012 Jessa Crispin: What Is Wrong With Men

Jessa Crispin’s new book, What Is Wrong With Men, studies American masculinity through a close reading of Michael Douglas’ movie roles from the mid-’80s through the late ’90s. The son of Kirk Douglas, who played Spartacus and Ulysses in the mid-20th century, Michael Douglas arguably dramatized the crisis of American men after the Sixties, because his characters are so startled by what they find sitting across from them at the dinner table.

Jessa’s a sharp-tongued critic and nonfiction writer who runs the arts & commentary website The Culture We Deserve. She originated one of the first online book blogs, called Bookslut, in the early 2000s; she’s a feminist as well as a critic of feminists, and her new book is not just fun, but also a rigorous exploration of the economic aspects of the “masculinity crisis” and what Jessa calls the Zombie Patriarchy.

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Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Pocketcasts

Resources:

What is Wrong With Men, by Jessa Crispin

My Three Dads, by Jessa Crispin

Bookslut is Dead, Long Live Bookslut, a commemorative essay on LitHub

“The Rushdie Narrative,” Mike’s piece about Salman Rushdie on The Culture We Deserve

Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone (1985):

At the bottom of this page you may see Jessa’s Substack bio, which is Bartlebyesque and reads “no thank you.”