Book Review: Men Explain Things to Me and Other Essays by Rebecca Solnit
I picked this book up solely on the basis of the title, briefly considered giving it to my sixteen-year-old niece for Christmas, then decided to keep it for myself and buy her some perfume instead. It’s probably for the best. Because while the themes are important to me and I hope important to my niece (although how much time she spends thinking about feminism and marriage equality and domestic violence and rape culture compared with the amount of time she spends thinking about boys and clothes and her potential sporting career is not clear), they are couched in a writing style and language that I think she would have had difficulty deciphering. I had some difficulty deciphering it.
Words like “irreducibility”, “uncircumscribable” and “quotidian” are sprinkled throughout liberally. Even though I know what they mean, her use of them made me want to reach for my dictionary to make absolutely sure. The fluid and operatic way in which she writes almost disguises her meaning at times, detrimental to both the writer’s message and the reader’s understanding.
Still, the book is immensely readable in places and I kept pausing to write down quotes that were relevant to me as a writer such as, “The ways creative work gets done are always unpredictable, demanding room to roam, refusing schedules and systems. They cannot be reduced to replicable formulas.” And, “The effects of your actions may unfold in ways you cannot foresee or even imagine. They may unfold long after your death. That is when the words of so many writers often resonate most.”
In the titular essay, she outlines a social encounter with a Very Important Man who, after finding out she wrote a book on a particular topic, tells her all about a Very Important Book on the same topic. When she realises that he’s talking about her book, she listens politely in silence until she is rescued by a friend who tells him several times, “That’s her book.” He has the grace to be embarrassed – at least for a moment – before he continues talking about something else. This essay is credited as the inspiration for the coining of the word “mansplaining”. Clearly, her words are powerful.
Solnit is at her strongest when she is discussing feminism and female empowerment and to a lesser extent other forms of equality (marriage equality for example). But the chapter on Virginia Woolf was a struggle for me, perhaps because I’m not a fan (and I’m not a fan perhaps only because I haven’t been exposed to Woolf’s work). And this is where the problem with the book lies. So much of it feels like preaching to the choir. That is, if you already agree with what Solnit is saying, then great. If you don’t have an opinion or think the opposite, her writing isn’t nearly persuasive enough to convince the reader.
At times it can also veer into territory that borders on whining – it’s not a complaint, just an observation. Because while she raises important points and supports them with evidence, nowhere does she offer anything even remotely resembling a solution. I know it’s not her job to solve the war (or whatever it is) between the sexes, but we know the problem exists and have known it for a while. We’re aware. So now is probably a good time to start seeing suggestions on how we might fix it.
Because the book is a collection of essays previously written and published elsewhere, it does at times feel disjointed – the Woolf chapter especially – or maybe a better term is book-ended. The beginning and ending parts of the book seem like they go together but there are chapters in the middle that seem misplaced, like they could have or should have been part of a different book.
I’ve read better, more convincing books about feminism than this one (I don’t need to be convinced but I want to be objective in my review for those who do or who want to be) but I suspect that when taken as a whole, Rebecca Solnit’s body of writing work will be important for future generations. It’s important for this generation and generations past. But this book on its own could have been more important if it had a little more clarity.
3 stars
*First published on Goodreads 23 December 2016
