Wednesday, January 08, 2020

Top ten books about toxic masculinity

Ani Katz is a writer, photographer, and teacher. She was born and raised on the South Shore of Long Island, New York, and holds an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago and a BA from Yale. She lives in Brooklyn.

Katz's new novel is A Good Man.

At the Guardian she tagged ten favorite books about toxic masculinity. One title on the list:
The Iliad by Homer

The original epic of toxic masculinity. The entire story is set in motion by the warrior Achilles’ monumental tantrum over being forced to give up a captive woman he considers his property, which results in a pissing contest at the expense of thousands of lives. In the end, the men weep as they reckon with the human cost of war before renewing their campaign of mutual destruction.
Read about the other entries on the list.

The Iliad also appears on John Gittings's list of five top books on peace, Becky Ferreira's list of her seven favorite tales of revenge in literature, the Barnes & Noble Review's list of five books on the Olympians, Madeline Miller's list of ten favorite classical works, Bettany Hughes's six best books list, James Anderson Winn's five best list of works of war poetry, and John Mullan's lists of ten of the best funerals in literature and ten of the best examples of ekphrasis. It is one of Karl Marlantes's top ten war stories.

--Marshal Zeringue