Books & Poetry

Earlier this year, the New York Times ran a long piece about a new blogging genre it called ‘fratire’ – celebrations of masculine (under)achievement by writers like Frank Kelly Rich and Tucker Max, whose collection of autobiographical vignettes ‘I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell’ recently grazed bestseller lists in the US.

‘The Alphabet of Manliness’ is cut from the same semen-stained cloth, even if its Utah-based author ‘has had the same girlfriend for five years, rarely drinks, and likes to play computer games’. Fratirists are angry because they think men have been emasculated by feminism. So they’re fighting back with the sort of intermittently funny but essentially retarded schoolboy smut that’s been a staple of UK men’s mags since the mid-’90s.

You’d have to be a real square not to be amused by the entry for K, Knockers – ‘What if breasts rained from the skies? Men would have evolved a mouth on the top of their heads to catch the breasts, and an extra mouth on the back of their heads just in case they have to tie their shoes during a storm’ – and for N, Norris (Chuck) – ‘Chuck Norris has fought in almost every major war, including the Korean War, World War I, the American Civil War, the Peloponnesian War, the Iran-Iraq war (on both sides simultaneously), the War of the Worlds, and the War on Drugs.’

But it’s important to remember that, for all its silliness, ‘The Alphabet of Manliness’ does not deal in irony, and has no wish to be read ironically by namby-pamby liberal faggots. It really means this stuff. Which is why the entry for O – Obedience – is so peculiarly, sinisterly unfunny.