One man brought “Watchmen,” a graphic novel. Valid, technically.
Another scoured his home bookshelf and realized he did not own a single novel or short story collection. So he showed up to the meeting with a nonfiction book about emotional intelligence. (Mr. Israel posted a photo of the seven millenial-ish men in the group, each holding his selection, to his Instagram account.)
Mr. Israel, who has hosted another book club for nearly a decade, started this group last December in an effort to inspire heterosexual men to read more fiction. He solicited members over social media. For the second meeting, he assigned a story collection by Jamel Brinkley, “A Lucky Man,” which examines contemporary masculinity. For two hours, the men discussed the book, and the theme. (...)
“I’m doing this because I need it,” he said in an interview.
So do lots of men — at least according to a robust debate unfolding in opinion pages and news articles, on social media platforms and inside the publishing world. By turns a maligned or suspicious figure in decades past — in the case of the “Infinite Jest” lover, for instance — or a fetishized one — consider the enormously popular “Hot Dudes Reading” Instagram — the figure of the literary male reader is now disappearing, some say, and his disappearance is a matter of grave concern.
These articles, which focus explicitly or implicitly on straight men, connect the fact that these men are reading fewer novels to a variety of social maladies, up to and including deleterious effects on American democracy itself. If more men were reading like Mr. Israel, the thinking goes, the country would be a healthier place: more sensitive, more self-aware, less destructive. As more American men fill their hours with the crude talk shows of the “manosphere,” online gambling and addictive multiplayer games, the humble novel — consumed alone, requiring thought and patience — can look like a panacea.
It’s a lot of pressure to put on the reading man, who for many people remains a fittingly prosaic sight, unworthy of deeper thought or further comment. Perhaps he is passing the time on a commute, or taking a break from the stresses of the day. Little does he know, he’s been drafted into a new front in the culture war over the future of men.
On a recent afternoon in June, Jack Kyono, an assistant manager at McNally Jackson, the stalwart New York book chain, walked the floor of the store’s SoHo location. Mr. Kyono was quick to point out that not all men read in the same way. International tourists are buying different books from older American men, who are buying different books from young professionals. But he broadly agreed with the idea that when it came to reading fiction, straight men were followers, not leaders. They might read Sally Rooney or Ocean Vuong, he said, but only after an audience of straight women and queer people had made them cultural touchstones.
Earlier on the phone, he told me he had noticed a gender divide among the stacks: When groups of women wandered into the store, they frequently browsed together, pointing out books they had read and making suggestions for their friends — an act that booksellers call “the handsell.”
Meanwhile, when men came into the bookstore with other men, they typically split up and dispersed to far corners of the store.
“It’s solo browsing time,” he said. (...)
Eventually, Mr. Kyono took me to the front to look at an attractive “customer favorites” display. Here, pastel and vivid colors dominated the covers of books by romance and “romantasy” stalwarts like Carley Fortune and Sarah J. Maas, the author of the popular “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series.
Beyond the bookstore, much of the architecture of book discovery is informally targeted at women. Celebrity book clubs are mostly led by female celebrities and increasingly court women of all ages, from those who are fans of Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon to those who are more interested in the tastes of Dua Lipa and Kaia Gerber. (Former President Barack Obama, the obvious straight male exception, releases a single list of his favorite books every year.) #BookTok, the vast community on TikTok that has become a best-seller machine, is largely populated by women recommending books by other women, like Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us.”
There are counterexamples that prove the rule. C.J. Box, the author of a long-running series about a Wyoming game warden who solves murders, has expanded his audience to include younger men by appearing on a series of podcasts about hunting, fishing and other outdoors subjects.
But literary novelists — the kind who populate prestigious lists and publish the “big” books of the year — have not seemed to crack the code with straight guys, at least on social media. (...)
These arguments hark back to a midcentury culture of fiction writing dominated by men writing about masculine subjects and the male experience. But it was not always thus. In the 19th century, the most popular novels were written by women for a female audience. Their output was considered “paltry entertainment,” according to Dan Sinykin, a professor of English at Emory University and the author of “Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature.”
Many of these titles were so-called sentimental novels, whose virtuous heroines illustrated proper moral conduct. In 1855, Nathaniel Hawthorne described American novelists to his publisher as “a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash.”
A century later, the story had changed, and publishing had become a boys club with cultural cachet, according to Mr. Sinykin. Literary form was prized above social instruction.
Starting in the 1980s, a new generation of women came to dominate the publishing industry. The “feminization” of the industry, as Mr. Sinykin called it, resulted in a business that “assumes its primary audience is white women between 30 and 65” and publishes books to suit their tastes. (...)
by Joseph Bernstein, NY Times | Read more:
“I’m doing this because I need it,” he said in an interview.
So do lots of men — at least according to a robust debate unfolding in opinion pages and news articles, on social media platforms and inside the publishing world. By turns a maligned or suspicious figure in decades past — in the case of the “Infinite Jest” lover, for instance — or a fetishized one — consider the enormously popular “Hot Dudes Reading” Instagram — the figure of the literary male reader is now disappearing, some say, and his disappearance is a matter of grave concern.
