The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom - Hardcover

Jones, Daniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060565349 ISBN 13: 9780060565343

Publisher: William Morrow, 2004

Synopsis

The husband of The Bitch in the House responds with a collection of original pieces by male writers about what men desire, need, love, and loathe in their relationships today ...

Cathi Hanauer's bestselling The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood, and Marriage spurred a national conversation about the level of friction in contemporary marriages and relationships. Now her husband, Daniel Jones, has rallied the men for the "literary equivalent of The Full Monty," in which twenty-seven thoughtful, passionate, and often hilarious men lay it bare when it comes to their wives and girlfriends, their hopes and fears.Enough with pop psychiatrists telling us why men lie, cheat, and want nothing more than to laze around the house in front of the TV. Enough with women wondering aloud -- at increasing volume -- why the men in their lives behave the way they do. The time has come for men to speak for themselves.

Many of the husbands and fathers in these pages contemplate aspects of their personal lives they've never before revealed in print -- they kick open the door on their marriages and sex lives, their fathering and domestic conflicts, their most intimate relationships and situations. Yet unlike the average meat-and-potatoes father who still rules the roost, these men are grappling with new ideas of manhood -- some that they are going after and grabbing, and others that are being thrust upon them by a changing world.

Powerful, heartfelt, and irreverent, The Bastard on the Couch is a bold, unprecedented glimpse into the dark corners and glaring truths of modern relationships that is guaranteed to amuse, entertain, enrich, and provoke.

About this title

About the Author:

Daniel Jones has edited the Modern Love column in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times since its inception in October 2004. His books include two essay anthologies, Modern Love and The Bastard on the Couch, and a novel, After Lucy, which was a finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Award. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, Parade, Real Simple, Redbook, and elsewhere. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, with his wife, writer Cathi Hanauer, and their two children.

From Publishers Weekly:

Last year's much-ballyhooed The Bitch in the House, edited by Hanauer, collated essays by women on their frustration and rage. Now Jones (Hanauer's husband and a novelist and journalist) offers the male version, wherein guys discuss how they feel about their standing in today's shifting cultural landscape (that is, if they care at all). As Jones notes, "The fact that women are in charge of their own birth control and reproduction may be a gigantic cultural shift, but I've yet to hear a single man complain about it." Divided into sections on "Hunting and Gathering," "Can't Be Trusted With Simple Tasks," "Bicycles for Fish" and "All I Need," the essays vary from somewhat revelatory to unsurprising, but they are almost uniformly entertaining and well written. There are several pieces in the vein of Christopher Russell's droll snippet about being bossed around by his Type A wife. Despite her "officious way," deep down, Russell knows her fussiness is often necessary. Some are more visceral, like Robert Skates's display of his jaded humor about the pain of divorce ("Punching doors seems to help. Throwing phones through windows ain't bad either"), or Jarhead author Anthony Swofford's wry tale of beating up a guy at a bar who was molesting Swofford's passed-out girlfriend. While precious few entries stray from the rested maunderings of educated professionals-there's no real scoop on what guys on the assembly line think-the book still manages to open a window into a place many women are pretty convinced doesn't exist: the male psyche.
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About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0060565349
• ISBN 13: 9780060565343
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320