POP-UP NUMBER 1: SEND ME A MAN WHO READS
(Did You Sleep With the Models?)
Looking for something unpredictable for Pride Month, I decided on this miniseries under the general title Send Me a Man Who Reads. Pop-Up Number 1 today, Sunday, June 2. The remaining Pop-Ups will follow this schedule:
Pop-Up Number 2: A Shadow’s Bliss on Tuesday, June 4
Pop-Up Number 3: Leather Locals on Thursday, June 6
Pop-Up Number 4: Pasolini on Saturday, June 8
—On Sunday, June 9, the usual weekly post—
Pop-Up Number 5: Saint Fascist on Monday, June 10
Pop-Up Number 6: Excuse Me, Are You a Boy or a Girl? on Wednesday, June 12
I’ve borrowed the title of this post from a 1960s ad campaign by the International Paper Company. Referring to that campaign, a former employee of the company commented on his blog that today it might be amended to: “Send Me a Man Who Can Read!”
Two ads of many from the campaign. The extended series became an instant advertising classic that elicited close to a million requests for reprints. The message was clear: People who read more, achieve more. Whatever its level of success, however, it fell on many deaf ears…or blind eyes. Most Americans don’t read, or if so they stick to social media and text messages. What does it tell us when major news websites label their stories as “5 minute read,” “3 minute read,” and so on?
In the second ad, note the worried reassurance that a boy who reads won’t become a “bookworm” (i.e., a sissy). Why, he’ll still have a chance at the NFL and the White House!!!
So dated it’s both funny and irksome, this ad recalls Ronald Reagan’s anxious reassurance to the press in the ‘80s that although his son, Ron, was a ballet dancer, he was still “all man.” Yuck!
On Memorial Day weekend, the traditional beginning of summer, news websites were glutted with reading recommendations. From the Washington Post:
28 Books to Read This Summer
Seven Historical Books to Read This Summer
12 Thrillers to Read This Summer
The Guardian, not to be outdone, went heavy:
100 Best Novels of All Time
The Best Books of the 21st Century
100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time
The New York Times, as grim as ever in its literary leanings, makes an offer easily refused: “Let Us Help You Find Your Next Book,” chosen perhaps from its list of “Best Books of the Year So Far.” And picked by staff who dare not buck the paper’s party line.
It was such book mania that prompted this series of pop-up posts. As the 1980s grows dim on the horizon, several books that made a splash then — or, in some cases, failed to do so — re-emerge from the depths of Mandate’s reviews.
Going through all of my issues recently, I recalled hearing from several readers of their interest in New York during that vanished decade: gay life, and culture high and low in those dark Republican days — eight years of the frantic old desperado, Ronald Reagan, followed by fumbling Bush the First. And always, the looming horror of AIDS.
I promise no such superlatives as the 100 best, or 12 to read this summer, and certainly not a list of the best books of 2024 so far; there are none, as far as I can tell. I recently dropped in to Barnes and Noble and found myself so depressed by what’s on offer that I hurried out of the store. So, a backward glance to traveled roads.
The best book reviews lead you not only to the book in question, but they can also convey the impression that you’ve read it already. Such a review is my lead-off by Leigh W. Rutledge. Although the subject — Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician and scientific genius whose work led to the computer I’m using at this moment and the device you’re reading on — is beyond my usual field of interest, the review is so riveting, and the story of Turing’s persecution by the British establishment so infuriating, that rereading it today angered me as it did in 1984, when Leigh submitted the review.
