF? "Dusting" the tails of pigs?
Note the "ethnic" vest over the button-up shirt and velvet ascot. This sums up, metaphorically, my experience of the contents of the book. A little bit hippie, a little bit new-age fetishist, a little bit ladies-man-of-the-1970's...and a little bit straightlaced and conservative underneath it all. So, he's basically promoting the male version of the "bleeding warriors of peace" women who paint murals of pregnant goddesses growing out of trees.
I tried really hard to give this book a fair chance. After all, Robert Bly has taken the time to suggest that men are alienated from their masculine natures and that this condition is bad for everybody. I can get behind that. But I just can't tolerate sentences like "Men and women alike once called on men to pierce the dangerous places, carry handfuls of courage to the waterfalls, dust the tails of the wild boars". WTF? "Dusting" the tails of pigs?
June 20, 2012
A book about perspectives on the "wildness" of men throughout history, with emphasis on the need for a return to the rites of passage laid out metaphorically in the "Iron John" tale as told by the Brothers Grimm, which likely dates back to ancient times. Sounds interesting, right? Except that it turns into a disconnected ramble that assumes anything "ancient" is automatically better than anything contemporary. This is a logical fallacy that makes me more angry every time I come across it. The reason humanity sought development was because the ancient world was a swirl of misery. Just because our attempt to perfect ourselves was a failed project, that doesn't mean the starting point was "better."
In the typical style of adherents to this position, Bly points to the virtues of ancient religious & mythological sources (Shivaism, cult of Dionysis, etc.) without ever judging the actual outcomes for those who chose to participate in these systems. I mean, they're very old, so they must have been better, right?
After a few good introductory chapters the Freudian and Jungian nonsense begins, often signified by phrases like "clearly this means" in reference to the most nebulous concepts. If someone dreams of swimming: "clearly this means his greatest wish is to return to the watery roots of the earliest organisms." Barf.
Because of the incessant pseudo-mysticism, I was reminded of the time I tried to read Joseph Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces." At least the Star Wars movies came out of that...
In the typical style of adherents to this position, Bly points to the virtues of ancient religious & mythological sources (Shivaism, cult of Dionysis, etc.) without ever judging the actual outcomes for those who chose to participate in these systems. I mean, they're very old, so they must have been better, right?
After a few good introductory chapters the Freudian and Jungian nonsense begins, often signified by phrases like "clearly this means" in reference to the most nebulous concepts. If someone dreams of swimming: "clearly this means his greatest wish is to return to the watery roots of the earliest organisms." Barf.
Because of the incessant pseudo-mysticism, I was reminded of the time I tried to read Joseph Campbell's "Hero With A Thousand Faces." At least the Star Wars movies came out of that...
October 6, 2016
The promising start:
1. 'Modern men' are losing their identity
•"...the images of adult manhood given by popular culture are worn out; a man can no longer depend on them". p.1/237
2. 'Feminised men' are unhappy
•"[the soft male has] a gentle attitude toward life...but many of these men are not happy...women begand to desire softer men...it isn't working out". p.3/237
3. 'Feminised men' arose from recent historical changes in parenting
•"The Industrial Revolution...pulled fathers away from their sons and, moreover, placed the sons in compulsory schools where the teachers are mostly women". p.19/237
If this doesn't interest you, stop here.
So, I thought, this book seems to describe how a son's relationship with his parents (mainly father) might gauge his masculinity.
Despite the troubling lack of evidence or logic, and the suspicious repetition of the above three points with the dogmatic tone of "we all know that...[gender bias/phenomenon]" leading every chapter, I thought, this book might offer practical advice for Bly's so-called 'soft' males.
----
My disappointment:
Maybe this book does, did or will help some men discover their identity, which is great, but the few glimmers I found in this I already think I understood by more transparent, recent sources (Freud/Jung/fiction to my own observations).
I tried to like this book, but by the end, disliked this book for 2 main reasons.
SPOILER ALERT (If this book can have one?)
1.It offers no clear practical advice
"Moreover, I am afraid of how-to-do-it books on the Wild Man". p.233/237
This bothered me, as reading 200 pages of, let's face it, very abstract, unrealistic symbolic descriptions of "finding one's masculinity", one is left thinking how exactly this could be done. The only worth I could give this Iron John analogy was if it suggested a method, which if applied, helped one find what the book was suggesting was lost, 'masculinity'. Empiricism: uncredited theory>test> result>credit theory. However, I sometimes feel as if the descriptions served more to change the reader's political views. The president, the use of drugs, and gang warfare were repeatedly sneaked in as the only evidence for something to do with men without fathers. I felt like I was reading a sneaky propaganda piece trying to woo me in with claims to a higher power I alone lacked, no method of attaining it, and out-of-nowhere sociopolitical comparisons embedded as conclusions to a shaky argument.
2. I think this is potentially misleading to the majority of presently young men
I'd say this is presently outdated for men already in their 18-30s, and to me this seems counter-intuitive for finding one's masculinity. Third wave feminism began after the publishing of this book which I think in Western societies has radically changed the general consensus on, and therefore usefulness, of 'traditional gender roles'. Also, doesn't 'poeticising' masculinity without providing practical guidance to attain it encourage men already trapped in 'female realm' to indulge further into the female realm? As in, describing figures as Kings and Godesses encourages men to idealise others, which is in itself seems to contribute directly to the rejection of the soft male. What use are principles grounded in fairy tales? Their context provides them no prescription to the possibilities, requirements or desires of reality. There are no bounds to it. For example, I could develop a fairy tale where (something like) the Wild Man exists as a non-human animal spirits which can be reached only by the closeness afforded by domestic household pets...everyone knows that cats inhabit the female realm and dogs inhabit the male realm *rolls eyes*...and say that dog owners are far more likely to find the Wild Man, and the basis for just 'how appealing' this sounded, some people might see this as actual advice. That might sound as ridiculous as Russell's teapot, but how many assertions of this book really satisfy a burden of proof?
I just feel this book paints a picture of a boy whom becomes a man solely by having "the courage" to rely on others, which I think leaves no room for a more promising interpretation that a boy becomes a man when he becomes unreliant on others. Especially when there seems to be no one way to reach the Wild Man, or one way to 'ride the horses' provided by the Wild Man, it just seems like nothing concrete has been said at all even within the mythopoetic context for how and how not to find the path.
---------
I would only recommend this to fatherless men particularly interested inacting on understanding the effects of the relationship they have/had/would have with their father.
I'm trying to find books more constructive to discussing the current situation for masculinity in Western societies, I welcome recommendations.
1. 'Modern men' are losing their identity
•"...the images of adult manhood given by popular culture are worn out; a man can no longer depend on them". p.1/237
2. 'Feminised men' are unhappy
•"[the soft male has] a gentle attitude toward life...but many of these men are not happy...women begand to desire softer men...it isn't working out". p.3/237
3. 'Feminised men' arose from recent historical changes in parenting
•"The Industrial Revolution...pulled fathers away from their sons and, moreover, placed the sons in compulsory schools where the teachers are mostly women". p.19/237
If this doesn't interest you, stop here.
So, I thought, this book seems to describe how a son's relationship with his parents (mainly father) might gauge his masculinity.
Despite the troubling lack of evidence or logic, and the suspicious repetition of the above three points with the dogmatic tone of "we all know that...[gender bias/phenomenon]" leading every chapter, I thought, this book might offer practical advice for Bly's so-called 'soft' males.
----
My disappointment:
Maybe this book does, did or will help some men discover their identity, which is great, but the few glimmers I found in this I already think I understood by more transparent, recent sources (Freud/Jung/fiction to my own observations).
I tried to like this book, but by the end, disliked this book for 2 main reasons.
SPOILER ALERT (If this book can have one?)
1.It offers no clear practical advice
"Moreover, I am afraid of how-to-do-it books on the Wild Man". p.233/237
This bothered me, as reading 200 pages of, let's face it, very abstract, unrealistic symbolic descriptions of "finding one's masculinity", one is left thinking how exactly this could be done. The only worth I could give this Iron John analogy was if it suggested a method, which if applied, helped one find what the book was suggesting was lost, 'masculinity'. Empiricism: uncredited theory>test> result>credit theory. However, I sometimes feel as if the descriptions served more to change the reader's political views. The president, the use of drugs, and gang warfare were repeatedly sneaked in as the only evidence for something to do with men without fathers. I felt like I was reading a sneaky propaganda piece trying to woo me in with claims to a higher power I alone lacked, no method of attaining it, and out-of-nowhere sociopolitical comparisons embedded as conclusions to a shaky argument.
