Essays
Blighted Horizons
On the new day-care wars
[Noelle Bodick]
Whether or not we trust our kids to one of these centers, the effects of the Tamagotchified care they offer have migrated beyond their bright, unimaginative walls, setting the terms of our debates and afflicting our very self-conception as parents. Data, too, can be demonic.
Autobiography of Influence
Baker, Bernhard and me
[Jordan Castro]
Yes! I thought as I read U and I, feeling my mischievous, troll instincts emerge: I could do what Baker did with Updike, but with Baker. I could mimic Baker’s somewhat creepy near-eulogization of a still-living writer as a pretext for finally writing my Baker/Bernhard essay! I could U and I Baker, just as Baker had U and I’d Updike. This was my way in.
Doom Scroll
Jorie Graham’s late style
[Brandon Kreitler]
For nearly forty years her poems have issued from a voice so desperate and imposing that it has served as the guarantor of its own words. Do whatever she likes and she can’t quite lose. But the wins have not come as they once did.
Symposium: What are men for?
The Failed Man
[Rowan Wilson]
Being a man is like making a soufflé: there are so many ways to fail at it. You can overdo it, becoming so butch that you enter the territory of camp; you can underdo it, drooping into effeteness; you can be a malewife; you can be impotent; you can be a mummy’s boy; you can fail at becoming whatever your father dreamed you’d be.
Searchers
[Simon van Zuylen-Wood]
A bachelor party will let a guy enjoy macho stuff like shooting guns, under the pretense that he is doing it for ritualistic purposes. Going to a Rogan show for “work” might function similarly, giving us cover in case we accidentally enjoyed it.
Battlefield Ecstasies
[Sophie Lewis]
Notwithstanding my own feminist ultra-radicalism and the overlaps between her personal experience of gender and my own, her state of emergency about the “terrorism” of porn left me cold. Rereading Dworkin in my mid-thirties has been, then, a semi-desperate attempt to relate to the current resurgence of enthusiasm for her thought. Part of me has wanted to have my mind changed, if only so I could stop feeling so crazy.
Fear of Fashion
[Derek Guy]
This is the trap that has defined male style for the better part of two hundred years: for a man to look good, he must not look too much like he wants to look good.
God Save the Top
[Shaan Sachdev]
Men are martial. Men are violent. Men bring us misogyny, corruption, rape, colonialism, genocide and all the muck in between. But men also penetrate.
Strength Training
[Phil Christman]
As much as building strength involves extreme effort, it also means, when the time comes—when the barbells are racked again and the plates back on their metal pegs, and you’ve jog-walked home and showered—not only accepting but almost coddling your own exhaustion. If you truly believe that strength is the most important thing in life, you can only resent this. Perhaps you can try to resist it. But fighting your weakness—getting back to the gym too soon, starving yourself, overdoing cardio on your off day—will only make things worse.
Survey
Manhood
What, if any, is your most “masculine” trait?
Never confiding, especially while appearing to.
Reviews
DIY
[Bud Smith]
YouTube has all the right answers and all the wrong answers. All you have to do is scroll down and look for the worst one. The one with the worst sound and video quality has the best answer most of the time because that person didn’t have any need to get the aesthetics right. Why bother? They’ve got the truth and they know it.
The Zone of Interest
[Garth Greenwell]
I wasn’t sure what I thought after seeing the film for the first time. All I knew was that something had happened to me: the film wouldn’t let me go, it was like a dark stain spreading in my interior.
The annotated table of contents below offers a sneak peek at what’s in issue 32. To get the issue delivered straight to your door, subscribe now.
Letter from the Editors
On the Crisis of Men
[Jon Baskin]
To fully inhabit the role that had been laid out for us there was not, it seemed, to be a good father; it was to be a good little boy, whereas the only reason we were there was because we had become fathers, and thus were no longer little boys. Or so we wanted to believe. But were we really fathers?
