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 In a day and age where the alpha male has been replaced by the only rational option, the beta male, Bly offers a third way, the nurturing Father.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.
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