2. I think this is potentially misleading to the majority of presently young men
I'd say this is presently outdated for men already in their 18-30s, and to me this seems counter-intuitive for finding one's masculinity. Third wave feminism began after the publishing of this book which I think in Western societies has radically changed the general consensus on, and therefore usefulness, of 'traditional gender roles'. Also, doesn't 'poeticising' masculinity without providing practical guidance to attain it encourage men already trapped in 'female realm' to indulge further into the female realm? As in, describing figures as Kings and Godesses encourages men to idealise others, which is in itself seems to contribute directly to the rejection of the soft male. What use are principles grounded in fairy tales? Their context provides them no prescription to the possibilities, requirements or desires of reality. There are no bounds to it. For example, I could develop a fairy tale where (something like) the Wild Man exists as a non-human animal spirits which can be reached only by the closeness afforded by domestic household pets...everyone knows that cats inhabit the female realm and dogs inhabit the male realm *rolls eyes*...and say that dog owners are far more likely to find the Wild Man, and the basis for just 'how appealing' this sounded, some people might see this as actual advice. That might sound as ridiculous as Russell's teapot, but how many assertions of this book really satisfy a burden of proof?
I just feel this book paints a picture of a boy whom becomes a man solely by having "the courage" to rely on others, which I think leaves no room for a more promising interpretation that a boy becomes a man when he becomes unreliant on others. Especially when there seems to be no one way to reach the Wild Man, or one way to 'ride the horses' provided by the Wild Man, it just seems like nothing concrete has been said at all even within the mythopoetic context for how and how not to find the path.
---------
I would only recommend this to fatherless men particularly interested in
I'm trying to find books more constructive to discussing the current situation for masculinity in Western societies, I welcome recommendations.
August 8, 2012
There was a literal moment when my thinking shifted from hating my father to understanding how his life had broken him. In understanding and forgiving him, I also can do so for myself, and some others. I see how people get broken like bones, and heal with limps, and restrictions, and anger that they can not be who they wanted to be, and they might not realize it within themselves. My father never would have. People never thought that way then. I miss my father now, knowing we could have finally done stuff together and enjoyed each others company. Arguably the most important book in my life. Wish I had had it while he was still alive, but it was still important to the quality of the rest of my life.
May 28, 2013
My boyfriend gave this to me and said "Please read this, I think it will help you understand me." So, with grim determination, and a not all too pleasant mindset, I began to read Iron John. Robert Bly is a respected poet and a "leader of men" or, a man who thinks he knows how to make men better men by teaching them to find the wild man inside of them and showing them when and how to make use of his characteristics. I'm not really a fan of the book. I couldn't finish it. This could be because I'm a woman. At first, I found it interesting, but as soon as he started talking about how woman have good intentions when trying to help men grow into themselves or assist in their daily problems we are doing more harm than good. While I agree that this might be true, he just says it too many times for me to be able to stand reading the book without feeling like a useless piece of crap. It disheartened me so much that I could not finish reading it. And Robert states that he means no ill will towards women, and he thinks we are wonderful creatures and have a large purpose in the lives of men, but we just can't do anything to help them and should probably stop trying. I handed it, unfinished, back to my boyfriend, apologized for not wanting to finish it and stated that I did understand him a little better, but I wasn't willing to buy into everything Bly is selling. He believes too firmly in ONE thing for me to be able to agree with him. There is no wiggle room in his theories for other things. If you are a man, chances are you will find a lot in this book helpful and informative, but if you're a woman, this book isn't for you, unless you are intellectually curious about what Bly has to say about the plight of the modern man.
May 25, 2012
One of the Best Books I have ever Read ....
Truly one of the best books I have ever read, and I have read many.
Robert Bly is a Poet and the founder of a Man's Movement. In Iron John he brings both elements to bear in a way that will only truly be understood by men.
That's right. I said it. This book requires a man to truly understand it. Women are welcome. I suppose a man can read Cosmo and come away with something too. You may find that sexist. You may find that unfair. Tough. That's the way it is written and for whom it is written. There are some differences between Men and Woman that go beyond nature's plumbing. Society has a tendency to "civilize" men to keep them "safe" and "productive." There's good reason to do this. What is sad is when men are effectively emasculated and no longer able to commune and rejoice in that "Wild Man" Archetype from whence we came. The hunter, protector and leader. "Iron John" to be precise.
Now don't get me wrong. This is not a book to walk away from and remake yourself in the image of an unkempt slob who scratches himself in public. This is not a shallow, "Be a MAN!" kinda read.
I found myself profoundly affected in reading this as a man in his mid 30's (the age I was at the time.) I did not have a particularly close relationship with my father. In fact there were very few men to whom I could be said to have had a close friendship let a lone a mentoring relationship.
Along comes this book and it presents through beautiful and accessible imagery a book that is about me. I found myself relating and understanding things that I long suspected, but didn't know. Robert Bly as it were put his arm around me and showed me through his imagery and modelling, what was missing in me. My identity and celebration of myself as a man. No woman can give that to me, though I love and respect women. My father didn't give it. I am the target of this book. A man who is drifting unable to connect with something essential.
It's not surprising to me that the evaluations of this book are all over the map. If you aren't a male and if you aren't attuned to and needing the message of this book, it probably feels like you are reading someone else's "male" (pun intended)
This book is especially great for men in their so-called "mid-life" crisis trying to come to terms with who they really are. Any man wanting to "find himself" can benefit from the work if they are able to assimilate and personalize what is presented here.
Iron John has no particularly strong religious overtones. If you want a similar book with Christian context try John Eldridge's "Wild at Heart."
I recommend Iron John strongly. I've experienced the message it brings and it is sorely needed in our society by men who have lost touch and connection with what it means to be a man.
Truly one of the best books I have ever read, and I have read many.
Robert Bly is a Poet and the founder of a Man's Movement. In Iron John he brings both elements to bear in a way that will only truly be understood by men.
That's right. I said it. This book requires a man to truly understand it. Women are welcome. I suppose a man can read Cosmo and come away with something too. You may find that sexist. You may find that unfair. Tough. That's the way it is written and for whom it is written. There are some differences between Men and Woman that go beyond nature's plumbing. Society has a tendency to "civilize" men to keep them "safe" and "productive." There's good reason to do this. What is sad is when men are effectively emasculated and no longer able to commune and rejoice in that "Wild Man" Archetype from whence we came. The hunter, protector and leader. "Iron John" to be precise.
Now don't get me wrong. This is not a book to walk away from and remake yourself in the image of an unkempt slob who scratches himself in public. This is not a shallow, "Be a MAN!" kinda read.
I found myself profoundly affected in reading this as a man in his mid 30's (the age I was at the time.) I did not have a particularly close relationship with my father. In fact there were very few men to whom I could be said to have had a close friendship let a lone a mentoring relationship.
Along comes this book and it presents through beautiful and accessible imagery a book that is about me. I found myself relating and understanding things that I long suspected, but didn't know. Robert Bly as it were put his arm around me and showed me through his imagery and modelling, what was missing in me. My identity and celebration of myself as a man. No woman can give that to me, though I love and respect women. My father didn't give it. I am the target of this book. A man who is drifting unable to connect with something essential.
It's not surprising to me that the evaluations of this book are all over the map. If you aren't a male and if you aren't attuned to and needing the message of this book, it probably feels like you are reading someone else's "male" (pun intended)
This book is especially great for men in their so-called "mid-life" crisis trying to come to terms with who they really are. Any man wanting to "find himself" can benefit from the work if they are able to assimilate and personalize what is presented here.
Iron John has no particularly strong religious overtones. If you want a similar book with Christian context try John Eldridge's "Wild at Heart."
I recommend Iron John strongly. I've experienced the message it brings and it is sorely needed in our society by men who have lost touch and connection with what it means to be a man.
April 10, 2020
In Iron John, Robert Bly presented a moderately interesting idea in a very unsatisfying way. The book uses a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm to outline the parts of what Bly believes make a whole and wholesome man. I don’t have a strong opinion one way or another about the seven aspects of manhood he presents—I can’t confirm or deny them without growing old and looking back at my life to see if I ever developed that way. What really bugged me about this book is that it felt poorly organized, inconclusive, and slightly nonchalant about casual prejudice.
