So few guests acquit themselves well on the Colbert Report, but I was laughing with not at Norah Vincent when I saw her interviewed on the show. (This was totally inappropriate because I was at the gym on the treadmill and it was five in the morning and the other people at the gym thought I was crazy. It was fun going to the gym back when I had both of my legs, but I digress.)
The conceit of this book is just like Black Like Me or that James Bond book where James Bond self-tans himself into a Japanese guy, except that in this case a woman goes under cover as a man for a year. The chapters are divided up by a set of male experiences she designs for herself: joining a bowling league, going to strip clubs, dating (men and women it says on the back but I only remember her dating women), living in a monastary, going on a men’s movement retreat — you know, the usual stuff that every man does all the time.
My favorite part of the book was the beginning where she talks about the logistical and practical aspects of passing as a man — gluing one’s beard on and so forth. She learned that women lean forward when speaking and men lean back; women tend to talk so fast that they run out of breath and men use fewer words. It was interesting how her innate feminine mannerisms would always betray her as effeminate or gay-seeming as a man even though she said she was always considered kind of a butch woman. It made me think about how I phrase everything like a question and apologize for everything and maybe I should be more macho.
The parts of the book I didn’t like were the sociological expositions at the end of every chapter. I felt like responding to these platitudes with the one they always beat you over the head with in journalism school: show, don’t tell. I feel certain, however, that it was some cheeseball editor or marketing person who was to blame for this aspect of the book, not Norah Vincent.
In sum, the book was good, sometimes tawdry, fun. It made me appreciate the power of a good suit and not talking too much or apologizing for everything. I don’t think it taught me any good lessons to apply to the serialist, though, except that I shouldn’t have a male narrator because the male mind is such a big brawny mystery to me.
