Jordan Ritter Conn spent years interviewing more than 50 men about the parts of their lives they’re not supposed to talk about. Sex, trauma, violence, loneliness, the gap between the ideal they inherited and the person they actually are. He narrowed it down to four. The book is called American Men and it’s out now.
This conversation is partly about those four stories — a Mohawk man reconciling his sexuality with bar fights, a West Point golden boy undone by his wife’s affair, a law student whose suppressed childhood trauma resurfaced at the worst possible time, a trans man in rural Ohio who found his real life when he stepped away from the internet. But it’s also about the process: how you get men to open up, what the notepad gives you as a shy person, and the “permission structure” that men seem to need before they’ll say the thing they’ve been carrying. Jordan tells the story of hoping a cancer scare would get him out of journalism school rather than having to talk to strangers again. He also talks about a trip to Scotland with his dad where he finally asked the questions he’d been asking other people’s fathers for years.
We got into video games, male loneliness, Bowling Alone, why the literary market is dominated by women readers, and the kid down the street whose 26-week hardball league is doing more for male friendship than most therapy programs.
Jordan’s Parnassus event in Nashville is tonight — April 23rd. Go if you can.
