A Dangerous Plot for Boys

Greetings, friends. I feel the need to hail you because it's been so long between posts; days at a time. Life is a whirlwind here in Thinkuland.

Charles McGrath has an interesting article in last Sunday's Times about The Dangerous Book for Boys. (See my post on the book here.) It seems Disney has contracted with director Scott Rudin ("The Queen" and "School of Rock") to produce a movie based on the book. Hard to conceive, really. I liked the book, myself, but come on: A Rudyard Kipling poem and a piece on how to make a paper water-bomb hardly seem like blockbuster material.

McGrath points out that the book's not nearly as dangerous as it makes itself out to be, since "there is less stuff to do in [it] than to read about." True, though making a vinegar-powered battery might be as dangerous as we can hope for from today's plugged-in, tuned-out lads. (I spent the summer with 50 of them, and getting them to put their GameBoys away for more than five minutes -- even in favor of interpersonal games they really loved -- was a continual struggle.) And besides, dangerous or not, a vinegar battery is still pretty darn cool.

But like McGrath, I'm skeptical of the movie, and I enjoyed the plot line he predicts:

A dad who, worried that his son is becoming a softy and a wuss, buys an under-the-counter copy of a mysterious Edwardian tome and forces the boy to listen as he reads aloud from it. “Don’t swagger,” he says, quoting Sir Frederick Treves. “The boy who swaggers — like the man who swaggers — has little else that he can do. He is a cheap-Jack crying his own paltry wares.”

Pretty soon the two of them are off in the woods together, killing rabbits, talking Latin, reciting Kipling and, safely away from women, companionably breaking wind. Junior ties knots, makes flint arrowheads and recites the rules of Rugby while Dad — Pater, that is — sucks on his pipe and lectures the lad about cold showers and avoiding “beastliness.”

Meanwhile, Mom has bought a book of her own, a home-repair manual, and has set about changing all the locks.

The Dangerous Book for Boys

[Reminder: Help out Thinkulous by taking the Reader Survey, at top right of the page!]

This week my extremely thoughtful betrothed bought a present for me. I've been working like a dog both on and off the job, and she wanted to lift my spirits a bit. She also knows I am very friendly to the psychological school that says that boys are currently having the "boy" squeezed out of them left and right. (I've recommended Michael Thompson's excellent documentary, Raising Cain, before, and I'm doing so again).

With all those thoughts in mind, she went out and got me The Dangerous Book for Boys, by Conn and Hal Iggulden, a couple of Brits who were tired of the "sit still in your seat and, by the way, no recess for you" trend. They teach a wide range of boy-oriented skills, tricks and history, most of which has been left by the wayside years ago.

I'm of two minds about the book. Most of me loves it. It's definitely a fun read. I'm already practicing some sleight of hand coin tricks, and planning to build a battery out of quarters and vinegar-soaked paper on the next rainy Sunday afternoon.

On the other hand, it's also strongly biased towards the scientific and physical-toughness aspects of masculinity and away from the artistic. Sadly, the book is also a little bit sexist. It would have been better not to mention girls at all than to have the one entry on them, out of dozens, consist of a bunch of flirting tips like "give them flowers" and "listen to them." Useful thoughts -- but highly limiting. If the Igguldens had simply focused on boys and not opened this can of worms, I could more easily celebrate their biased approach. It doesn't bother me in the least that the book is directed only at boys; it pleases me. My fiancée clearly wasn't offended, either.

For better and for worse -- and it's both -- the book could have been published in 1965. Which is one reason it may be read more by guys my age than by our sons. (With that said, when I have one, I will give him this book -- along with a bunch of reading that delights in the softer side of life).

I do fondly remember my days launching model rockets and shooting corks out of bottles filled with baking soda and vinegar. The Igguldens cover similar fun and bracing territory, such as:

- How to build an electromagnet
- Well written short bios of explorers and inventors like Robert Scott and the Wright Brothers
- Writing in invisible ink
- Dozens of fun Latin phrases and their translations
- The U.S. naval flag code

I'm working my way through, dreamily remembering the days I spent poring over similar compendia lo, those many years ago -- and how I used those manuals to memorize cool facts, build things, and blow up stuff.