The topic, as Faludi freely admits, isn't a new one. The past few months alone have witnessed a volcanic eruption of books on men and manhood, boys and boyishness. Writers like Lionel Tiger, Michael Segall, and Paul Kivel have reached the overwhelming consensus that something's really wrong and soul-killing in the way American males are set and stewarded on life's path. Because modernity and its incursions upon the human spirit have already been thoroughly picked apart in the sub-mainstream press, it's getting hard to find new and interesting angles on the subject. And however odd it might seem that Faludi's studying men instead of women, Carol Gilligan does the same in her chair at Harvard's Gender Studies department. In fact, the intercampus grapevine has long hinted that male liberation promises to be the next vanguard topic for gender theorists.

Despite this wave of interest, out there in the land of Newsweek, common wisdom, and the battle cry of "who-has-time-to-read?" the field of "gender issues" still reduces neatly to women's issues, which further reduces to a pastiche of political advocacy and casual "girls rule" chauvinism. As noted elsewhere in these pages, the men's movement, such as it is, is still fraught with the image of Robert Bly and his naked-chested drum-beaters, and populated chiefly by cranks with a grudge -- the "angry white males." In the mainstream, men's inner lives aren't sexy or esoteric, like the nuanced female soul depicted in Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography. Rather, the "male ego" is more like an inner dick, swelling and deflating for oofy, puppydog reasons: a hometeam touchdown, a sultry glance from across the dancefloor; twisting open that ketchup bottle, changing her tire.

Into this milieu comes Faludi, swinging two-fisted, with a blockbuster book on the subject (Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man) primed for release. The American male, Faludi points out, has feelings and problems, and suffers societal oppression just like women do. Modern life, the modern economy, and consumer culture are wreaking havoc on the male psyche, she says, to the point where men are in a state of blinkeredness and servitude not unlike the one to which women were confined in the 1950s. Further, the double-edged sword of responsibility and privilege that used to constitute American masculinity has largely been dissolved, leaving men with nothing useful and vital to do, and with nothing but an abiding sense of individual failure to fill the void.

Most of which is common sense to any writer who's worked on the subject. Indeed, Faludi, men's movement grumpus Warren Farrell, and the right-establishment communitarian Francis Fukuyama could probably mix up each other's dinner speeches one of these evenings, and nobody would even notice until the "patriarchal market society" bit right at the end. But to have Newsweek launch Faludi with one mighty, reverberating twang to the forefront of the whole movement? It means two things. For one, the time is overripe for men and boys to be granted the other half of their humanity, which they've been denied all along: the complex, mysterious, human interiority that women and girls once owned exclusively (and retained after feminism earned them a share of male power and perquisite). Second: D'oh! Whatta fumble for average-American manhood! Lettin' a carpetbagger come around like that and open the ketchup bottle! Eee-yoop! goes the shriveling Manhood. Stiffed, indeed.

Gavin McNett has no inner dick.

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Britain will soon reverse the law which forces pubs to close after 11 PM -- a First World War era code which was meant to increase worker productivity. Celebrate by checking out the Social Issues Research Center's Guide to British Pub Etiquitte. "There is no waiter service in British pubs. You have to go up to the bar to buy your drinks, and carry them back to your table. One of the saddest sights of the British summer (or the funniest, depending on your sense of humour) is the group of thirsty tourists sitting at a table in a pub, patiently waiting for someone to come and take their order."

Check out Film Unlimited at The Guardian for interviews with filmmakers like Jasmin Disdar and quick, amusing profiles of actors like Edie Falco, who is now celebrated for her role on "The Sopranos" but will always be remembered for her snappy turns in early Hal Hartley movies.