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Title: Men Before Ten A.M. by Pam Houston, Veronique Vial ISBN: 1-885223-19-6 Publisher: Beyond Words Publising Pub. Date: November, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.75 (8 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Beautiful, but not picturesque
Comment: I bought this book looking for more of the wisdom I had found in other Pam Houston novels, accompanied with pictures. Instead, I found a wonderfully pretty book of black and white photos of men, with a little narritive to accompany them. The men in these pictures are mostly people who I haven't heard of: not-yet-famous actors, designers, etc. The few "famous" men are indeed charming in their morning faces. The photographs are well done and very candid. However...
I wanted words. I wanted text. In this book I enjoyed very much what amounted to a short story by Houston and the dialogue between Houston and Vial. I also enjoyed the asides by Vial in describing the situations in which she phographed some of the men. It was typical Houston storytelling and candid thoughts by Vial.
In short, this pictorial is a very good coffee table book. It is beautiful. However, if you are searching for another "Cowboys Are My Weakness" you should look to something by Melissa Banks or another Houston novel. The pictures are very good, but how long can you observe another disheveled man?
Rating: 2
Summary: A Failure of Nerve
Comment: If you came here looking for something erotic, look elsewhere. Amazingly, Veronique Vial takes an inherently sexy idea and manages to neuter it. And I don't think it shows undue prurient interest on my part to have expected something sexy from these photographs of (sometimes) gorgeous men going about their morning business. We get them looking tired, cranky, disheveled and ponderous, but not sexy. We get them making coffee and brushing their teeth and eating their eggs, but damnit, we don't get them sexy. We even get some of them still in bed and awaking from sleep, but ... well, you guessed it. (True--one of Dial's subjects greeted her at the door nude and with a full erection; the ensuing shot of him in bed -- presumably still aroused -- with a comforter covering his excitement is one of this book's tackiest, most gratuitous entries. The photographer thinks it's "funny now.")
So even if I'm a victim of my own salacious expectations, a better title for this book would have been "Fully Clothed Men Eating Their Breakfast With Wet Hair" or "Middle-Aged and Old Men in Their Bathrobes and Boxers Jonesing for Coffee." A celebration of the male body this is not. One gets the sense that the subjects -- young and older -- would have been willing to play, willing to expose more of themselves both spiritually and corporeally, but that there was an overall failure of nerve on the photographer's part. One gets the sense that she is the prude, not her subjects. And that prudishness or reserve or de-eroticization is all that comes through in the finished work. It's like you're looking for something that should be there and just isn't.
The book is more reminiscent of a Life magazine photo essay than anything by Bruce Weber -- and that's a major deficit for this subject matter. Maybe a male photographer -- straight or gay -- would have been more up to the task. That these women -- who had access to Brendan Fraser and Edward Burns with their guards down -- could so botch the job is a real shame.
Editorially, the book's a disaster. Pam Houston, who wrote the Introduction, gives a me-centric account of her own involvement in the project -- as if anyone cares. Whoever wrote the text accompanying the photos expresses awe when anyone -- including Frenchmen! -- speak to her in "perfect French." The subjects are described one too many times as being "warm." Unknown artists or movie producers or even gardeners are barely identified along with famous movie stars and aged potentates like Bill Blass and Robert Altman.
All in all, a technically accomplished waste that I myself probably won't even flip through again. Do I sound bitter? I am. I feel cheated.
Rating: 5
Summary: Sexy When Messy
Comment: These are wonderful pictures taken by a French female photographer of famous men before 10 am in the morning. These are not just actors but men famous for other reasons as well. She doesn't date the pictures and I believe some of them are from quite a few years back but that is not a detraction. Some of the men are wide awake and already working but many are not. They are all informal, to say the least! I don't like the companion book, Women Before Ten A.M., nearly as well but a man might prefer that one. The binding on this large paperback hasn't held up well but, even knowing that, I would still get it for the contents.
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Title: Men Before 10 AM Too by Veronique Vial, Jennifer Beals ISBN: 1576870847 Publisher: powerHouse Books Pub. Date: 15 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Women Before 10 a.m. by Veronique Vial, Sean Penn ISBN: 1576871207 Publisher: powerHouse Books Pub. Date: 15 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Cowboys Are My Weakness by Pam Houston ISBN: 0671793888 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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