Random Thoughts

Sept. 10, 2003

What Makes a Man?
Lonely traveler or life of the party?

By Robert Downes

“By the time Eustace Conway was seven years old he could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree.“
That‘s one of the boasts in “The Last American Man,“ a book now in paperback by novelist and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert, which tells the true story of a character who‘s spent the past 20 years or so living out in the woods in a teepee and dining on roadkill.
It‘s the kind of book that resonates in Northern Michigan, where we still have plenty of wanna-be mountain men who dream of absconding to Alaska or Montana to live the carefree “Deliverance“ lifestyle.
To the author, Conway is “a cross between Davy Crockett and Henry David Thoreau,“ shunning materialism in order to live close to nature. Conway left his parent‘s suburban home at the age of 17 to live in the Appalachian forest, “making fire with sticks, wearing skins from animals he trapped, and living off the land.“
Apparently, it was a fruitful life, free of the scalpings and health hazards which plagued earlier pioneers, because by his late 30s, Conway owned 1,000 acres of land in the North Carolina mountains, which he farms with Mennonite machinery. His exploits have included walking 2,000 miles along the Appalachian Trail, surviving on food he hunted or trapped along the way; and riding a horse across America, visiting Indian reservations, black ghettoes, Chicano slums and suburban communities. Today, he‘s got a small army of followers at his Turtle Island homestead, “nine out of ten of whom do not long endure his weird boot-camp regime,“ according to the Kirkus Review.
In short, Eustace Conway, the “tall, handsome teepee dweller in buckskins“ from Wilkesboro, North Carolina, is purportedly the model for the last “real“ American man.

WET DREAM
Gilbert notes that Conway is “a symbol of what we feel our men should be, but rarely are.“ He‘s the lonely mountain man, going it alone out in the wilderness; fending off a buck‘s slashing antlers with his bare hands as he grapples for the kill.
In American literature, lone wolf types like Conway have been wet dreams for authors going back to the days of Dan‘l Boone. In the 1830s, James Fennimore Cooper gave us “The Leatherstocking Tales,“ with Hawkeye and his Mohican buddies surviving on their wits and courage in a wilderness full of savage Iroquois. Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Raymond Chandler, Robert Howard, Ian Fleming, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Norman Mailer continued the tradition of lauding the strong, silent tough guy. The ideal man should be a Tarzan, a Conan the Barbarian, James Bond, Jay Gatsby or a Phillip Marlowe, ready to smack a lippy broad or wrestle a tiger at a moment‘s notice. Mailer wrote “Tough Guys Don‘t Dance“ to remind us that disco is sissy stuff, and women would rather melt under the insect gaze of a loner who‘s cool to the point of being a sociopath. Real men can be found muttering into their booze down at Rick‘s Cafe in Casablanca.
Closer to home, the Rambo movies and this summer‘s “First Blood“ remake, “The Hunted,“ celebrate the same idea: that psycho veterans dodging around the woods are America‘s “real“ man role models. Ted Nugent exhorts us to kill our own meat with a bow and arrow. The Terminator advises that life is just one big search-and-destroy mission. George Bush challenges terrorists in Iraq to “Bring ‘em on,“ because our guys can handle whatever car bombs or ambushes come our way.

BACK TO REALITY
But when you brush the horseshit off these moping warriors from film and literature, you find hollow men that ring more of tin than gold. Even in “The Last American Man,“ author Gilbert notes that Eustace Conway‘s life was shaped by his perfectionist, abusive father and repressive mother; he fled to the woods as a runaway to get away from an unhappy home. Today, despite claiming that a wilderness lifestyle is a cure-all for the modern man, Conway is nonetheless dependent upon alcohol, has an inflexible personality, and can‘t keep friends. He‘s also deluded with a “man of destiny“ line of thought that has him cast in the role of a back-to-the-land prophet.
A more honest look at man‘s fate as a loner is found in Daniel Defoe‘s novel, “Robinson Crusoe,“ which was written some 300 years ago and is considered by some to be the first English novel. Based on a true story, Crusoe is marooned on a desert island for 26 years, and rather than being delighted with the chance to go it alone like the “real man“ heroes of American literature, he‘s properly horrified at the bleak existence he faces in the wilderness, the greatest terror of which is being completely alone. Crusoe‘s only hope to escape madness and despair is to make friends with a savage named Friday. So great is his need to reach out to another human face that he risks the threat of being eaten by what he fears is a cannibal.

ANCIENT WISDOM
A better model for “real“ men is found in the Bible, with the examples of Abraham, Noah and Moses. Far from being moody isolates, these men are literally the life of the party -- throwing feasts at the drop of a turban. The men most honored in the Bible were all at the center of their families and their tribes, intimately concerned with everyone‘s safety and welfare.
The men of the Bible are not perfect -- sometimes, they‘re downright rottten. Abraham is willing to sacrifice one son, and abandons another to the desert; he‘s found drunk and naked by his embarassed offspring. Lot is willing to throw his daughters to an angry mob to protect angelic visitors. Moses loses his temper. These are men with warts and clay feet.
But bad as they are, these are also men whose hearts and souls are invested in their communities and their families. It‘s their entire reason for living. To these man, the Rambos, Conans and Vin Diesel types that we celebrate as noble loners would come across as unbalanced weirdos and dangerous pariahs.
So, which is the better man? The guy who can nail a chipmunk to a tree with a thrown knife, or the shepherd interested in being the heart and soul of his flock and his family? Kicking the myth of the noble loner is the first step to becoming a man who has something to offer the world.