Brian Stout

“Hank was walking barefoot up the dock, carrying his sweatshirt over a freckled shoulder and his boots clamped between thumb and finger of that maimed hand. Lee marveled at the scamper of small muscles across the narrow white back, at the swing of the arms and the lift of the neck. Did it take that much muscle just to walk, or was Hank showing off his manly development? Every moment constituted open aggression against the very air through which Hank passed. He doesn't just breathe, Lee decided, listening to Hank's broken-nosed puffing, he gobbles the oxygen. He doesn't just walk; he consumes distance step by carnivorous step. Open aggression is what it is all right, he concluded.

Yet couldn't help but notice the way those shoulders seemed to savor the swing of the arms, or the way those feel relished the feel of the dock. These people...am I one of these people?”
― Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion

“The structural foundations of traditional manhood--economic independence, geographic mobility, domestic dominance--have all been eroding. The transformation of the workplace--the decline of the skilled worker, global corporate relocations, the malaise of the middle-class manager, the entry of women into the assembly line and the corporate office--have pressed men to confront their continued reliance on the marketplace as the way to demonstrate and prove their manhood.”
― Michael S. Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History

“But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that’s starving me.’’ “I don’t know. Maybe there’s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn’t men at all. Maybe, like you said, the property’s doing it. Anyway I told you my orders.’’ “I got to figure,’’ the tenant said. “We all got to figure. There’s some way to stop this. It’s not like lightning or earthquakes. We’ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that’s something we can change.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath