book reviewing as a spectator sport (nussbaum v. mansfield edition)

Ladies and gentlemen, get yourselves some popcorn and settle in: here's Martha Nussbaum's awesome review of Harvey Mansfield's book Manliness (courtesy of Powells.com, which has reprinted the original from The New Republic). I'm not gonna excerpt it, because you should read the whole thing. It's a pleasure to see such a lively evisceration of such a deserving target--Nussbaum provides the perfect combination of a) elegant dismantling of Mansfield's "assertions" ("I cannot quite call them arguments," she says); b) well-deserved and amusing derision; c) genuine, serious anger at the slipshod thinking and egregious implications contained in the book. The latter is particularly satisfying: Nussbaum has her fun mocking Mansfield, but in the end, this kind of caricatured, mendacious anti-feminist ranting represents a real threat--not just because it comes from someone of Mansfield's stature, but because there's an eager audience for its trite conclusions and the sociopolitical agenda they serve to justify.

Damn, that was fun. It reminded me of Said taking on Huntington in "The Clash of Ignorance"--the witty, erudite smackdown elevated to an artform.

Bonus: Mansfield's letter in reply: "I say that I did not follow her instruction for writing my book because I did not want a product quite as earnest as the books she has done lately. Nor do I desire the servile future of caring males listening raptly to righteous females that she has in mind for us." Ooooh, I can just sense the manliness, Harvey.