STAN: http://www.lulu.com/content/276367 … I think.

“Sex & War” is exactly what I expected after reading Stan’s first books–and that is praise indeed. While his style continues to be meandering, it doesn’t detract in any way for me since his digressions bring a sense of familiarity and immediacy to the read, almost as if this complex mind is taking time to converse just with you.

For me, “Sex & War” functioned as a natural extention of “Full-spectrum Disorder.” I would even go so far as to call them a necessary set for someone desiring a broad-brush examination of modern society, its driving and corrupting philosophies and the hard reality of what’s needed to fix the problem.

Goff’s take is especially poignant for a male veteran trying to make the cognitive leaps necessary to start perceiving–let alone understanding and countering–the issues of misogyny, patriarchy, class warfare or racial inequity. Goff has travelled the entire length of the hyper-masculine yardstick, leaving his credibility unimpeachable to any “man’s man” just so long as that man wants to learn. And a man can learn much from Goff’s take on hyper-masculinity; as he says at the end of one chapter where he has just described the socially and psychically destructive results of our faustian connection to patriachy: “Been there. All the way to the top, to places most men for a thousand reasons will never go. Here’s what I found there. Nothing. It is a place without meaning.” The fact that by the time you’ve read that far, it is obvious that those words are not spoken as some ego-driven measure of masculine power, but rather as a plea–full of pain and regret–that other men might hear and pause in their pursuit of some “perfect sociopathic masculinity.”

My only significant criticism of Goff’s book is consistent from “Full-spectrum Disorder”: his penchant for using really big, unfamiliar words and philosophically obscure concepts. But even this isn’t breally the author’s problem, as it is society’s unwillingness to explore alternative economic and political possibilities that leaves us scrambling for a good dictionary. On top of that, in “Sex & War” Goff has very effectively utilized same-page footnoting, offering the reader instant access to definitions and references, turning what could have been a jarring excercise in context-mining and book-juggling into the pleasant, personal conversation I mentioned at the beginning of this review.

As with “Full-spectrum Disorder,” I will have to re-read “Sex & War” many times, as well as seek out several of Goff’s original sources on feminism, patriarchy, etc., before I feel like I’ve truly started to understand the complex dynamics he is trying to unmask. But I’m fairly confident that Stan Goff would be comfortable with that response…just so long as I keep searching.

All the best,

Randy Morris

If you are uncomfortable using Paypal, send the money as a check to PO Box
90691, Raleigh NC 27675, and an email address where you can receive the pdf,
and I will send it along.

Charles Brown

Keep up the great work–books, website, marches, whatever else you can think of to keep pushing the communication envelope–it’s making a difference.

Randy

So, just how many pages are we talking? Well, whatever it is, I’m sure it will leave a mark on my poor printer.

Randy