Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 9, 1991 TAG: 9104090306
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB SIPCHEN LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Behind him, 800 men of every age and hairstyle roared along in unison. But Bly is hardly a typical American coach, and this "men's gathering" at the Japan America Theater was hardly in the spirit of a gridiron competition.
In the course of the recent event, the men beat the bejabbers out of drums, danced around like dervishes, linked arms and chanted, spoke to each other about childhood travails and angrily shouted out examples of how their fathers had wounded their young psyches.
Mainly, though, they sat and listened as Bly and storyteller Michael Meade wove poems and myths into a daylong analysis of masculinity.
Since 1980, Bly has been leading men's gatherings, becoming a central figure in the so-called "men's movement."
Now, Bly's new book, "Iron John" - essentially an exploration of an ancient tale about a hairy "Wild Man" who lives at the bottom of a pond - has become a surprise commercial success, battling past all the financial self-help and pop psychology how-to books to the highest reaches of the best-seller list.
But then "Iron John" might be viewed as something of a "mythopoetic" self-help book: "How to be a man in the last decade of the 20th century."
As Bly sees things, the male gender is in big trouble. Between 20 percent and 30 percent of American boys live in a home with no father present. And since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, even fathers who stay with their families no longer work with their sons by their sides. As a result, boys have no one from whom to absorb masculinity.
Therefore, Bly says, many men experience "father hunger," often filling the void left by an absent father with a distrust of older men.
Meanwhile, America is bereft of the sort of initiation rituals common in more traditional cultures, in which older men guide boys through a series of rites that lead to manhood.
And without these rites, says Bly, it is no wonder that so many American men are weak, naive and ignorant of their "interior warrior," the force that urges them to fight for what is right and protect their own internal "psychic boundaries."
Bly says that most of the men who attend the sessions are over 35. "I think that's because the images of manhood we're given in high school - Gen. (William) Westmoreland or John Wayne or some fool like Clint Eastwood - may last us through our 20s to some extent," he says. "But by the time you're 35, it's clear that those models are not working.
"The myths and ancient stories we tell provide models of masculinity with more soul, more range and a greater integration of the feminine."
Also, Bly says, a man is usually 35 before he realizes that his job life and his relationships with women and with other men are not working. So usually the men who attend have accepted a little sense of failure.
"I admire them for that," he says. "The ones who don't come are the ones in the `I'm all right, Jack' category; they wonder, `Who are these wimps down there?' "
"I think our gatherings are a form of adult education," Bly says. "What we do is teach poetry and mythology, including the fairy tales which are to some extent the oldest literature we have.
"We're asking men to get in touch with their lives. To do that, they must have what D.H. Lawrence called `a purpose.'
"A purpose is not the same as wanting to be rich. Or wanting to control the junk bond market. Or wanting to be dominant over other men in the business world. Or to have many mistresses. We ask men to become dissatisfied with their own lives."
by CNB