{"id":201,"date":"2013-04-22T10:31:21","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T17:31:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/?p=201"},"modified":"2013-04-22T20:41:55","modified_gmt":"2013-04-23T03:41:55","slug":"man-in-search-of-his-anima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/?p=201","title":{"rendered":"MAN IN SEARCH OF HIS ANIMA"},"content":{"rendered":"

A review of Mel Mathews\u2019 Menopause Man \u2013Unplugged<\/em> – The Chronicles of a<\/em> Wandering Soul: Book Two. <\/em>\u00a0Fisher King Press. 2012\u00a0 Author blog: melmathews.com<\/p>\n

It was \u2013 in retrospect \u2013 a risky thing to do : read a book written by my publisher. It is fiction, but every writer\u2019s soul and character comes through in their work. What if his book revealed a person different from the one I knew through phone calls and emails? What if I didn\u2019t like it?\u00a0 All reasonable cautions. But I was curious. As it turns out, so is Malcom Clay, the protagonist. Curious, rebellious, always drawn to the off-center. Well, so was I, starting with the second book in the series, after giving the first, LeRoi, <\/em>to a friend.<\/p>\n

\u201cI loved it,\u201d he said, \u201cA male Eat Prey Love<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was intrigued. I learned from reviewing another Fisher King Book, Eros and<\/em> the Shattering Gaze: Transcending<\/em> (Male) Narcissism <\/em>by Ken Kimmel, that a woman can learn a great deal about herself by reading books about men.<\/p>\n

I was still nervous. I knew\u00a0 Mathews\u2019 book wasn\u2019t academic like Kimmel\u2019s. Mel had to be capable of creating a fictional world I was willing to dive into, get lost in, and enjoy, or would I be lost in a quagmire of words and images I couldn\u2019t relate to?<\/p>\n

Turns out, my worries were a totally ridiculous spinning out of my own \u201cdark side\u201d. I fell right into this book \u2013 a true Page Turner. While it is technically fiction, it reads like the journal of a very real man, with all his quirks, complexities, and goofball humor, falling for the wrong women, drawn to the wrong situations while desperately searching for the light . I don\u2019t know if this was Mathews\u2019 intention, but it reads like a prose version of the goofy guys in movies like Hangover<\/em> \u2013 with a very real quest at its core. He throws in poetic references that belie his superficial kick-back persona, such as a framed copy of The Definitive<\/em> Journey<\/em> by Juan Ramon Jimenez, Spain\u2019s great poet and author of one of my favorites, Platero and I.<\/em><\/p>\n

At the top of this tale, we find Malcom in a self-described midlife crisis. He quits his boring job, and moves to a funky flat in Carmel, writing, dreaming, and struggling to find a woman he can connect with in all the completeness of sexuality, and belonging. \u00a0A tall order, in a world where all the women he picks seem to leave him in the dust.<\/p>\n

He turns to male friends for illumination, companionship, and contrast. One pal is married and has kids, \u201c A great marriage,\u201d according to Malcom. \u00a0His pal urges Malcom not to ruin it for the rest of the guys on the planet by finding the right woman. His continual mis-fires create a kind of perverse voodoo for all the married guys, \u201cYou\u2019re doing it for all mankind,\u201d chirps the married guy.<\/p>\n

Funny, but not so funny, for our menopause man struggling to find his anima (Greek for soul) in the exterior women in his life.\u00a0 This is my Jungian therapist\u2019s interpretation, but I can\u2019t help it. I have sat with many men who spend so much time looking for it \u201cout there\u201d in a woman, when the true relationship they long for is with the archetypal feminine energy buried within their own inner life.<\/p>\n

If Malcom were reading this review, he might ask, \u201cJust what is an inner life <\/em>anyway?\u201d It is as individual as it gets. To one person it is the dawning awareness of their own feelings<\/em> after years of repressing them. To another, it is a rich life of the imagination in which the anima (the feminine soul in a man) or animus (the masculine soul in a woman) are personified in archetypal characters who come to be as real as people in \u201creal life\u201d. To another, it is an inner dialog with a voice Jung called the \u201cgod image\u201d, as distinct from a God as defined by organized religion. Often this inner oracle surfaces when most needed, with wisdom from the depths of the unconscious mind.<\/p>\n

Back to Malcom. If we go with the premise that he is searching for his soul in all the wrong women, we find another parallel with Eat, Pray, Love.<\/em> \u00a0In Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s book, in the Pray section, she meets a man who is also suffering and searching. They become friends. In Menopause Man<\/em>, Malcom has Shiela, a woman with whom he shares so much, a woman with whom he can be totally himself, a sister, a true friend. \u201cI love you,\u201d he tells her, while clarifying to himself that he is not in <\/em>love with her.\u00a0 An important distinction, and seen in tandem with Gilbert\u2019s man-friend, it begs the question: in the transition from wrong-way woman to a relationship with his inner anima, is it desired, even necessary, to find a person of the opposite sex to love purely as a person, without the projections and neurosis so often attached to sexual-romantic love?<\/p>\n

I suspect the answer is as eccentric and varied as the nature of an inner life. With regards to Malcom, I leave you in suspense. Does he find his true calling, the right woman, a breathtaking connection to his inner anima\/muse? Does he turn one day to Shiela and realize he can love a true friend with all the passion and devotion he once reserved for the women in his fantasy life? \u00a0Or does he continue the journey into his new book, third in the series, SamSara<\/em>?<\/p>\n

A final tip of the hat to its author who manages to ignite our awareness of these deep psychological themes while spinning a highly entertaining narrative about ordinary people bungling through life. It is also a great treat as a woman to get such an intimate and hilarious window into what men really talk about when there are no women around. I always suspected it, but holy cow, it explains a lot!<\/p>\n

Great soul food, for all of us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of Mel Mathews\u2019 Menopause Man \u2013Unplugged – The Chronicles of a Wandering Soul: Book Two. \u00a0Fisher King Press. 2012\u00a0 Author blog: melmathews.com It was \u2013 in retrospect \u2013 a risky thing to do : read a book written … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizabethclarkstern.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}