Not To Be Confused With Heartburn

Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man by Sam Keen

My review

rating: 1 of 5 stars
Keen writes way too preachy, and although he dug up a few clever quotes, the book disappointed me to the point that I could not finish it. That surprised me because it came highly recommended and the title sounded quite promising. The title thing was big for me due to my extended romance with the concept of having a fire in one's belly. One bright San Francisco morning warped by a twenty-something hangover my friends & I came across a raspy wino sitting on a steep street outside a liquor store that happened to be in a fair to middling mood. We gave him some dough for booze and he explained to us about the fire in the belly. The grizzled little man had a way of yelling "fire, fire in your belly", with a very strong accent on the fire part, that my friends & I would take turns bellowing to each other when we were drunk for the next ten years. You see, said the wizened wino, "a 40-oz malt liquor in the morning won't give you that fire, you need wine, or perhaps whiskey, to give that wondrous burn we call the fire in the belly." We roared with laughter, overstanding, and devil-may-care alcoholic bonding before setting off to chase that flickering flame across ten-thousand twilights, and again tomorrow. Cannot count the times I have cried for that fire, done violence for it, gone hungry, pushed my body to collapse, and still I would swear by it's unassailable greatness without hesitation. Keen does not this concept justice, in my admittedly arrogant & condescending opinion.






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