If you take your cues from the supermarket magazine aisle, manliness is pretty easy. Spend a few days browsing the selection and you’ll learn all about how you, too, can have ripped abs, a ripped chest, and ripped legs. You’ll be able to run faster at the track, lift more weight on the bench, and bike up mountains in no time. You’ll learn how to buy the perfect suit, cook the perfect meal, and be the perfect lover. But is a superficial checklist all it takes to be manly? Brett and Kate McKay, the authors of The Art of Manliness – Manvotionals: Timeless Wisdom and Advice on Living the 7 Manly Virtues
The McKays, the husband and wife team also behind ArtofManliness.com and The Art of Manliness: Classic Skills and Manners for the Modern Man, are connoisseurs of manliness. Even before the introduction of Manvotionals, the two lay out the only qualifications necessary for them to expound on the subject: “Brett McKay is a man. Kate McKay loves manly men.” (They dedicate the book to their son, Gus, whose name is as manly man as a boy’s name could possibly be.) For the McKays, manliness comes in forms much more subtle and internal. Manvotionals sets forth seven core qualities that have embodied manliness since the beginnings of modern civilization.
The authors are quick to point out the differences between their idea of manliness and one that has recently taken root:
“There are two ways to define manhood. One is to say that manhood is the opposite of womanhood. The other is to say that manhood is the opposite of childhood. The former seems to be quite popular, but it often leads to a superficial kind of manliness.”
The McKays also contend that the qualities that define manliness are not in any way unique to men, but differentiate adults from children:
“A child is self-centered, fearful, and dependent. A man is bold, courageous, respectful, independent, and of service to others. Thus a boy becomes a man when he matures and leaves behind childish things. Likewise, a girl becomes a woman when she matures into real adulthood. Both genders are capable of and should strive for virtuous, human excellence.”
Manvotionals devotes one chapter for each of the manly virtues the authors chose: manliness, courage, industry, resolution, self-reliance, discipline, and honor. They start by first addressing the overall quality of manliness. Each of the subsequent virtues can help a person in their striving for manliness, and each depends on the others for its effects to be realized:
“They are the virtues that have most called to the masculine spirit throughout the ages and which form the backbone of a man’s pursuit of a virtuous life, a firm foundation upon which all the other virtues can be built.”
But Manvotionals, far from the traditional self-improvement book, features little author soliloquy or personal anecdote. After the book’s introduction, the authors’ words hardly appear except to set up each chapter and provide limited background on passages where necessary. The McKays mostly act as aggregators, presenting stories, letters, and speeches as they were written from the great thinkers of ancient Greece to America’s Founding Fathers to the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement. The result makes Manvotionals read less like a second-hand advice book and more like a primary-source history book.
That isn’t to take anything away from how well the authors crafted Manvotionals. Each chapter is set up to explain why its virtue was chosen and where it fits in the overall concept of manliness. The selections were taken from a number of time periods, yet none of them came across as out-of-date. One of the first passages is from 2nd century Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in which he revisits how each of the mentors in his life taught him a different aspect of manliness. His words flow perfectly into those of Charmian London speaking about her husband and noted 20th century manly man Jack London. The passages stand alone incredibly well and little translation or author interjection is necessary.
Overall, the authors did a nice job of mixing up the order of passages within the chapters by using varying time periods, subject matter, and lengths. The variety of styles was also welcome. Manvotionals has open and personal letters, poems, lessons, fables, speeches, and excerpts from books and manuals throughout. The chapter on courage was one of my favorites. A lengthy excerpt from the 1859 Frederick Douglass speech “Self-Made Men” championed the value of hard work and the dismissal of luck as a key element in an individual’s success. That was followed by “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, extolling the spirit of groups heading west and recognizing the importance of unity and courage in the face of overwhelming odds.
Most of the passages in Manvotionals are easy to read but the structure doesn’t lend itself well to a single-sitting consumption. Some of the passages (I’m looking at you, the 34 stanzas from Thomas Babington Macaulay’s Horatius on courage) took some effort to get through and even required a second or third read to decipher and relate to its chapter. Thankfully the variety the authors employ help to insulate the otherwise dry sections. Even with the authors’ caveat, the passage from the 1941 Army Field Manual seemed tedious in comparison to the other passages on discipline. Thankfully, it was immediately followed by engaging sections on Harry Houdini and Lord Chesterfield.
I doubt the authors’ intent was for the book to be read as I read it, though. Manvotionals would seem to be perfect for reading a passage or two at a time, allowing your brain to focus on what was written and how it relates to the pursuit of manliness. It’s not a how-to book; there’s no narrative or summary that allows for skimming or grasping the essence of any of the seven virtues. The passages within each chapter don’t necessarily need to be read in order, although I found the authors’ care in ordering the passages made it easy to read as presented.
Overall, I enjoyed Manvotionals. Using voices from the past to examine the essence of manliness in history keeps the book from the traps befalling most others in the genre. Instead of long commentary on the state of manhood and where it has gone awry, the authors chose mostly engaging passages to illustrate their vision for manliness. The introduction to both the book and the individual chapters do just enough to frame the book and make it more than just a collection of short historical anecdotes.
Even more, the book accomplishes the goals set out by the authors in the introduction. The passages presented focus almost entirely on internal displays of manliness as opposed to the external displays in men’s magazines. It’s much more about what manly (wo)men are instead of what manly (wo)men do. Manvotionals is a book Ron Swanson would give to his friends, if he had any, and that’s good enough for me.