Let’s start with the prejudice. I know this book is a bit dated, at 30 years old, but there are several points that made me double take because Bly chose very strange comparisons or metaphors.
P. 12: “His model was probably consensus, the way the staff at the health food store settles things. I felt the souls of all the women in the room rise up in the air to kill him. Men like that are as dangerous to women as they are to men.”
So, ignoring the fact that this paragraph is complete nonsense, he is dismissive of people who work at health food stores for some reason, and he makes huge assumptions and generalizations about the women in the room, proving his point by attributing an emotion to them, claiming that consensus is bad for everyone. What the heck?! No further explanation, just consensus is a bad method of discussion, period.
He does this over and over, tossing out examples of groups of people to illuminate a metaphor or to clarify a distinction, but often folding a vague insult or judgment into it.
The second aspect that really drove me crazy was his use of the word, “we.” I understand this is a bit petty, but he makes many references to world cultures or literature and he almost always introduces them by saying, “we know that so and so from such and such a place does this.” Without any further explanation of the thing I really do not know (so he should say, “I,” not, “we”), he presents that as proof of whatever idea he is postulating: p 189 “we remember that Orestes, while being pursued by the Furious Invisible Women after he murdered his mother, bit off a finger and threw it at them; when they saw that, some of the black Furious Invisible Women turned white and left him alone... A traditional strategy, then, when one feels too much guilt is to bite off one part of your body and throw it behind you.”
P 207 “we know that the Fisher King, the most famous of all the Arthurian wounded men, had received some sort of genital wound.”
P. 209 “We remember that Hephaestus also had a limp.”
All of these examples are things I did not know and that merited further explanation, and many of them were casually tossed out there and then followed by a complex metaphor presented as fact, such as that suggestion that we have to throw a piece of our body behind us. Without further context, and without far more examples, I am not ready to accept that it was a traditional stratagem. "We" do not know these references and "we" don't just believe your interpretation unless you back it up with analysis and explain how you got there.
This is pretty much the root of my greatest issue with Bly. Almost every paragraph starts with a thesis, and then jumps to a conclusion with no analysis in between. Perhaps he’s right about all of those things, but I cannot know unless he walks me through the steps!
Other times, he is just too selective about his examples and seems to actively ignore the truth. On page 161, he gives many examples of why the number three is a symbol of inadequacy and why four symbolized completeness. Well, Robert, you’re just wrong about that. Look at the trinity, or at a tripod. Tripods cannot wobble! Tables with four legs always wobble. Ask any mathematician and they will tell you that triangles are better (or at least more interesting and useful) in almost every way than four-sided figures. Almost every geometric tool that involves quadrilaterals requires that you treat the quadrilateral as two triangles by dividing it down a diagonal! It’s just wrong to present poetic arguments to prove a point that science knows is wrong: “Three, on the other hand, falls a little short. A three-gated city is not as impressive as a four-gated city, and a planet with only three directions would seem odd to us.” Wtf. We live on a three-direction universe and planet (x,y,z; N/S, E/W, Altitude; forward/backward, left/right, up/down), so what is he even talking about? Any foreign system seems odd until you assimilate into the system, but it's normal to the people who already live with it, so what’s the point of arguing something like that?
Generally, the fact that Bly relies on poetry (mostly his own), conjecture, vague accounts, and metaphor to prove facts is troublesome. Most of his quotations are from poems and I don’t find them comprehensible, convincing, or sufficient. The whole book is a metaphor and pretty much every chapter starts with him presenting an unconventional phrase, defining it, and then declaring that it is the truth and it was known to be the truth for thousands of years until we forgot it recently. The problem is that his definition is also poetry and I can’t figure out what the heck the phrase means! What’s worse is when he claims to know what everyone in a room is feeling or uses one story he heard from a participant in one of his conferences as proof of a point, such as the story about a friend’s dream or about mothers who snuck up to hug their sons and their relationship was never the same again. He is wildly mistaken if he thinks I will accept his dream analysis as evidence of anything at all.
The last chapter explains that he had used Iron John to outline the seven parts of a man, but couldn’t he have said that in the beginning to help me figure out what was happening all along? Instead, the transcription of the fairytale is at the end and the two forewords read more like postscripts.
Lastly, although I found his initiation theory interesting, I found it frustrating that I could not prove or disprove it. I went to boarding school and was a Boy Scout, so there were many times I found myself in situations that might have been initiations with older men. I literally participated in rites of passage around a fire with ritual scripts, costumes, fasting, vows of silence, and pyrotechnics! I spent time around campfires with older men and women (let's be honest–it doesn't have to be a man, it just can't be your mother or someone you sexually desire, male or female) who were doing ritual behavior that was distinctly part of the adult world. I was sent on solo camping trips, told to spend time in solitude in the wilderness. Nobody injured me... I don’t find that part of the book compelling, but at least some of these experiences could surely count as initiation. My father was never abstruse about his work–he's a botanist and he kept test tubes of algae all around our house, including my room, always eager to show me what it was and why it was important. I learned the skills to take care of my home and my health by observing and participating under his guidance. I went to college and grad school and now work a job where I create practical things with my hands, having worked closely with older male mentors to develop these skills over many years. Yes, people still do apprenticeships and journeys today, and no, I don't think they're necessary in order to be a man. I’m the exact opposite of what Bly says American men are like today. I find it troublesome that I can’t confirm or deny his theory since I may have been initiated. What I can deny for sure is his assumption that all Americans have a fucked up home life and a broken family. Stop projecting! I have a feeling that Bly is really just trying to talk through his own problems with his father.
In college, I visited Boston to see an art opening and when I came back to college the next day, I told my professor about a work of art that I couldn't believe made it into the gallery. Somebody had strapped meat onto an R/C vehicle and made a video of it scooting around suburbia. I was aghast and completely disdained the whole concept. My art professor just replied by telling me that there are many different reasons to make art and many different metrics by which people measure success as artists. Couldn't we argue that it was the best art in the whole gallery, given that I hadn't told anybody about any of the other works? I will never forget that lesson. To this day, although I still remember several of the other works that were in that show, the meat R/C is still the only one I ever think about. Perhaps this book is a great success if it drew me to write an essay in response to it...
Let’s start with the prejudice. I know this book is a bit dated, at 30 years old, but there are several points that made me double take because Bly chose very strange comparisons or metaphors.
P. 12: “His model was probably consensus, the way the staff at the health food store settles things. I felt the souls of all the women in the room rise up in the air to kill him. Men like that are as dangerous to women as they are to men.”
So, ignoring the fact that this paragraph is complete nonsense, he is dismissive of people who work at health food stores for some reason, and he makes huge assumptions and generalizations about the women in the room, proving his point by attributing an emotion to them, claiming that consensus is bad for everyone. What the heck?! No further explanation, just consensus is a bad method of discussion, period.
He does this over and over, tossing out examples of groups of people to illuminate a metaphor or to clarify a distinction, but often folding a vague insult or judgment into it.
The second aspect that really drove me crazy was his use of the word, “we.” I understand this is a bit petty, but he makes many references to world cultures or literature and he almost always introduces them by saying, “we know that so and so from such and such a place does this.” Without any further explanation of the thing I really do not know (so he should say, “I,” not, “we”), he presents that as proof of whatever idea he is postulating: p 189 “we remember that Orestes, while being pursued by the Furious Invisible Women after he murdered his mother, bit off a finger and threw it at them; when they saw that, some of the black Furious Invisible Women turned white and left him alone... A traditional strategy, then, when one feels too much guilt is to bite off one part of your body and throw it behind you.”
P 207 “we know that the Fisher King, the most famous of all the Arthurian wounded men, had received some sort of genital wound.”
P. 209 “We remember that Hephaestus also had a limp.”
All of these examples are things I did not know and that merited further explanation, and many of them were casually tossed out there and then followed by a complex metaphor presented as fact, such as that suggestion that we have to throw a piece of our body behind us. Without further context, and without far more examples, I am not ready to accept that it was a traditional stratagem. "We" do not know these references and "we" don't just believe your interpretation unless you back it up with analysis and explain how you got there.
This is pretty much the root of my greatest issue with Bly. Almost every paragraph starts with a thesis, and then jumps to a conclusion with no analysis in between. Perhaps he’s right about all of those things, but I cannot know unless he walks me through the steps!