Etymology
Toxic masculinity
“Combating versions of toxic masculinity has always been part of the Disney playbook, Pinocchio being the OG blockhead who must develop the interpersonal skills to become a real boy.”
Essays
Blighted Horizons
On the new day-care wars
[Noelle Bodick]
Whether or not we trust our kids to one of these centers, the effects of the Tamagotchified care they offer have migrated beyond their bright, unimaginative walls, setting the terms of our debates and afflicting our very self-conception as parents. Data, too, can be demonic.
Autobiography of Influence
Baker, Bernhard and me
[Jordan Castro]
Yes! I thought as I read U and I, feeling my mischievous, troll instincts emerge: I could do what Baker did with Updike, but with Baker. I could mimic Baker’s somewhat creepy near-eulogization of a still-living writer as a pretext for finally writing my Baker/Bernhard essay! I could U and I Baker, just as Baker had U and I’d Updike. This was my way in.
Doom Scroll
Jorie Graham’s late style
[Brandon Kreitler]
For nearly forty years her poems have issued from a voice so desperate and imposing that it has served as the guarantor of its own words. Do whatever she likes and she can’t quite lose. But the wins have not come as they once did.
Symposium: What are men for?
The Failed Man
[Rowan Wilson]
Being a man is like making a soufflé: there are so many ways to fail at it. You can overdo it, becoming so butch that you enter the territory of camp; you can underdo it, drooping into effeteness; you can be a malewife; you can be impotent; you can be a mummy’s boy; you can fail at becoming whatever your father dreamed you’d be.
Searchers
[Simon van Zuylen-Wood]
A bachelor party will let a guy enjoy macho stuff like shooting guns, under the pretense that he is doing it for ritualistic purposes. Going to a Rogan show for “work” might function similarly, giving us cover in case we accidentally enjoyed it.
Battlefield Ecstasies
[Sophie Lewis]
Notwithstanding my own feminist ultra-radicalism and the overlaps between her personal experience of gender and my own, her state of emergency about the “terrorism” of porn left me cold. Rereading Dworkin in my mid-thirties has been, then, a semi-desperate attempt to relate to the current resurgence of enthusiasm for her thought. Part of me has wanted to have my mind changed, if only so I could stop feeling so crazy.
Fear of Fashion
[Derek Guy]
This is the trap that has defined male style for the better part of two hundred years: for a man to look good, he must not look too much like he wants to look good.
God Save the Top
[Shaan Sachdev]
Men are martial. Men are violent. Men bring us misogyny, corruption, rape, colonialism, genocide and all the muck in between. But men also penetrate.
Strength Training
[Phil Christman]
As much as building strength involves extreme effort, it also means, when the time comes—when the barbells are racked again and the plates back on their metal pegs, and you’ve jog-walked home and showered—not only accepting but almost coddling your own exhaustion. If you truly believe that strength is the most important thing in life, you can only resent this. Perhaps you can try to resist it. But fighting your weakness—getting back to the gym too soon, starving yourself, overdoing cardio on your off day—will only make things worse.
Survey
Manhood
What, if any, is your most “masculine” trait?
Never confiding, especially while appearing to.
Reviews
DIY
[Bud Smith]
YouTube has all the right answers and all the wrong answers. All you have to do is scroll down and look for the worst one. The one with the worst sound and video quality has the best answer most of the time because that person didn’t have any need to get the aesthetics right. Why bother? They’ve got the truth and they know it.
The Zone of Interest
[Garth Greenwell]
I wasn’t sure what I thought after seeing the film for the first time. All I knew was that something had happened to me: the film wouldn’t let me go, it was like a dark stain spreading in my interior.
Traces of Iman Mersal
[Ursula Lindsey]
This is what Mersal does: she exposes herself in a way that leads you to bare something of yourself in turn; you look up from the page and lock eyes with your life.
If you liked this essay, you’ll love reading The Point in print.