Book Review: All That Man Is
Instead of the seven ages of Man, David Szalay goes two better than Shakespeare and gives us nine. In All That Man Is, he presents a prototypical male – in this case, white European – at various stages of life. Each chapter features a self-contained story of a man floundering in a world he doesn’t quite understand. We follow the progress across the ages, from a 17-year-old student on a trip across Europe to a 73-year-old man on retreat in Italy.
Each story follows the same structure: the main character is traveling away from home and is outside his comfort zone. He has no close friends, merely associates. There is a longing for love, even if the man is already in a significant relationship.
In the first tale, 17-year-old Simon is traveling with his friend Ferdinand, but his thoughts are on Karen Fielding, a girl he knows from school. It is unrequited love, and that’s what makes it so poignantly romantic to Simon. All he wants is to return home to explore this new relationship, yet he hesitates because dreams are safer than possible failure. When he and Ferdinand rent a spare room in an apartment, the landlady boldly flirts with Simon. Even when she becomes practically brazen, he ignores the suggestions – out of shyness, innocence, or fear – he needs to maintain the purity of his fantasy love rather than succumb to sordid reality.
In the fourth story, Szalay channels Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” when Karel learns that his girlfriend Waleria is pregnant. Because a child would disrupt his professional plans, he pressures her to have an abortion. Karel exhibits the worst characteristics of male dominance – questioning whether the child is his, using emotional blackmail to get his way. Waleria calls him on his selfishness, but that is not something he can fathom about himself.
Szalay’s male characters feel like they don’t know how to fit into the world. They are ill at ease, even when they are good at the game of appearing confident. There is a sense that time is running out on them. At the end of the sixth story, James is walking with his son Tom, who keeps running ahead. For all his plans to build a successful future, James is deeply aware that youth is getting out of reach, so he practices his current mantra: Life is not a joke.
The female characters have a marginal presence in the stories, since the men simply don’t know how to relate. Men are more focused on their careers, on beating out their rivals, on achieving professional success. Even in the stories in which the main character is attracted to a woman, there is never a sense of emotional attachment. Women are something to be attained. Instead, the men succumb to a sort of existential longing for love but lack the ability to define what that need is.
There is a certain presumptuousness to the title: All That Man Is, while it covers broad themes, keeps to a very white male perspective. The characters come from a variety of European nations, yet there is a thematic connectedness across the stories, even to the point that they tangentially touch one another. For example, in the last chapter, you learn that Tony is the grandfather of Simon from the first chapter. Does it matter? Only as a way to stress the threadbare connections that men feel.
"Men need to grow up already!"
By chance, I read this novel on my way to the Women’s March in DC. I would say that it was an ironic choice on my part, but the truth is that the novel was a perfect example of the patriarchy that women are protesting. Feminism, for me, promotes a sense that everyone has a story, and that one narrative thread doesn’t fit all.
Szalay suggests that part of the troubling limitations that men feel is that they remain isolated from one another. They forgo deeper connection because they are uncertain of their place in the world. Perhaps if the characters in All That Man Is were to open themselves to a Feminist viewpoint, there wouldn’t be such a pervasive atmosphere of displacement and loss. In other words, if all that man is is that he doesn’t know where he fits in, perhaps he’d better start evolving and learning how to live in the real world.
Each story follows the same structure: the main character is traveling away from home and is outside his comfort zone. He has no close friends, merely associates. There is a longing for love, even if the man is already in a significant relationship.
In the first tale, 17-year-old Simon is traveling with his friend Ferdinand, but his thoughts are on Karen Fielding, a girl he knows from school. It is unrequited love, and that’s what makes it so poignantly romantic to Simon. All he wants is to return home to explore this new relationship, yet he hesitates because dreams are safer than possible failure. When he and Ferdinand rent a spare room in an apartment, the landlady boldly flirts with Simon. Even when she becomes practically brazen, he ignores the suggestions – out of shyness, innocence, or fear – he needs to maintain the purity of his fantasy love rather than succumb to sordid reality.In the fourth story, Szalay channels Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” when Karel learns that his girlfriend Waleria is pregnant. Because a child would disrupt his professional plans, he pressures her to have an abortion. Karel exhibits the worst characteristics of male dominance – questioning whether the child is his, using emotional blackmail to get his way. Waleria calls him on his selfishness, but that is not something he can fathom about himself.
Szalay’s male characters feel like they don’t know how to fit into the world. They are ill at ease, even when they are good at the game of appearing confident. There is a sense that time is running out on them. At the end of the sixth story, James is walking with his son Tom, who keeps running ahead. For all his plans to build a successful future, James is deeply aware that youth is getting out of reach, so he practices his current mantra: Life is not a joke.
The female characters have a marginal presence in the stories, since the men simply don’t know how to relate. Men are more focused on their careers, on beating out their rivals, on achieving professional success. Even in the stories in which the main character is attracted to a woman, there is never a sense of emotional attachment. Women are something to be attained. Instead, the men succumb to a sort of existential longing for love but lack the ability to define what that need is.
There is a certain presumptuousness to the title: All That Man Is, while it covers broad themes, keeps to a very white male perspective. The characters come from a variety of European nations, yet there is a thematic connectedness across the stories, even to the point that they tangentially touch one another. For example, in the last chapter, you learn that Tony is the grandfather of Simon from the first chapter. Does it matter? Only as a way to stress the threadbare connections that men feel.
"Men need to grow up already!"By chance, I read this novel on my way to the Women’s March in DC. I would say that it was an ironic choice on my part, but the truth is that the novel was a perfect example of the patriarchy that women are protesting. Feminism, for me, promotes a sense that everyone has a story, and that one narrative thread doesn’t fit all.
Szalay suggests that part of the troubling limitations that men feel is that they remain isolated from one another. They forgo deeper connection because they are uncertain of their place in the world. Perhaps if the characters in All That Man Is were to open themselves to a Feminist viewpoint, there wouldn’t be such a pervasive atmosphere of displacement and loss. In other words, if all that man is is that he doesn’t know where he fits in, perhaps he’d better start evolving and learning how to live in the real world.
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