Other times, he is just too selective about his examples and seems to actively ignore the truth. On page 161, he gives many examples of why the number three is a symbol of inadequacy and why four symbolized completeness. Well, Robert, you’re just wrong about that. Look at the trinity, or at a tripod. Tripods cannot wobble! Tables with four legs always wobble. Ask any mathematician and they will tell you that triangles are better (or at least more interesting and useful) in almost every way than four-sided figures. Almost every geometric tool that involves quadrilaterals requires that you treat the quadrilateral as two triangles by dividing it down a diagonal! It’s just wrong to present poetic arguments to prove a point that science knows is wrong: “Three, on the other hand, falls a little short. A three-gated city is not as impressive as a four-gated city, and a planet with only three directions would seem odd to us.” Wtf. We live on a three-direction universe and planet (x,y,z; N/S, E/W, Altitude; forward/backward, left/right, up/down), so what is he even talking about? Any foreign system seems odd until you assimilate into the system, but it's normal to the people who already live with it, so what’s the point of arguing something like that?
Generally, the fact that Bly relies on poetry (mostly his own), conjecture, vague accounts, and metaphor to prove facts is troublesome. Most of his quotations are from poems and I don’t find them comprehensible, convincing, or sufficient. The whole book is a metaphor and pretty much every chapter starts with him presenting an unconventional phrase, defining it, and then declaring that it is the truth and it was known to be the truth for thousands of years until we forgot it recently. The problem is that his definition is also poetry and I can’t figure out what the heck the phrase means! What’s worse is when he claims to know what everyone in a room is feeling or uses one story he heard from a participant in one of his conferences as proof of a point, such as the story about a friend’s dream or about mothers who snuck up to hug their sons and their relationship was never the same again. He is wildly mistaken if he thinks I will accept his dream analysis as evidence of anything at all.
The last chapter explains that he had used Iron John to outline the seven parts of a man, but couldn’t he have said that in the beginning to help me figure out what was happening all along? Instead, the transcription of the fairytale is at the end and the two forewords read more like postscripts.
Lastly, although I found his initiation theory interesting, I found it frustrating that I could not prove or disprove it. I went to boarding school and was a Boy Scout, so there were many times I found myself in situations that might have been initiations with older men. I literally participated in rites of passage around a fire with ritual scripts, costumes, fasting, vows of silence, and pyrotechnics! I spent time around campfires with older men and women (let's be honest–it doesn't have to be a man, it just can't be your mother or someone you sexually desire, male or female) who were doing ritual behavior that was distinctly part of the adult world. I was sent on solo camping trips, told to spend time in solitude in the wilderness. Nobody injured me... I don’t find that part of the book compelling, but at least some of these experiences could surely count as initiation. My father was never abstruse about his work–he's a botanist and he kept test tubes of algae all around our house, including my room, always eager to show me what it was and why it was important. I learned the skills to take care of my home and my health by observing and participating under his guidance. I went to college and grad school and now work a job where I create practical things with my hands, having worked closely with older male mentors to develop these skills over many years. Yes, people still do apprenticeships and journeys today, and no, I don't think they're necessary in order to be a man. I’m the exact opposite of what Bly says American men are like today. I find it troublesome that I can’t confirm or deny his theory since I may have been initiated. What I can deny for sure is his assumption that all Americans have a fucked up home life and a broken family. Stop projecting! I have a feeling that Bly is really just trying to talk through his own problems with his father.
In college, I visited Boston to see an art opening and when I came back to college the next day, I told my professor about a work of art that I couldn't believe made it into the gallery. Somebody had strapped meat onto an R/C vehicle and made a video of it scooting around suburbia. I was aghast and completely disdained the whole concept. My art professor just replied by telling me that there are many different reasons to make art and many different metrics by which people measure success as artists. Couldn't we argue that it was the best art in the whole gallery, given that I hadn't told anybody about any of the other works? I will never forget that lesson. To this day, although I still remember several of the other works that were in that show, the meat R/C is still the only one I ever think about. Perhaps this book is a great success if it drew me to write an essay in response to it...
December 4, 2010
Iron John is commonly regarded as one of the major men's books written over the past few decades. In many ways it functions as a secular Wild at Heart. It's an easy read that covers a lot of deep issues relating to masculinity.
There's a lot to like about this book, as well as a few problems. I'll start with the good stuff. First, I love the mythological approach Bly takes to masculinity. He's considered one of the foremost figures in the Mythopoetic Men's Movement, and for good reason. He not only understands the value of mythology, he's able to draw you into the myth and teach from it.
Second, the book represented some unique takes on masculine initiation. Much of the discussion of initiation was familiar to other sources, and necessarily so. The only idea of initiation is walking a tried and true path, not reinventing the wheel. However, that doesn't mean there's no room for fresh perspective. I found Bly's suggestion that it may be beneficial and necessary for the lover archetype to come into a boy's life before the warrior to be fascinating. I'm not sure to what extent I agree, but I love the idea.
Third, Iron John represents a balanced and holistic view of masculinity. There's no part of the book where it feels like Bly is short shifting one issue and overemphasizing another. As a result, this is a great introduction to masculine issues.
Now for a couple of drawbacks.
First, Bly can be a bit long winded at times. He's a terrific writer, and I certainly don't want a book that's so condensed and digestible that it loses the beauty of the language. Honestly, I can't stand books like that (I'm looking at you John Maxwell). However, there were times where it felt like a little more trimming would have been appropriate.
Second, I come at men's issues from a mostly evangelical perspective, which Bly does not share. As a result there are places where Bly and I part ways rather decisively. This isn't a criticism in the sense that I expect Bly to share my views, but I also can't pretend as a reader to not be reading from my Christian worldview. As a result, I see Bly's work, while being very good and worthwhile, as ultimately falling short in several areas.
The good far outweighs the bad in this one. This is a must read for any man seeking to understand himself or any woman interested in learning more about the men in her life
There's a lot to like about this book, as well as a few problems. I'll start with the good stuff. First, I love the mythological approach Bly takes to masculinity. He's considered one of the foremost figures in the Mythopoetic Men's Movement, and for good reason. He not only understands the value of mythology, he's able to draw you into the myth and teach from it.
Second, the book represented some unique takes on masculine initiation. Much of the discussion of initiation was familiar to other sources, and necessarily so. The only idea of initiation is walking a tried and true path, not reinventing the wheel. However, that doesn't mean there's no room for fresh perspective. I found Bly's suggestion that it may be beneficial and necessary for the lover archetype to come into a boy's life before the warrior to be fascinating. I'm not sure to what extent I agree, but I love the idea.
Third, Iron John represents a balanced and holistic view of masculinity. There's no part of the book where it feels like Bly is short shifting one issue and overemphasizing another. As a result, this is a great introduction to masculine issues.
Now for a couple of drawbacks.
First, Bly can be a bit long winded at times. He's a terrific writer, and I certainly don't want a book that's so condensed and digestible that it loses the beauty of the language. Honestly, I can't stand books like that (I'm looking at you John Maxwell). However, there were times where it felt like a little more trimming would have been appropriate.
Second, I come at men's issues from a mostly evangelical perspective, which Bly does not share. As a result there are places where Bly and I part ways rather decisively. This isn't a criticism in the sense that I expect Bly to share my views, but I also can't pretend as a reader to not be reading from my Christian worldview. As a result, I see Bly's work, while being very good and worthwhile, as ultimately falling short in several areas.
The good far outweighs the bad in this one. This is a must read for any man seeking to understand himself or any woman interested in learning more about the men in her life
September 3, 2013
I really don't like to give a book only three stars, especially when it's obvious the author worked so hard researching and writing. But, this book really only deserves three stars, in my opinion.
Robert Bly really did his homework when he researced the myth of Iron John. He has an historical illustration for almost every word of the story. It's very impressive.
But, for some reason I can't explain, Bly's writing is difficult for me to understand. I read most of his paragraphs over and over again before giving up and moving on, hoping I got the gist of what he's trying to communicate. That's one reason I gave it three stars.
The other reason is I think some of his explanations and illustrations for situations in the story are really far-fetched. I think he does alot of stretching, and I'm not swallowing it. Really, do all of our actions have mystical implications?
My favorite part of the book is when Bly encourages the reader to decide what he wants, and then pay for it. I repeat that sentiment to anyone who will listen.
