And so Norah transforms herself into Ned. Ned comes into being via a flat-top haircut, a new wardrobe of sports jackets and rugby shirts, a pair of rectangular glasses, workouts to build up the shoulders and add 15 pounds of bulk, a cupless sports bra to flatten the breasts, a convincing layer of facial stubble (made of something called wool crepe hair and applied with an adhesive called stoppelpaste) and some lessons in male speech patterns with a Juilliard voice coach. For verisimilitude, Vincent also acquires a prosthetic member from a sex shop -- though, the author takes pains to explain, it's a flaccid version designed specifically for cross-dressers, not an outsize toy for bedroom kicks.

Vincent's status as a "masculine woman" abets this transformation, but the subject of her lesbianism falls away, more or less, once her adventures as Ned begin. Indeed, one of the great attributes of "Self-Made Man" is its lack of agenda or presuppositions. To be sure, Vincent's status as a woman is what makes her observations of male behavior fresh -- introducing herself to some guys in a bowling league, she's touched by the ritual howyadoin', man-to-man handshake, which, "from the outside . . . had always seemed overdone to me," but from the inside strikes her as remarkably warm and inclusive, worlds away from the "fake and cold" air kisses and limp handshakes exchanged by women. But in its best moments, "Self-Made Man" transcends its premise altogether, offering not an undercover woman's take on male experience, but simply a fascinating, fly-on-the-wall look at various unglamorous male milieus that are well off the radar of most journalists and book authors.

That bowling league, for example. Norah-as-Ned commits to it for eight months, becoming the weak link on a four-man team of working-class white men. (Vincent has changed the names of the characters and obscured the locations to protect the identities of her subjects.) The resultant chapter is as tender and unpatronizing a portrait of America's "white trash" underclass as I've ever read. "They took people at face value,$(2$) writes Vincent of Ned's teammates, a plumber, an appliance repairman and a construction worker. "If you did your job or held up your end, and treated them with the passing respect they accorded you, you were all right." Neither dumb lugs nor proletarian saints, Ned's bowling buddies are wont to make homophobic cracks and pay an occasional visit to a strip club, but they surprise Vincent with their lack of rage and racism, their unflagging efforts to improve Ned's atrocious bowling technique and "the absolute reverence with which they spoke about their wives," one of whom is wasting away from cancer.

Compelling in a rather different way is Vincent's account of working as a salesman for one of those shady, Mamet-ready outfits that advertise in the classifieds, offering $$$ to "high-powered" prospects, no experience necessary. Answering such an ad, Ned lands a thankless job going door-to-door selling "entertainment books" filled with coupons for discounts at local businesses. The raw, malevolent arrogance of Ned's fellow salesmen, who actually psych themselves up by shouting out such idiotic motivational acronyms as Juice (for Join Us In Creating Excitement), can't hide their desperation. Vincent scares herself when, dressed up in one of Ned's power blazers, she submits to the Juice mentality and actually succeeds at being a feral-jerk saleswolf, earning her boss's praise as "a highly motivated type a guy."

Ned's whistle-stop tour of modern manhood also takes him to a Roman Catholic monastery, a lap-dance club, a men's consciousness-raising group and on a series of awkward dates with women. (Amusingly, Vincent is utterly astounded by the amount of rejection and hauteur that heterosexual men put up with.) Conspicuously absent from "Self-Made Man," though, are men leading full, contented lives. Perhaps this is a function of the limitations of Vincent's experiment -- after all, a "man" created out of thin air and stoppelpaste can't very well insinuate himself into an elegant country club or a loving nuclear family.