Read this book for a
book group – at 76 pages of fairly large print at least it doesn’t
take too long to read…
I found the ideas
within it odd at a number of levels - your “Inner Gold” would
appear to be a metaphor that Johnson has pushed too far towards the
literal. The handing over of your Gold for someone else to look
after until a time when you are strong enough to carry it yourself
takes you a certain distance as an idea. There is something about
self-worth that can at times in your life be difficult to hold onto,
and having someone within your life who sees that worth and
cherishes it even when you yourself can not could be valuable.
Johnson seems to
focus on the male or masculine experience as the primary point of
understanding the world, and portrays both masculine and feminine in
a rather thin manner, caricatures – he claims that men come
“factory equipped – it is absolutely ingrained – with two
visions of women.”, which are essentially the Virgin and the Whore.
For women their vision is of man as either “a knight on a white
horse [or] a barbarian” while “If you’re homosexual, the same
thing happens, but the labels are reversed.” Johnson writes in
absolute terms – his pronouncements are made as universal “facts”
- and therefore it would seem that the whole of human existence is
trapped in gender norms of a rather up-tight version of Victorian
morality. It is a deeply depressing prognosis.
I would also note
that Johnson has a somewhat offhand approach when he views the roots
of Nazism as an “archetypal force” which “miscarried” - it
would suggest that the greatest crimes against humanity were the
result of people’s sense of identity getting a little out of shape
rather than an evil perversion of the essence of humanity.
For the most part
the book was neither convincing nor compelling. While I find the
idea of throwing books away painful, after we have discussed it in my
book group I think I will be dropping this one in the recycling bin.