I also appreciate Bly's attempt to sypathize with and support the history and pertpetuation of human masculinity. I'm saddened to think of all we've lost as a species in that regard.
So, I think it's a good book, and I recommend it to everyone; just be aware, you may find it difficult to understand and rather far-fetched at times.
Robert Bly really did his homework when he researced the myth of Iron John. He has an historical illustration for almost every word of the story. It's very impressive.
But, for some reason I can't explain, Bly's writing is difficult for me to understand. I read most of his paragraphs over and over again before giving up and moving on, hoping I got the gist of what he's trying to communicate. That's one reason I gave it three stars.
The other reason is I think some of his explanations and illustrations for situations in the story are really far-fetched. I think he does alot of stretching, and I'm not swallowing it. Really, do all of our actions have mystical implications?
My favorite part of the book is when Bly encourages the reader to decide what he wants, and then pay for it. I repeat that sentiment to anyone who will listen.
I also appreciate Bly's attempt to sypathize with and support the history and pertpetuation of human masculinity. I'm saddened to think of all we've lost as a species in that regard.
So, I think it's a good book, and I recommend it to everyone; just be aware, you may find it difficult to understand and rather far-fetched at times.
April 2, 2019
در کل کتاب خوبی بود، البته با توجه به تعریفهایی که از آن شنیده بودم، انتظار داشتم که کتاب بهتری باشد. نویسنده در پی تحلیل «مرد» و عناصر گوناگونی بود که در کنار هم یک «مرد» واقعی و درست و حسابی را میسازند، از عناصر اسطورهای و فرهنگی گرفته تا عناصر ژنتیکی و جسمانی. فارغ از مخالفت و موافقت با نظریههای نویسنده، نوع نگاه او و روش تجزیه و تحلیل او برایم جذاب و خواندنی بود و در برخی از بخشهای کتاب واقعا شور و شوق و اشتیاق مرا برمیانگیخت. کتاب خیلی قوی شروع شده و تا میانههای کار هم واقعا خواندنی و جذاب است، اما رفتهرفته از میانه کتاب به بعد نویسنده آنقدر به حاشیه رفته و شاخ و برگهای زائد را وارد کتاب کرده که گاهی کتاب حوصله مخاطب را سر میبرد و او را در کلافی سردرگم رها میکند که تا پایان کتاب هم گرهش کورتر میشود و آخرسر هم باز نمیشود. به هر روی از خواندن این کتاب راضی هستم و بهویژه بخشهای آغازین کتاب و تحلیل عناصر اسطورهای مردانگی را دوست داشتم. اگر فرصتی دست دهد، میخواهم یکبار دیگر آنرا بخوانم تا بلکه کلاف درهمبرهم و سردرگم آن گشوده شود.
January 3, 2018
Μετά το πέρας της τρίτης ανάγνωσης οφείλω να ομολογήσω πως είναι ένα από τα πιο δυνατά αναγνώσματα που έχω διαβάσει. Παρατηρώ πως η επιρροή του είναι πολύ μεγάλη σε θέματα που μέχρι χθες δεν είχα προσεγγίσει με αυτή την πολύ βαθιά ματιά. Πρόκειται για μια ανθρωπολογική μελέτη επάνω στην αρχετυπική μορφή του άρρενος. Χρησιμοποιώντας το παραμύθι του Σιδηρόγιαννου ο συγγραφέας κάνει μια αποσυμβολοποίηση και αποκαλύπτει κρυμμένη γνώση που εμφορούνται τα παραμύθια χιλιάδες χρονια. Κάθε άνδρας (και όχι μόνο) οφείλει στον εαυτό του την ανάγνωση αυτού του βιβλίου. Είναι μια αποκάλυψη σίγουρα. Ότι και να πω είναι λίγο.
March 28, 2018
Too mystical, too much reliance on shaky metaphors and mythological reinterpretations of bullshit. Also, one gets the impression that Bly is absolutely in love with himself; he'll present poems written by himself as evidence for his point, which would be sketchy under the best circumstances, but when combined with terrible poetry, it becomes unforgivable. Save yourself some time and skip over this one.
July 11, 2017
Stupendous.
Brilliant.
Wonderful.
Charming.
Inspired.
Magical.
Loved it :-)
Brilliant.
Wonderful.
Charming.
Inspired.
Magical.
Loved it :-)
September 27, 2011
Bly is sly. He talks about men without isolating women, without excluding the Divine Feminine from the male experience.
In a day and age where the alpha male has been replaced by the only rational option, the beta male, Bly offers a third way, the nurturing Father.
I really like the way Bly brings in fairy tale, mysticism, some gnosticism, and paganism, and um, even mythicism and also um the kitchen sink to describe the male ego in all of it's complexity.
The most telling, for me, is the chapter on the lost King, concerning modern men's relationships to their workaholic distant Fathers, and embracing of their Mothers. The mothers encouraged men to eschew manual labor (vulgar!) for more 'spiritual' work involving intellectualism. And obviously, with the Enlightenment and the dispatch of Kings, the male ego has no really earthly Father to gaze upon as a Spiritual Guide.
Bly rightly points out that in aboriginal tribes such as Indian and Australian, male initiation still takes place for boys where today in postmodern Western society, the lack of men intervening in boys' lives makes the process much more drawn out, much more protracted and even postponed. What happens in some aboriginal boys' lives at age thirteen only happens to young 'men' aged forty in Western society.
Initiation, for me personally, occurred anonymously and in my late thirties, and lasted much too long. I only now am just coming to grips with the fact it happened and the resultant implications.
It is uncanny the path and waypoints the initiation takes as described in Bly's book and how it was meted out in my own experience, pointing to what must be a universal phenomenon that encompasses many cultures.
I recommend this book for any man who has ever failed miserably at being a 'man'.
The rest already have this stuff down pat, I'm sure.
In a day and age where the alpha male has been replaced by the only rational option, the beta male, Bly offers a third way, the nurturing Father.
I really like the way Bly brings in fairy tale, mysticism, some gnosticism, and paganism, and um, even mythicism and also um the kitchen sink to describe the male ego in all of it's complexity.
The most telling, for me, is the chapter on the lost King, concerning modern men's relationships to their workaholic distant Fathers, and embracing of their Mothers. The mothers encouraged men to eschew manual labor (vulgar!) for more 'spiritual' work involving intellectualism. And obviously, with the Enlightenment and the dispatch of Kings, the male ego has no really earthly Father to gaze upon as a Spiritual Guide.
Bly rightly points out that in aboriginal tribes such as Indian and Australian, male initiation still takes place for boys where today in postmodern Western society, the lack of men intervening in boys' lives makes the process much more drawn out, much more protracted and even postponed. What happens in some aboriginal boys' lives at age thirteen only happens to young 'men' aged forty in Western society.
Initiation, for me personally, occurred anonymously and in my late thirties, and lasted much too long. I only now am just coming to grips with the fact it happened and the resultant implications.
It is uncanny the path and waypoints the initiation takes as described in Bly's book and how it was meted out in my own experience, pointing to what must be a universal phenomenon that encompasses many cultures.
I recommend this book for any man who has ever failed miserably at being a 'man'.
The rest already have this stuff down pat, I'm sure.
June 4, 2016
In my ongoing attempt at self-improvement -- or self-understanding, or whatever -- I finally picked up "Iron John," Robert Bly's 1990 bestseller that gave rise to a thousand drum-beating retreats.
I've been a male for all of my 51 years, but I'm not sure I've ever been a man, or what "being a man" means. I'm hopeless with tools and my last experience with playing football was in junior high school. I'm not a huge fan of action films or explosions. I used to not cry -- "boys don't cry," right? -- but I realized the foolishness of that when I suffered the painful, irreplaceable losses that every human being goes through, whether breakups or death. I've tried to be compassionate and good, and I hope that counts for something, but whether it's manly or simply humane is beyond me.
Bly uses the story of Iron John, which comes to many of us through a Grimm fairy tale, to illustrate his points. Iron John is a wild man (or Wild Man, as Bly has it) who lives in the forest. He is eventually captured by a nearby kingdom and housed in a cage, but is freed by the king's son and returns to the forest with the kid. Iron John then becomes a father figure to the boy, urging in him caution, then industriousness, then warlike strength, and finally wisdom and confidence. Bly departs from the tale many times to explain its symbolism and lament the lack of men in Western society, noting that icy distance nor wanton violence nor pure sensitivity makes a man.
