about The Last American Man
What does it mean to be a man in modern America? Do men somehow better themselves when they leave civilization and head into the woods? The Last American Man is a cultural examination of contemporary American male identity and the uniquely American desire to return to the wilderness.From the frontier West to American utopian communities, Elizabeth Gilbert has produced a history of American manhood as it has never been told before. To illustrate her story, Gilbert uses the rich and fascinating case study of Eustace Conway, a man who has lived in the Appalachian Mountains since the age of 17. Conway has worked tirelessly to try to convince his fellow Americans to give up self-destructive modern lifestyles and return with him to the primal sanctuary of the wilderness. He is a living metaphor that challenges all assumptions about what it is to be a modern man in America. The Last American Man is at the same time an adventure saga and a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of man to the wilderness. It is also a reflection of masculine American identity in all its conflicting elements—energy, isolation, narcissism, inventiveness, audacity, and destiny.
about Elizabeth Gilbert
ELIZABETH GILBERT is an award-winning magazine journalist and currently writer-at-large for GQ. She is the author of Stern Men and Pilgrims, a short-story collection, that was a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and winner of the 1999 John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares. Her work has been published in Harper's Bazaar, Spin, and the New York Times.
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