THE MEN’S CLUB By LEONARD MICHAELS 1981 First Edition

Seven men, some acquainted and some strangers, meet one night to begin a club. This won't be a working man's club named for a large four-legged mammal or a toney businessman's city athletics and dinner club; instead it's a club dreamt up by a psychotherapist, modeled on the women's consciousness raising groups of the 1970s. Without an agenda, the men immediately focus on one subject -- women. They tell stories of bafflement, need, love, abuse, and marriage. They listen and they argue. They eat and drink and smoke and fight and break things. Their stories are outrageous and they sound true. Most of all, these men pay serious attention to one another. Michaels's masterful prose brings each man to life with gestures and dialogue and unforgettable stories. This is a small novel, but it brings important news from the gender wars. Women should read it, because it is both amusing and horrifying. These are characters you can hate and love just as if you knew them. In fact, you do know them. They are your brother, father, son, husband, lover, or friend.

Originally published in 1981, the Men's Club is set in the Bay Area during the late 70s. A psychologist named Kramer gathers a small group of men in their mid-to-late thirties together to discuss guy stuff. The club starts out, writes Michaels, "trying to recapture high-school days. Locker-room fun. Wet naked boys snapping towels at each other's genitals." There's some drinking and pot smoking before the men migrate into more dangerous territory-a refrigerator stocked full of food for tomorrow's luncheon - a woman's group hosted by Kramer's wife. Mixed in with the bacchanalia are men talking about themselves. These aren't men talking about sports or power tools, but strange, sometimes sad, stories about their relationships with women - sometimes their wives -- who they've connected with, but are still trying to process. Michaels does a satisfying job tying up the story with a cohesive ending and the writing is terse and engaging.Also, it's not an especially dated book, because men haven't evolved much in the last 20 years.