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"I don't think men want to read about dating and relationships," Mr. Mezrich said. "They want to read about money, sex and people beating the system."
-- Ginia Bellafante for The NY Times
No! Surely, this is another overhanded generalization castigating men. When it comes to this sort of sexism, one doesn't have to worry about running afoul of political correctness. Feel free to take your best shots at men, as if we were all power-hungry brutes with constant hard-ons, devoid of any of the more tender feelings.
Why, Monk just recently finished re-reading a wonderful cult-classic about the marital relationship and couples struggling to make it work, titled Bondage Basement - an anonymous little work published back in 1980. A failing marriage is restored when the couple learns to communicate again, and the wife becomes a better sex-slave while the husband learns that a master has to be more considerate of his slave's needs. Quite affecting really.
___ ___ ___
[This is an excerpt from the linked book review of "Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions" by Ben Mezrich. The review, incidentally, is titled, "What Do Men Really Want (To Read About)?"]
Mr. Mezrich lacks Michael Lewis's sense of enthusiasm for explaining in lay terms the complicated financial transactions around which so much of the story revolves. No need to thicken the text with a refined description of arbitrage when a term like that seems to evoke so much sexiness for Mr. Mezrich on its own. "Ugly Americans" provides as much of an idea of what it means to short a bond market as "Bergdorf Blondes" does to offer a chemical analysis of collagen. As one reader, an expatriate trader in Hong Kong, said in a note posted on Amazon.com, "This book is amazingly stupid."
It is the night life of Tokyo and Osaka that seems to propel Mr. Mezrich — the hostess clubs, "soaplands" and "sexual harassment clubs" in which Malcolm's colleagues conduct so much of their business. Harassment clubs, one learns from the book, are stage sets of sorts — mock subway cars filled with young women dressed to look like schoolgirls where men pay for the right to chat and fondle....
But then, Mr. Mezrich isn't saddled with the desire to be taken seriously as a writer. "I write for people who don't read."
.
"I don't think men want to read about dating and relationships," Mr. Mezrich said. "They want to read about money, sex and people beating the system."
-- Ginia Bellafante for The NY Times
No! Surely, this is another overhanded generalization castigating men. When it comes to this sort of sexism, one doesn't have to worry about running afoul of political correctness. Feel free to take your best shots at men, as if we were all power-hungry brutes with constant hard-ons, devoid of any of the more tender feelings.
Why, Monk just recently finished re-reading a wonderful cult-classic about the marital relationship and couples struggling to make it work, titled Bondage Basement - an anonymous little work published back in 1980. A failing marriage is restored when the couple learns to communicate again, and the wife becomes a better sex-slave while the husband learns that a master has to be more considerate of his slave's needs. Quite affecting really.
___ ___ ___
[This is an excerpt from the linked book review of "Ugly Americans: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions" by Ben Mezrich. The review, incidentally, is titled, "What Do Men Really Want (To Read About)?"]
Mr. Mezrich lacks Michael Lewis's sense of enthusiasm for explaining in lay terms the complicated financial transactions around which so much of the story revolves. No need to thicken the text with a refined description of arbitrage when a term like that seems to evoke so much sexiness for Mr. Mezrich on its own. "Ugly Americans" provides as much of an idea of what it means to short a bond market as "Bergdorf Blondes" does to offer a chemical analysis of collagen. As one reader, an expatriate trader in Hong Kong, said in a note posted on Amazon.com, "This book is amazingly stupid."
It is the night life of Tokyo and Osaka that seems to propel Mr. Mezrich — the hostess clubs, "soaplands" and "sexual harassment clubs" in which Malcolm's colleagues conduct so much of their business. Harassment clubs, one learns from the book, are stage sets of sorts — mock subway cars filled with young women dressed to look like schoolgirls where men pay for the right to chat and fondle....
But then, Mr. Mezrich isn't saddled with the desire to be taken seriously as a writer. "I write for people who don't read."
.
