Laura Davidson SOHO II Office Chair. A few weeks back on Dying Breed, I gave readers a tour of our home office. I noted how we needed new office chairs and solicited recommendations. Reader Alex B. pointed us toward the Laura Davidson SOHO II, and after checking out the clean, mid-century lines, we pulled the trigger. At $300, it’s not cheap, but it’s not Herman Miller Aeron expensive either. I like that it evinces a Mad Men-era look without being too precious about it. I also like that it doesn’t have a lot of adjustment thingies that are tedious to optimize. At the same time, it hits the sweet spot comfort-wise. You can sit in it for a long time without your back screaming at you, but it doesn’t coddle you and invite you to perpetually stay on your keister. Thanks for the tip, Alex!

A Man Escaped. I watched this 1956 French film about a prison break this week and really enjoyed it. Director Robert Bresson takes what could have been a straightforward escape thriller and turns it into something almost meditative. The film follows Lieutenant Fontaine, a French Resistance fighter, as he slowly and methodically plans his breakout from a Nazi prison. There’s no dramatic music or flashy camera work — just the sound of a spoon scraping against wood as he works on his cell door, night after night. Watching this guy unravel bed sheets and make makeshift grappling hooks is engrossing. You’re rooting for every small victory, sweating through every close call with the guards. It’s based on a true story, which makes the determination and desperation even more powerful. A great film that highlights courage under fire and male improvisation. 

Manliness: The Robert Mitchum Way by James Scott Bell. After watching The Night of the Hunter last week, I went down a rabbit hole exploring Robert Mitchum’s career and stumbled across this little book. Bell uses Mitchum’s film roles as a guide to masculinity, arguing his characters embodied old-school manly virtues like duty and honor. It’s a quick read. I appreciate how earnest Bell is about reviving old-school manliness, and the book also gave me a solid watchlist of Mitchum’s films. 

The Dull Men’s Club. I recently came across this Guardian article about a Facebook group where people celebrate the unexciting and ordinary. The Dull Men’s Club started as a joke in the 1980s, but thanks to the wonders of the internet, the club now has millions of members who post about coat hangers in hotel rooms and the proper way to hang toilet paper. The rules are strict: no exclamation marks (too exciting), no politics, and definitely no emoji avatars. In a world of short-form video influencers and manufactured excitement, these men show that there’s genuine connection to be had in admitting life is mostly just mundane.

On our Dying Breed newsletter, we published Sunday Firesides: What You Really Want and Dying Breed Dialogues: On Elevating Your Agency.

Quote of the Week

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald

This article was originally published on The Art of Manliness.