I think he makes some good points, and given my fascination with Jungian psychology, there was plenty of food for thought. But oh, this book became a slog after awhile.
Bly grasps for ancient tales and mythology as if trying to round up all buried knowledge, but instead of clear connections, his meandering writing feels more like digressions surrounding his main point. A poet, he quotes himself (and, to his credit, some others), weakening the book. (His poetry, at least the material in "Iron John," is far weaker than, say, Yeats, Blake or Frost.) What's worse is that he comes across as an anthropology dilettante -- which is not to say that he doesn't know his stuff, just that he's so enthusiastic about offering it that it comes across as messy and unfocused. This may have made a better longish essay. (It does make me want to read a book on the Grimm brothers to see how they compiled their fairy tales, and if they were aware of all the psychological resonances we see today.)
He does make one excellent point towards the end. When "Iron John" came out, it was criticized as suggesting that men get back in touch with nature and their own raw interiors to become better men -- that is, promoting the undisciplined, beastly side of males. But that isn't Bly's point at all, as he notes: "The aim is not to BE the Wild Man, but to be IN TOUCH WITH the Wild Man ... in American culture, past and present, we find people who want to be the Wild Man -- writers as intelligent as Kerouac fail to make the distinction between being, and being in touch with."
And, indeed, the tale of Iron John ends by revealing that Iron John was a king himself who had been enchanted, presumably for some violation of nature or spirit. He, too, had to learn discipline.
It's a nice message and one that resonates with me. But it took a long time to get there with Bly.
I've been a male for all of my 51 years, but I'm not sure I've ever been a man, or what "being a man" means. I'm hopeless with tools and my last experience with playing football was in junior high school. I'm not a huge fan of action films or explosions. I used to not cry -- "boys don't cry," right? -- but I realized the foolishness of that when I suffered the painful, irreplaceable losses that every human being goes through, whether breakups or death. I've tried to be compassionate and good, and I hope that counts for something, but whether it's manly or simply humane is beyond me.
Bly uses the story of Iron John, which comes to many of us through a Grimm fairy tale, to illustrate his points. Iron John is a wild man (or Wild Man, as Bly has it) who lives in the forest. He is eventually captured by a nearby kingdom and housed in a cage, but is freed by the king's son and returns to the forest with the kid. Iron John then becomes a father figure to the boy, urging in him caution, then industriousness, then warlike strength, and finally wisdom and confidence. Bly departs from the tale many times to explain its symbolism and lament the lack of men in Western society, noting that icy distance nor wanton violence nor pure sensitivity makes a man.
I think he makes some good points, and given my fascination with Jungian psychology, there was plenty of food for thought. But oh, this book became a slog after awhile.
Bly grasps for ancient tales and mythology as if trying to round up all buried knowledge, but instead of clear connections, his meandering writing feels more like digressions surrounding his main point. A poet, he quotes himself (and, to his credit, some others), weakening the book. (His poetry, at least the material in "Iron John," is far weaker than, say, Yeats, Blake or Frost.) What's worse is that he comes across as an anthropology dilettante -- which is not to say that he doesn't know his stuff, just that he's so enthusiastic about offering it that it comes across as messy and unfocused. This may have made a better longish essay. (It does make me want to read a book on the Grimm brothers to see how they compiled their fairy tales, and if they were aware of all the psychological resonances we see today.)
He does make one excellent point towards the end. When "Iron John" came out, it was criticized as suggesting that men get back in touch with nature and their own raw interiors to become better men -- that is, promoting the undisciplined, beastly side of males. But that isn't Bly's point at all, as he notes: "The aim is not to BE the Wild Man, but to be IN TOUCH WITH the Wild Man ... in American culture, past and present, we find people who want to be the Wild Man -- writers as intelligent as Kerouac fail to make the distinction between being, and being in touch with."
And, indeed, the tale of Iron John ends by revealing that Iron John was a king himself who had been enchanted, presumably for some violation of nature or spirit. He, too, had to learn discipline.
It's a nice message and one that resonates with me. But it took a long time to get there with Bly.
May 19, 2008
This book is why I love Robert Bly. The modern man is lost, disheveled, and more broken everyday because there is no guidance to lead him into maturity, and through self-discovery. Utilizing the myth of Iron John, Robert Bly offers some answer to the wounds we receive in life, and how those too are means for us to grow well.
May 15, 2013
I haven't learn anything about male initiation other than what I already knew. And what I knew, was a bit different and far more useful than what Robert Bly explains. It seems that he tries to put pieces of male initiation together, but in reality, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
I agree with one thing - a boy, if he wants to become a man, need the elders to do so. It seems that Robert Bly never had the elders to help him, and thus, he walked blindly through the writing process of this book.
I agree with one thing - a boy, if he wants to become a man, need the elders to do so. It seems that Robert Bly never had the elders to help him, and thus, he walked blindly through the writing process of this book.
January 20, 2014
A cross between Jungian psychology, Poetry, and Fairy Tales, this book neatly intersects many of my primary interests. Written by the poet Robert Bly, it's an odd journey through the archetypal psychic development of men in western culture, focusing on the uses of and need for initiation rites and spiritual life, and a Jungian interpretation of the fairy tale "Iron John". There are some remarkable insights here, though also some pretty specious claims.
May 5, 2021
Are modern men lost?
In this piece, author examines the manhood of a modern man, precisely the lack of it, based on mythological stories, ancient practices and poetry.
He names a few types of an American man — the gentle, nonviolent and passive “sixties-seventies man” greatly influenced by the second wave feminism movement, then its’ opposite — the “fifties man” who is aggressive, overly stoic, and rather brutal. Author advocates for the third type — a man who is capable of feeling both sides of emotions spectrum, being the free, wild man who has reached adulthood and has taken ownership of his own life.
I somewhat agree with author’s opinion on the importance of father or other male role model in a boy’s life. As we know by the statistics too many boys are raised in a father-absent or father-passive homes, which, author claims, leaves an inner void.
He also argues that active intervention of older men is crucial to boy’s development, especially when transitioning to a grown up.
In ancient societies boys were transitioned to men by various of rituals, for example, being taken from a mother and sent to the wilderness to survive. Once he comes back, if he does, he is no longer a boy — he is part of the men in their community.
Today there are no more such practices, at least in the western world, which can be a reason some men are stuck in their boyish phase, or as Jordan Peterson would say — old infant’s phase.
Author believes that despite the purest intentions of a single mother, she cannot raise a man. “Women can change the embryo to a boy, but only men can change the boy to a man.”
Unfortunately this point is the only one I can agree with, the rest of the book was hardly readable and has not taught me a lot. The question that is bothering me (what is masculinity?) is left unanswered.
In this piece, author examines the manhood of a modern man, precisely the lack of it, based on mythological stories, ancient practices and poetry.
He names a few types of an American man — the gentle, nonviolent and passive “sixties-seventies man” greatly influenced by the second wave feminism movement, then its’ opposite — the “fifties man” who is aggressive, overly stoic, and rather brutal. Author advocates for the third type — a man who is capable of feeling both sides of emotions spectrum, being the free, wild man who has reached adulthood and has taken ownership of his own life.
I somewhat agree with author’s opinion on the importance of father or other male role model in a boy’s life. As we know by the statistics too many boys are raised in a father-absent or father-passive homes, which, author claims, leaves an inner void.
He also argues that active intervention of older men is crucial to boy’s development, especially when transitioning to a grown up.
In ancient societies boys were transitioned to men by various of rituals, for example, being taken from a mother and sent to the wilderness to survive. Once he comes back, if he does, he is no longer a boy — he is part of the men in their community.
Today there are no more such practices, at least in the western world, which can be a reason some men are stuck in their boyish phase, or as Jordan Peterson would say — old infant’s phase.
Author believes that despite the purest intentions of a single mother, she cannot raise a man. “Women can change the embryo to a boy, but only men can change the boy to a man.”
Unfortunately this point is the only one I can agree with, the rest of the book was hardly readable and has not taught me a lot. The question that is bothering me (what is masculinity?) is left unanswered.
January 11, 2016
This book is absolutely loaded with psychological insight. Reading this book felt almost surreal at times because of how it brought together so many different things that I have read into a cohesive whole. Robert Bly discusses the importance of male initiation rituals on a male's psychological in theself-development in ancient societies. I had first become aware of the existence of these male initiation rituals through reading Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology. When I first read that book I was thinking that modern men need a similar kind of system in order to harness the masculine power within in a constructive way.
