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Just Three Minutes, Please
What’s wrong with the contemporary American medical system? What does it mean when a state’s democratic presidential primary casts 40% of its votes for a felon incarcerated in another state? What’s so bad about teaching by PowerPoint? What is truly the dirtiest word in America?
These are just a few of the engaging and controversial issues that Michael Blumenthal, poet, novelist, essayist, and law professor, tackles in this collection of poignant essays commissioned by West Virginia Public Radio.
In these brief essays, Blumenthal provides unconventional insights into our contemporary political, educational, and social systems, challenging us to look beyond the headlines to the psychological and sociological realities that underlie our conventional thinking.
As a widely published poet and novelist, Blumenthal brings along a lawyer’s analytical ability with his literary sensibility, effortlessly facilitating a distinction between the clichés of today’s pallid political discourse and the deeper realities that lie beneath. This collection will captivate and provoke those with an interest in literature, politics, law, and the unwritten rules of our social and political engagements.
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ABOUT MEN; No Big Deal
We walk down the block to [Marjorie]'s house, where she lives with her two pre-adolescent boys. Having asked her husband of 13 years to move out of their previous home several years ago, she has, just recently, asked the man she has been living with for the last two years to do likewise. When she first told me, the other day, of their separation, I replied - almost Pavlovianly - ''That must be hard.'' ''No, not really,'' she responded. And the few evenings I've spent with her since bear out that reply. She seems happy to be alone, her saying so having not so much an air of rationalization as of truth. To the fact that I - reasonably bright, reasonably attractive, clearly interested - have just walked into her life, there is little more reaction than a mildly pleased amiability, like that of someone who has found an extra anchovy in her Caesar salad. My entrance into her life, as into [Natalie]'s kitchen, is - my none-too-subtle wishes notwithstanding - no big deal. The fact is - as I was reminded in Natalie's kitchen and Marjorie's living room - that women no longer ''need'' men the way we men who came of age in the late 1960's and early 70's were once trained to believe they did. As did the women around that kitchen table, many of them have their own homes, their own careers, their own values, their own ''network'' of women friends, their own sense of security - even, in many cases, their own children. And if, indeed, they ''need'' men, those needs are, clearly, of a different genre - for partners, not protectors; for equals, not oppressors; for someone to look across at, not up to.
Newspaper Article