Books

SINGLE MEN/LIVING TOGETHER

NAKED NOMADS: Unmarried Men in America

by George Gilder Quadrangle/New York Times, $7.95

One year ago George Gilder wrote Sexual Suicide, which was reviewed in these pages. He contended that traditional sex roles were the answer to many problems of the modern world. Now he narrows his concerns to people like himself. He rewards single males of all descriptions and life styles with a massive guilt trip based on what he thinks is best. He argues for the conventional values of super-butch males and very female women. For Gilder it's back to basics. Women must again be placed on a pedestal and worshiped. Men are again regarded as vicious, untamed beasts who need submission to the gentle sex. Christianity has pushed this concept for centuries. It is small wonder that women and men have battled each other for centuries because they expect the impossible.

Marriage is offered as the article of faith for the unmarried man and whatever ails him. He receives the shaft from Gilder for 90 per cent of all crime; he will not live as long as his married counterpart and is said, according to government figures, to have a high rate of illness. But, as the old saw goes, the figures don't lie but liars figure. Statistics must, of necessity, be interpreted and fleshed out. Gilder draws on anthropology and other social sciences to imply that marriage is a matter of uncompromising urgency. His research tells him that single women don't need the knot tied nearly as urgently as single men do. Woman can sublimate her needs, but man is so undisciplined and violent that only a stable supply of roots and security will do the trick.

It is unfortunate that Gilder does not deal adequately with the brute fact of divorce. If marital bliss can become so therapeutic and necessary for all the unwed, why do we find the skyrocketing divorce rate? Perhaps society has come to expect too much of this fundamental union. Sometimes compulsory happiness evolves into an overwhelming burden.

Certainly there are grains of truth in Naked Nomads. We learn that a shortage of young females exists for males of the same age group

(600,000 females for 1.5 million males). This dilemma has seemingly been produced by the number of divorced older men who develop a yen for proving they can still attract the pretty ones in their twenties. Again we wonder about the high crack-up rate.

Reckless playboy sorts are offered as outrageous examples of irresponsible,

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untamed manhood. Many gays will be unable to identify with these characters. The message offered is that single men above thirty are wandering about disillu sioned and miserable. They have committed the most grievous sin of all-they failed to conform.

In such a book we should expect a

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