Newsletter #13 - Appreciation
Updates
It has been more than a year since I launched The Wild Gentleman and sent the first newsletter in July 2025. It has been everything I hoped it would be and more.
The best part has been people pulling me aside when I happen to run into them out there in the "real world" and thanking me for sharing all that I am thinking about, researching, and learning about being a good man in 2026. (This happened a few times in the last couple of days.)
More than anything, having a monthly book club meeting for guys to show up to (whether they read/listened to the book or not) and share the good and bad, successes and failures, joys and challenges from their lives has been one of the most amazing experiences in my life.
More on what a year of The Wild Gentleman means below, but first things first, a bit about this month's book club.
We have our next The Wild Gentleman Book Club meeting tonight (Tuesday, July 21).
So far this summer, we've read John by Niall Williams and Nick Offerman's Where the Deer and the Antelope Play, two books that differ greatly in style, tone, and story. (But both are excellent reads and listens.)
This month, we are discussing John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, a shorter read that follows the denizens of a run-down sardine-canning street in Depression-era Monterey, California.
The Wild Gentleman Book Club
Tuesday, July 21st at 6:00 PM
Paddy's Public House in West Newton
RSVP here: https://luma.com/406eg4kq
Questions? Reach me at dennis@thewildgentleman.com.
Read on.
The Wild Gentleman in June
We had a small group and a deep discussion centered on Niall Williams's John. The book follows the rise of early Christianity — the titular John is a historically fictionalized writer of the gospel — and much of the chat centered on relationships to church, religion, and spirituality. My takeaways revolved more around age, experience, and creativity.
Niall Williams, an Irishman, writes prose that has a lilt of conversation that I don't think I've encountered often on the page. It is both challenging and rewarding. And it makes the characters, their relationships (in the case of John, a brotherhood of believers and storytellers), and the humanity inherent in both, come alive.
Wrapping Up The Wild Gentleman Summer
We have our last book club meeting of the summer on Wednesday, August 12 to discuss Charles Portis's True Grit. This, our first Western book, marks one full year of TWG in-person book club meetups. Excited to have a big group at this one. RSVP here: https://luma.com/tpw9tpxo
Pick up any of the books we read through The Wild Gentleman's page at Bookshop.org and support independent booksellers, too!
A Year of The Wild Gentleman
Last summer, I was fighting a ton of anxiety connected to months of unemployment, struggling to get a consulting business off the ground to make up for a lack of income, a job marketplace that seemed walled off by AI bots and junior-junior HR kiddos, and a summer with family free time, adventure expectations, and opportunities to spend those rare, beautiful hours outdoors in New England.
I had already ridden a roller coaster of emotions from belief to despair, doubt to optimism, and hope, more than anything. I needed to act. I needed to put something out there in the world. What am I good at, I asked myself.
- Writing. (Some may say...)
- Bringing people together.
I had been playing around with the idea of a blog/newsletter and a book club since the winter. I had created mockup websites, tested different newsletter products, and worked on distinctive branding. But I had the immense weight of fear that comes with putting something out there in the world for all to judge. Hitting publish. Signing your name to an idea. Asking for support. These are easy to write out and incredibly hard to actually do.
But at some point, I told myself, I just need to do this. I was getting incredibly frustrated by the narrative about manhood and masculinity filling up social media and drowning the algorithms. I was worried about my son and his generation, whose models of success — praised for pageviews, followers, likes, and wealth — traded in specious arguments and gripes about their standing as men, leveraging vulgarity, mockery, greed, and performative victimhood. Looking more closely at my own generation and those closer in age to me — guys between, say, 30 and 55 — I also felt a void in real-life connections: meaningful relationships, opportunities to sit and talk, share stories, laugh or commiserate, and just feel community. More than anything, all of this seemed to be occurring in parallel with an epidemic of separateness, aloneness, technological siloing, and, looking deeper, darkness.
And so, I published a few blog posts centered on ideas I was wrestling with. I created a newsletter to share my thoughts in a tighter (hahaha...) format. I reached out to a few folks to follow along, built a way to amplify my ideas via social media, and asked folks if they wanted to come to a night to talk about books over food and drink. The worst that could happen was that no one signs up. No one shows up. Everyone unsubscribes.
Then what? Move on.
But. That didn't happen. I showed up to the first book club meeting in August 2025, driving down to Newton from Maine, where my family was hanging, not knowing if anyone would show. And they did — a few friends who are now deeper friends, people I'm forever grateful for and appreciative of, met at Paddy's and discussed The Great Gatsby.
That night, something I couldn't have foreseen happened. We not only discussed our takes on the characters and what the book meant to us after not having read it in decades, but we talked about how to weave the lessons — and the tragedy — of Gatsby into our lives and careers. We opened up about deeply personal experiences: worries we had, family we were proud of, accomplishments we'd made. We bonded as good men who showed up to share what we were wrestling with, and to let each other know: we're all going through similar ups and downs, and we'll be there for each other.
There's so much I've learned in the past year. There are lots of unexpected surprises and aspects of this project that exceeded my wildest vision. There are also things that I want to improve and lessons learned. But that is an exercise for another day.
Thank you to all who have read these newsletters, sent notes, reached out, and shared ideas, insights, and constructive criticism. I am humbled that I can connect with you on some level through this writing.
I am forever grateful to Steve, Mike, Brendan, Ari, Dave, Brendan, Hardy, Andy, John, and whoever shows up tonight. Also, most importantly, thank you, Sarah, for always being my muse and having my back.
The Gentleman Shares - Recent Thought-Provoking Reading and More
A few things worth your time this month:
Pete Hegseth’s Testosterone Fantasy Is Part of a Much Larger Right-Wing Phenomenon - Christina Cauterucci, Slate
Recently, I shared New York Times Magazine's wide-ranging breakdown of the current trends with testosterone. This Slate piece wades into the political waters of how testosterone has found its way into policy. The current embrace of testosterone by the powers-that-be is because it is perceived as a "Magic manly potion, an indisputable indicator of sexual power, a tool for turning matcha-swilling weaklings into musclebound superheroes incapable of expressing any emotion but rage." The article breaks down the benefits and potential dangers of testing and prescribing T.
"The Hedonic Treadmill - Seth Godin, Seth's Blog
I love to read Seth Godin's daily post of wisdom, introspection, or call to action. This is a recent little bit on something we've talked about a fair amount at the book club, having enough.
"What I Learned About American Men in My All-Male Book Club" - Kristopher Jansma, Lit Hub
The author asks, rightly, "If our adult lives are full of hard work and responsibilities, then why shouldn’t we devote our scant free time to a journey on the high seas, an intergalactic quest, or a trip through Camelot?"
Support The Wild Gentleman
I've carried a lot of the weight on this project, happily, over the past year. But it would be incredibly helpful if you believe in this project and would support it as a member or patron.
I recently updated the membership tiers so that it is clear what each level of membership or patronage gets out of the deal.
The best way to support The Wild Gentleman is to become a paid member. Membership gets you access to the full archive of printable reader's guides, comments on every post, and more in the future.
For all of you who already support The Wild Gentleman: Thank you. I am forever grateful.
Wild at Heart. Refined in Mind.
Dennis