Men and male development are more complicated issues than contemporary society is willing to recognize. There is, as Robert Bly says and which I have noticed long before I even read this book, a subtle crisis in the modern world in regards to male mental health. Men are much more likely than women to commit suicide, and this is especially true in western countries. Obviously something must be done, and Robert Bly points the way.
I will write a more in-depth review when I have the time.
Men and male development are more complicated issues than contemporary society is willing to recognize. There is, as Robert Bly says and which I have noticed long before I even read this book, a subtle crisis in the modern world in regards to male mental health. Men are much more likely than women to commit suicide, and this is especially true in western countries. Obviously something must be done, and Robert Bly points the way.
I will write a more in-depth review when I have the time.
February 7, 2022
Men and masculinity have been under attack as of late. There are shouts of "toxic masculinity" and how males are a "problem" in society today. None of that is true. Whatever is masculine cannot be toxic and whatever is toxic cannot be masculine. "Toxic masculinity" is an oxymoronic statement.
Robert Bly suggests that there are two choices in which a man can behave; there is "Savage" and there is "Wild". Bly uses an ancient fable of "Iron John" to illustrate and differentiate between the two.
I gained an incredible amount of insight from Bly in his explanations (& many poems) that he shares in this book. For me, I realized that the "Savage" man is someone who succumbs to their unbridled emotions and creates a prison for himself while the "Wild" man is a man of agency. A "Wild" man uses that agency to create and maintain his own freedom. Freedom from the bonds of emotional fallout and forcing that fallout upon others.
Read IRON JOHN: A BOOK ABOUT MEN and discover for yourself what makes YOU "Savage" and what gives you the freedom of the "Wild" man.
Robert Bly suggests that there are two choices in which a man can behave; there is "Savage" and there is "Wild". Bly uses an ancient fable of "Iron John" to illustrate and differentiate between the two.
I gained an incredible amount of insight from Bly in his explanations (& many poems) that he shares in this book. For me, I realized that the "Savage" man is someone who succumbs to their unbridled emotions and creates a prison for himself while the "Wild" man is a man of agency. A "Wild" man uses that agency to create and maintain his own freedom. Freedom from the bonds of emotional fallout and forcing that fallout upon others.
Read IRON JOHN: A BOOK ABOUT MEN and discover for yourself what makes YOU "Savage" and what gives you the freedom of the "Wild" man.
March 30, 2022
Look, this book is a lot. I would not recommend it for everyone, and had to keep my cynicism in check, but I liked it.
Bly, a poet, believed that men today are alienated from their masculinity, unsure about their role in a changed society. Some of this has to with industrialisation and urbanisation (he quotes Blake a lot, as well as D.H. Lawrence's essay Men Must Work and Women as Well, about his generation's turn away from physical labour). Some is to do with feminism and evolving gender roles. Bly supports these: he rejects the masculinity of the 50s, of the emotionally repressed, strong and silent provider. His is a masculinity that can contain and encourage feminism and strong women, homosexual love, and talking about your feelings. It is rooted in mythology: fairy tales (such as the titular Iron John, whose summary and analysis forms the spine of the book), Jungian archetypes, Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves, and other detrita from the Age of Aquarius.
In Bly's telling, male coming of age must involve some kind of communion with an inner "Iron John", a sort of warrior wild-man. The goal of this process is not to become this being ("no ancient Greek wanted to be Zeus"), but to channel some of its spirit. Without going through this - when suppressing any exposure to death, violence, pain - men will act out in different ways (teenagers stealing cars, midlife crises, etc.), struggle to build relationships with women built on mutual respect, feel frustrated and unfulfilled.
For our actual warrior class, the veterans of Vietnam or Iraq, there is no heroic homecoming but instead a sense of shame:
The book is full of great literary references: Kafka's The Judgment (a heart-rendingly gorgeous metaphor for today's basement-dwelling "failsons"); Chekhov's story about codependency The Darling (which ends with a sleeping child shouting, "I'll give it to you! Get away, shut up!"); Robert Frost's poem "Home Burial" (the way he "sustains the tension between opposites", in this case the alternate approaches of Frost and his wife Elinor as he digs a grave for their infant son). He also sees the Biblical "hairy man" Esau as a hint to the wild man being exiled by the agriculturalists symbolised by Jacob (which will not surprise reader's of Boyarin's Unheroic Conduct). From cinema, Bly also mentions that classic bad father figure Darth Vader. (I will continue to defend to the death the overlooked classic Hot Rod (2007), whose stepfather - who the son must wrestle and lose to over and over - is Darth Vader repeated as farce.)
Much has changed since Bly's book became a bestseller and launched a movement. But talk of a "crisis of masculinity" is still fairly common (and we might add a biochemical factor, the secular decline in testosterone). I'll end with a passage from the book that addresses some common criticisms.
Bly, a poet, believed that men today are alienated from their masculinity, unsure about their role in a changed society. Some of this has to with industrialisation and urbanisation (he quotes Blake a lot, as well as D.H. Lawrence's essay Men Must Work and Women as Well, about his generation's turn away from physical labour). Some is to do with feminism and evolving gender roles. Bly supports these: he rejects the masculinity of the 50s, of the emotionally repressed, strong and silent provider. His is a masculinity that can contain and encourage feminism and strong women, homosexual love, and talking about your feelings. It is rooted in mythology: fairy tales (such as the titular Iron John, whose summary and analysis forms the spine of the book), Jungian archetypes, Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves, and other detrita from the Age of Aquarius.
In Bly's telling, male coming of age must involve some kind of communion with an inner "Iron John", a sort of warrior wild-man. The goal of this process is not to become this being ("no ancient Greek wanted to be Zeus"), but to channel some of its spirit. Without going through this - when suppressing any exposure to death, violence, pain - men will act out in different ways (teenagers stealing cars, midlife crises, etc.), struggle to build relationships with women built on mutual respect, feel frustrated and unfulfilled.
For our actual warrior class, the veterans of Vietnam or Iraq, there is no heroic homecoming but instead a sense of shame:
When an old Celtic warrior, such as Cuchulain, returned from battle, the whole community would take part in the ritual. Sometimes a group of women, his mother among them, would bare their breasts at him to awaken compassion, and the men would place him, still in the madness of the heated midbrain, into three tubs of water, one after the other, to cool him down. The first tub of water would vanish on contact, the second would boil away, and so on. We asked the Vietnam men to become soldiers. But there have been no ceremonies emphasizing compassion, no acknowledgement of heat, no honouring of a requested madness.At the other end of this journey is a pride in masculinity, comfortable and non-violent, like that of the heron, deer or peacock ("'the pride of the peacock is the glory of God', Blake says"), although Bly is never big on details.
The book is full of great literary references: Kafka's The Judgment (a heart-rendingly gorgeous metaphor for today's basement-dwelling "failsons"); Chekhov's story about codependency The Darling (which ends with a sleeping child shouting, "I'll give it to you! Get away, shut up!"); Robert Frost's poem "Home Burial" (the way he "sustains the tension between opposites", in this case the alternate approaches of Frost and his wife Elinor as he digs a grave for their infant son). He also sees the Biblical "hairy man" Esau as a hint to the wild man being exiled by the agriculturalists symbolised by Jacob (which will not surprise reader's of Boyarin's Unheroic Conduct). From cinema, Bly also mentions that classic bad father figure Darth Vader. (I will continue to defend to the death the overlooked classic Hot Rod (2007), whose stepfather - who the son must wrestle and lose to over and over - is Darth Vader repeated as farce.)
Much has changed since Bly's book became a bestseller and launched a movement. But talk of a "crisis of masculinity" is still fairly common (and we might add a biochemical factor, the secular decline in testosterone). I'll end with a passage from the book that addresses some common criticisms.
Geneticists have discovered recently that the genetic difference in DNA between men and women amounts to just over three percent. That isn’t much. However the difference exists in every cell of the body. We know that many contemporary men have become ashamed of their three percent. Some feel shame over the historical past, over oppressive patriarchies, insane wars, rigidities long imposed. Other men who have seen their fathers fail to be true to the masculine and its values don’t want to be men. But they are. I think that for this century and this moment it is important to emphasize the three percent difference that makes a person masculine, while not losing sight of the ninety-seven percent that men and women have in common.
