Duo provide a road map to being a man

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/01/2016 (3850 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A recent guest on CBC radio, gloating about never having seen any of the Star Wars movies, joked that George Lucas had sold the franchise for billions, and would donate the money to a charity… to help 30-year-olds move out of their parents’ basements.

A good use of some of that money would be to buy each of those failures-to-launch a copy of this lightheartedly serious book of “Manly Advice.”

Tag-team authors Jim Geraghty and Cam Edwards mix their own amiable reminiscences with references to television dad Ward Cleaver to illustrate that being a grown-up is not the end of fun or freedom, but the source of real, mature, adult satisfaction and joy.

Geraghty is a conservative columnist for National Review and the host of several podcasts, including Radio America’s Three Martini Lunch. His previous books include Voting to Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership and The Weed Agency: A Comic Tale of Federal Bureaucracy Without Limits.

Edwards represents the National Rifle Association on radio and in America’s 1st Freedom magazine. This is his first book. Of note for those who recoil in horror at the mere mention of the NRA, there is only one oblique mention of gun control in Heavy Lifting, in the chapter Raising a Responsible Rebel about over-cautious parenting.

From the opening chapter, Ward Cleaver Was a Stud, Edwards and Geraghty ramble informally through a multitude of ways that growing up is the most satisfying goal of life. “What leaves a man depressed and hollow inside is not attachments, but the lack of them… gainfully employed, married, a dad — you have no idea how great your life can be. But we’re about to show you.”

The book’s sections (Breaking Away, Life Skills 101, Love and Marriage, Fatherhood and Dads Out and Proud) cover many different aspects of adult male responsibility. After brief introductions, most chapters consist primarily of personal stories from Cam or Jim about their own journeys to adulthood.

Each chapter ends with a quick note (What Would Ward Cleaver Do?) about the chapter’s topic.

(Arguing that they are not “wanting to go back to the 1950s” with their championing of Leave it to Beaver’s dad, and that they are not “archaic, stodgy curmudgeons with hopelessly outdated thinking and nostalgia masquerading as advice,” Geraghty and Edwards assure readers that their wives are neither docile nor submissive.)

Unlike some advice tomes, most of Heavy Lifting is cheerful and personal. Occasional outbursts will mirror many readers’ reactions to the officious or irresponsible: “Get a farshtunken grip, educators. You’re supposed to be the grown-ups here.”

In The Art of Drinking, both authors recount stories of problem drinking, but do not come down in favour of abstinence. Edwards counsels “maintaining what I call the Golden Zone of Inebriation… happily buzzed, but still fully aware of your surroundings and yourself.”

Relating The Benefits of Getting Fired, they advise those laid off to take it in stride, not “go out in a blaze of glory… on social media…. Let someone else be the #MoronOfTheMoment on Twitter.”

“Despite what your boss just said, you still have a job. That job is finding your next job.”

Altogether, this eminently readable book is a breath of fresh air, bracingly presented to a culture that (like so many cultures in the past) feels that it is in trouble.

“If all the slackers in the world disappeared tomorrow, the video game industry would collapse. If all the Ward Cleavers in the world disappeared tomorrow, civilization would collapse.”

Heavy Lifting provides clear direction without ever seeming heavy-handed — probably like the best parents, including Ward Cleaver.

 

Bill Rambo teaches at the Laureate Academy in St. Norbert. He hopes he can continue to keep a grip.