When Bill Moyer's PBS special on Robert Bly, "A Gathering of Men," aired in the winter of 1990, it brought forth an unprecedented flood of calls and letters from both men and women attesting to the pain and confusion experienced by many contemporary men. Iron John is Robert Bly's long-awaited book on male initiation and the role of the mentor, the result of ten years' work with men to discover the truths about masculinity that get beyond the stereotypes of our popular culture. In the tradition of Blake, Yeats, and D.H. Lawrence, Bly has turned to the most ancient stories and legends to remind men and women of welcome image long forgotten, images of a vigorous masculinity both protective and emotionally centered. Bly takes as the frame for his book the tale of "Iron John." Which the Grimm brothers collected in the early nineteenth century, but which in its themes and motifs goes back thousands of years, In the story, an ancient "hairy man" - Iron John - becomes mentor to a young boy, and each event or adventure is regarded as a stage of male growth. As Bly retells the story, he stops at times to reflect on initiation rituals for men which still go on in some parts of the world or are still remembered in epics such as The Odyssey. As the book progresses, it brings together a rich and coherent picture of what it meant through time to pass from boyhood into manhood. Throughout that long history of initiation the role of the older man has been central. Yet in our own time, the young men Bly observes are hungering for the father and the mentor as intensely as they hunger for food. Some stay stuck in the "tough guy" mode. Others linger in the na茂vet茅 that destroys relationships, so doubtful of themselves that they can be life preserving ... but not life giving. Such men in recent times have been directed toward some form of "higher" consciousness, or perhaps "higher" achievement. Bly offers instead the way of descent, in which the psyche learns to grieve. As "Iron John" and so many other stories show us, grief - the time of ashes - is the door to feelings. Iron John also points the way toward developing what Bly calls the "inner warrior," whose task is not hostility and aggression but a steady resolve to know and to defend what one lives. This initiatory path, which is long, begins by getting in touch with the "Wild Man" who reconnects us to the earth and who helps us, in the terms given by the story, "steal the key from under the mother's pillow." But unlike Freud, Bly does not "blame the mother" for the boy's problems. The initiatory process as Bly presents it honors the feminine and involves partnership with the feminine. This book returns responsibility to the older males for bringing the boy into the world of men. Iron John is at the same time a new vision and a very ancient vision of adult manhood, one that has depth, vividness, and solidarity. It reconfirms the power of ancient stories to guide, to heal, and to convey the deepest truths, and it will be read by men and women for decades. - Dust jacket.