The Beat Goes On Guru Of Men’s Movement Turns His Drums On A Society That Refuses To Move Into Adulthood

Robert Bly looks the part of the barrel-chested, white-maned, drum-thumping bard who helped launch the modern men’s movement five years ago with “Iron John,” his runaway best-seller about male grief and male growth.

But for Bly, the music of young males bonding around a campfire doesn’t sound so sweet anymore. This time, the poet laureate of postmodern tribalism is banging away on a different theme, adolescent rudeness and junk culture in America. The beat is distinctive, and even Bly’s sense of grieving - here, over the death of common courtesy and high art alike - will sound reassuringly familiar to his millions of fans.

Rather than gently humming with music of the spheres, though, Bly’s new book, “The Sibling Society,” is about as soothing as Roseanne singing the national anthem. Iron John, meet Flinty Bob.

“I’m delivering a lot of bad news in this new book, I recognize that,” admits the 69-year-old author. “‘Iron John’ was basically a hopeful book; this one isn’t.”

Indeed it is not. As Bly describes it, our sibling society is one in which “no one is superior to anyone else, high culture is to be destroyed, and business leaders look sideways to other business leaders.” Lacking any sense of discipline, Bly writes, the culture encourages parents to “regress to become more like children.” Children, meanwhile, are “forced to become adults too soon,” he declares, “and never quite make it.”

Reaction to the new book has been mixed. To some critics, Bly merrily blasting away at the excesses of youth culture and the desensitizing nature of computers smacks of old fogeyism at its worst. Bly himself notes a much different reception for this book than for “Iron John,” which got a sympathetic response from men and a suspicious one from many women readers.

“Here,” says Bly, “it seems to be the other way around.”

The difference, Bly suggests, may be that women are closer to the child-rearing process - and therefore more focused, in a worrisome way, on their children’s futures. What these mothers see, says Bly, is a generation plunging into an intellectual and moral abyss fueled by technology and ruled by television. Men, being more protective of the culture, are less inclined to question the basic values that drive it.

“This youth generation is the first in American history to feel they’re not wanted,” Bly charges. “They’re saying, if my parents want me, they would talk to me. They wouldn’t put me in front of a TV set. If the culture wanted me, they would save jobs for me. Instead, we’re going to get more robots taking over people’s jobs. We’re going to get more downsizing.

“These kids are not dumb. They know in some deep way they’re not wanted. And the violence and despair we see all around comes out of that. We have become a nation of half-adults.”

On the heels of “Iron John,” which appeared in 1991 and spent 10 weeks atop the New York Times best-seller list, thousands of men who barely knew the Brothers Grimm from the Blues Brothers trooped off into the woods to rediscover their sweaty, sensitive selves. It was quite a trip, all that grunting and hugging. It was also a walk on the wild side that took Bly, who led many men’s workshops himself, from being a respected - if somewhat obscure - teacher and poet to being a household name in households of the High Granola faith.

The men’s movement has marked many significant milestones since Bly’s influence was first felt, including the Million Man March and the rise of Promise Keepers, a nationwide group pledged to responsible parenting and religious faith. Charges of cultural elitism leveled at Bly and his followers - by feminists like Susan Faludi, whom Bly accuses in his new book of “character assassination” - have also seemed to fade as the men’s movement has entered what many observers describe as its second wave. Less tribal, perhaps more personal.

Still, whenever a joke is cracked about men dancing around tepees barking at the moon, Bly is the butt of it. An ad for Dewar’s Scotch, for instance, claims, “You don’t have to hug a tree or beat a drum to be a man.” Bly hates the ad. What upsets him is not that it makes fun of male ritual, he says, but that it uses a cheap laugh to sell a potent product. Whiskey.

“Now that’s a profoundly adolescent thought,” Bly sneers, “that all you have to do to be a man is to drink. Be a man, become an alcoholic. If that ad had been directed toward women, other women would march down there and tear the place up.

“To me, it indicates corporate men are very upset that other men are trying to move toward feeling. They don’t want that. So we get this big split between men who want to be better fathers and husbands than their fathers were, who want to get in touch with their feelings, and the corporate men who want no part of what that stands for.”