Marina Egorova read for us a book by Igor Kon «The Boy is the Father of a Man».
“Igor Semenovich Kon always writes about what everyone already knows. About friendship, for example, as if we didn’t have friends ourselves, about homosexuals — well, who doesn’t know about them. Well, in general, everyone told us about sex back in the pioneer camp. But every time after reading his books, it becomes clear that, firstly, you didn’t know anything before, secondly, you found out a lot of unexpected things for yourself, and thirdly, you still have a lot of questions that you didn’t have before, of course. With each new book by Kon, the world around us becomes more complex and interesting.
Now he has written about boys, about how they become men, how they differ from girls, how they see themselves and how others see them, and much, much more.
He doesn’t give advice on how to be happy. here is only what gives us understanding
As always with Kohn, this book has everything — anthropology, psychology, sociology, pedagogy, and everything is at the highest professional level. In our time, when you can print anything, this edition is conservative in its own way: it says what it really is. There are no unverified statements and sensations invented by amateurs and graphomaniacs here. You can believe every word.
Kohn dedicated his new work to boys, but addressed to girls: as the slightly sad and ironic preface says, men don’t read anything anyway. And yet, having opened this book, grown-up boys will experience much that they began to forget, and as a result, they will better understand themselves. And women will better understand the boys with whom they once were friends and at enmity, and the men of their today’s, adult life. And regardless of whether you were a boy or a girl, you will better understand your father, who may no longer be with you, your son or grandson.
Kohn’s book does not contain advice on how to be happy. It contains a lot of facts and theories, it contains the history of culture and modern science, which will help to understand that everything around (like ourselves) is more complicated than we thought. But maybe it is this understanding that makes us more attentive and more tolerant of those who live nearby.”