No Time for Social Disciplines

For The Wall Street Journal, John Gross reviews David Castronovo’s Blokes.

Perhaps no writer of stature, if only by dint of having exceptional gifts, qualifies as a bloke in this second sense. Certainly the members of Mr. Castronovo’s chosen quartet don’t. They were difficult, aggressive and self-centered: They cultivated a number of blokish tastes but also remained stubbornly literary, remote in many of their interests from the general mass of men and women.