ill-sorted

And not ill-sorted in a way that might make someone shudder.

By his own admission, Stephen Booth's new project of close reading brings together a group of "ill-sorted" texts (ix), including Lincoln's 1863 Gettysburg Address and early modern works in disparate genres by Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Such a tale can, and does, cover a lot of ground in a book about American masculinity; but in real life things happen, and concepts get constructed and deployed, not just because men and women want to feel good about themselves but also because they seek real social power--which is why Kimmel's psychologism is ultimately no more or less helpful than the crudely functional economism, it seeks to avoid, and why so much of Manhood in America comes across as so ill-sorted and half-baked.