Some say, "Well, let’s just be human, and not talk about masculine or feminine at all." People who say that imagine they are occupying the moral high ground. I say that we have to be a little gentle here, and allow the word masculine and the word feminine to be spoken, and not be afraid that some moral carpenter will make boxes of those words and imprison us in them. We are all afraid of boxes, and rightly so.
Many men say to me they literally don’t know what the word man means, nor whether they are grown men or not. When an older man riskily names some masculine qualities which he sees, then the younger man can see how far he is from that spot, in what direction it lies, and whether he wants to go in that direction at all. Simply naming human attributes doesn’t help such a man. I’ve mentioned that certain contemporary female psychologists believe in naming womanly attributes as well, so that a woman can become a conscious woman instead of an unconscious one. All naming of qualities is dangerous, because the naming can be made into boxes. But we have to hope to do better than in the past...
Some people believe that "men’s work" is important only for some men, the "sensitive ones." "Well, all this mythology stuff is fine for the sensitive men; they probably need it. But I see construction workers eating their lunch with other men - they don’t have any problem with their masculinity. They don’t even think about it. They are the real men..."
But do the twenty-six-year-old journalists, men and women, who say this truly believe that blue-collar workers do not feel shame about being men? Do they imagine that the childhood homes of these "men’s men" were not also messed-up? Whenever a man makes insulting remarks to women going by he is usually doubly insecure in that he remains unaware of the shame.
Dividing men that way into "sensitive men" and "construction workers" makes no sense anyway. The blue-collar workers and woodsmen who have participated in the conferences that I have experienced are just as thoughtful and sensitive as any professors, CEOs, or therapists. So I think we have to say that the shame over the three percent and the pride over the three percent belong to all contemporary men, not just to some.
November 13, 2020
قبل از برداشتن این کتاب، به صحبتها و لحن نویسنده آن گوش دهید. شاید برای شما نباشد، شاید زمان مناسب تری برای بازکردن آن پیش آید.
https://youtu.be/TP3HWLIL1Aw
مترجم در اکثر صفحات کتاب حضور پررنگی دارد که با اتصال نوشتههای نویسنده به فرهنگ و ادب ایرانی، خود تجربهی خواندن را دگرگون میکند، از دید من برای بدتر؛ مانند اینکه دو پدربزرگ همزمان در پی نصحیت تو باشند.
https://youtu.be/TP3HWLIL1Aw
مترجم در اکثر صفحات کتاب حضور پررنگی دارد که با اتصال نوشتههای نویسنده به فرهنگ و ادب ایرانی، خود تجربهی خواندن را دگرگون میکند، از دید من برای بدتر؛ مانند اینکه دو پدربزرگ همزمان در پی نصحیت تو باشند.
September 12, 2020
چندان جذبم نکرد
December 13, 2022
کتاب درباره تاثیر پدران غایب یا فقدان پدر است (به هر شکلی) و البته راهنماییهایی گنگ برای پیدا کردن مسیر که برای توضیح آن از قصه آیرون جان استفاده میکند.
کمی بیشتر از نیمهی آن را خواندم اما دیگر نمیخواهم ادامه بدهم. تا همین جا هم نمیدانم چطور حوصله کردم! چندین صفحه را میخواندم و چیزی دستم را نمیگرفت.
متاسفانه مشکلم با «کتابهای یونگی» مثل قبل باقی مانده، حرف از اساطیر و الگوها و فاصله گرفتن از «حالا» و «واقعیت»، بیان نامشخص و مبهم و نبودِ چفتوبست بین محتوای آنها، تعدادی انگشتشمار از الگوها و جای دادن همه آدمها در این قالبها.
هر چه بود خلاص شدم!
کمی بیشتر از نیمهی آن را خواندم اما دیگر نمیخواهم ادامه بدهم. تا همین جا هم نمیدانم چطور حوصله کردم! چندین صفحه را میخواندم و چیزی دستم را نمیگرفت.
متاسفانه مشکلم با «کتابهای یونگی» مثل قبل باقی مانده، حرف از اساطیر و الگوها و فاصله گرفتن از «حالا» و «واقعیت»، بیان نامشخص و مبهم و نبودِ چفتوبست بین محتوای آنها، تعدادی انگشتشمار از الگوها و جای دادن همه آدمها در این قالبها.
هر چه بود خلاص شدم!
February 29, 2016
This is quite a profound book, that sits uneasily at the interjections of mythology, psychology, and literary criticism. The author, through the beautiful use of a framing device (an ancient Germanic fairy tale collected by the Grimm brothers), investigates the morass of contemporary masculinity.
Fundamentally, the problem with today's men has nothing to do with the men themselves ; rather, it is the destruction of a healthy masculine tradition, and the consequent destruction of appropriate initiation rituals, that leaves men in the modern era feeling rootless, disempowered, with weak boundaries, and, having been stripped of their relevance and identity, hoping to achieve both by collaborating with the feminine principle in order to redeem the endarkened Father (a metaphor for masculinity itself).
One only has to remember Camille Paglia's quip ("A woman simply becomes a woman. A man must prove that he has become a man.") , to recognize the the fundamental validity of the author's concern over the loss of male initiation rituals, and broadly, the loss of a larger masculine tradition and community.
The book, too, is a beautiful thing, sprinkled with profound poems (the author's own, as well as by other luminaries), literary meditations, dwellings on Ancient Greece and Egypt, before revisiting the framing-story at strategic intervals. It is simultaneously a hymn of despair and hope.
Fundamentally, the problem with today's men has nothing to do with the men themselves ; rather, it is the destruction of a healthy masculine tradition, and the consequent destruction of appropriate initiation rituals, that leaves men in the modern era feeling rootless, disempowered, with weak boundaries, and, having been stripped of their relevance and identity, hoping to achieve both by collaborating with the feminine principle in order to redeem the endarkened Father (a metaphor for masculinity itself).
One only has to remember Camille Paglia's quip ("A woman simply becomes a woman. A man must prove that he has become a man.") , to recognize the the fundamental validity of the author's concern over the loss of male initiation rituals, and broadly, the loss of a larger masculine tradition and community.
The book, too, is a beautiful thing, sprinkled with profound poems (the author's own, as well as by other luminaries), literary meditations, dwellings on Ancient Greece and Egypt, before revisiting the framing-story at strategic intervals. It is simultaneously a hymn of despair and hope.
February 19, 2015
It's hard to believe that this was first published in 1984 (30 years ago! What?!), because the problems it attempts to address are just as relevant today, if not more so. Debates about gender politics are so inflammatory and so complex that it's refreshing to read something thoughtful, emotional, and occasionally silly about what it means to be a man.
Like many other Goodreads reviewers, I agreed with many of Bly's key points, but found his writing to be a slog. Many of his references were incredibly obscure, much of his analysis of "traditional cultures" were sweeping generalizations (having gone to school for anthropology, these hit me hard--but I appreciated his nod to Victor Turner), and he used many anecdotes and snippets of personal conversations to back up his ideas. But Bly isn't a sociologist, or an anthropologist, and this isn't a scholarly work. It's more of a thought piece, and I had to keep reminding myself that it's okay for him to not be rigorously accurate. It's what at the heart of the book that counts, and that's what I've taken away from it.
Like many other Goodreads reviewers, I agreed with many of Bly's key points, but found his writing to be a slog. Many of his references were incredibly obscure, much of his analysis of "traditional cultures" were sweeping generalizations (having gone to school for anthropology, these hit me hard--but I appreciated his nod to Victor Turner), and he used many anecdotes and snippets of personal conversations to back up his ideas. But Bly isn't a sociologist, or an anthropologist, and this isn't a scholarly work. It's more of a thought piece, and I had to keep reminding myself that it's okay for him to not be rigorously accurate. It's what at the heart of the book that counts, and that's what I've taken away from it.
August 18, 2010
I read this book based on the recommendation from a graduate student in my Women Studies program. I had the hardest time reading it though. It was a very frustrating read in general. I felt like Bly generalizes masculinity so he can fit it into the story of Iron John. It also felt very essentialist. Whether or not the story of Iron John is a good method for boys to learn masculinity, it is certainly not the only way, but while reading this, it felt like my only option.
I wish I could have stopped myself from reading this, because I had already decided I couldn't stand it after half of it.
I wish I could have stopped myself from reading this, because I had already decided I couldn't stand it after half of it.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 746 reviews