Male Matters

Calvin Thomas's Male Matters

        reveals the act and production of writing as a bodily, material process

        that transgresses the boundaries of gender. Wise and quirky, sophisticated

        and coarse, serious and hilarious, this look at male identity and creativity

        and dislocation at the end of the twentieth century definitely will not

        assuage male anxiety!

      "An excellent and important

        book. . . . By mixing high and low, by speaking candidly about what we

        usually keep in the (water) closet, while simultaneously engaging the

        'highest' philosophies of language and culture, Thomas calls the entire

        enterprise of criticism into question." -- Jeremy Earp, Journal

        of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Identity

      "A brave, indispensable

        exercise in writing the male body, and a tour de force of theoretically

        informed close reading." -- Kevin Floyd, Journal of the Midwest

        Modern Language Association

      "Both analyzes and performs

        our anxieties about masculinity. . . . This experiment in criticism transgresses

        boundaries of theory, gender, and academic taste in ways sure to delight

        and infuriate its readers." -- Gregory Jay, author of America

        the Scrivener: Deconstruction and the Subject of Literary History

      "Calvin Thomas is able

        to hint at a way out of the prison-house, as he puts it, of straight male

        identity." -- Kathy Acker, author of In Memoriam to Identity