These articles, which focus explicitly or implicitly on straight men, connect the fact that these men are reading fewer novels to a variety of social maladies, up to and including deleterious effects on American democracy itself. If more men were reading like Mr. Israel, the thinking goes, the country would be a healthier place: more sensitive, more self-aware, less destructive. As more American men fill their hours with the crude talk shows of the “manosphere,” online gambling and addictive multiplayer games, the humble novel — consumed alone, requiring thought and patience — can look like a panacea.
It’s a lot of pressure to put on the reading man, who for many people remains a fittingly prosaic sight, unworthy of deeper thought or further comment. Perhaps he is passing the time on a commute, or taking a break from the stresses of the day. Little does he know, he’s been drafted into a new front in the culture war over the future of men.
On a recent afternoon in June, Jack Kyono, an assistant manager at McNally Jackson, the stalwart New York book chain, walked the floor of the store’s SoHo location. Mr. Kyono was quick to point out that not all men read in the same way. International tourists are buying different books from older American men, who are buying different books from young professionals. But he broadly agreed with the idea that when it came to reading fiction, straight men were followers, not leaders. They might read Sally Rooney or Ocean Vuong, he said, but only after an audience of straight women and queer people had made them cultural touchstones.
Earlier on the phone, he told me he had noticed a gender divide among the stacks: When groups of women wandered into the store, they frequently browsed together, pointing out books they had read and making suggestions for their friends — an act that booksellers call “the handsell.”
Meanwhile, when men came into the bookstore with other men, they typically split up and dispersed to far corners of the store.
“It’s solo browsing time,” he said. (...)
Eventually, Mr. Kyono took me to the front to look at an attractive “customer favorites” display. Here, pastel and vivid colors dominated the covers of books by romance and “romantasy” stalwarts like Carley Fortune and Sarah J. Maas, the author of the popular “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series.
Beyond the bookstore, much of the architecture of book discovery is informally targeted at women. Celebrity book clubs are mostly led by female celebrities and increasingly court women of all ages, from those who are fans of Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon to those who are more interested in the tastes of Dua Lipa and Kaia Gerber. (Former President Barack Obama, the obvious straight male exception, releases a single list of his favorite books every year.) #BookTok, the vast community on TikTok that has become a best-seller machine, is largely populated by women recommending books by other women, like Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us.”
There are counterexamples that prove the rule. C.J. Box, the author of a long-running series about a Wyoming game warden who solves murders, has expanded his audience to include younger men by appearing on a series of podcasts about hunting, fishing and other outdoors subjects.
But literary novelists — the kind who populate prestigious lists and publish the “big” books of the year — have not seemed to crack the code with straight guys, at least on social media. (...)
These arguments hark back to a midcentury culture of fiction writing dominated by men writing about masculine subjects and the male experience. But it was not always thus. In the 19th century, the most popular novels were written by women for a female audience. Their output was considered “paltry entertainment,” according to Dan Sinykin, a professor of English at Emory University and the author of “Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature.”
Many of these titles were so-called sentimental novels, whose virtuous heroines illustrated proper moral conduct. In 1855, Nathaniel Hawthorne described American novelists to his publisher as “a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash.”
A century later, the story had changed, and publishing had become a boys club with cultural cachet, according to Mr. Sinykin. Literary form was prized above social instruction.
Starting in the 1980s, a new generation of women came to dominate the publishing industry. The “feminization” of the industry, as Mr. Sinykin called it, resulted in a business that “assumes its primary audience is white women between 30 and 65” and publishes books to suit their tastes. (...)
Book culture is not a monolith. According to BookScan, some 782.7 million books were sold in 2024, and the rapid growth of the self-published book market means that there is fiction to suit almost every taste. In this context, what Mr. Sinykin called the “worst version” of the critique of contemporary fiction — that liberal politics have destroyed the space for male readers — seems like a huge oversimplification. And many people who care about the future of the male fiction reader are keen to avoid it.
Mr. Israel deliberately did not include the words “man” or “men” in the name of his book club. He called it “The Fiction Revival,” to underline the idea that there was a kind of reading experience for men that needed to be resuscitated.
Max Lawton, a translator who frequently works on long European novels, scoffed at the “corny idea of the male reader” who is interested only in stereotypically masculine subjects and austere prose.
“Being a reader is not a two-party system — you can read whatever you want,” he said.
Even Mr. Castro, the novelist, rejected the idea of a countermovement in the name of masculine identity. “Resentment, performing or embodying a self-consciously ‘masculine’ identity at the expense of literary value, is cringe,” he wrote in an email. “‘Identity’ is not a literary value.”
One real challenge at hand is a frenzied attention economy competing for everyone’s time, not just men’s. To present the sorry state of the male reader as having solely to do with the gendered quality of contemporary fiction misses a screen-based culture that presents nearly unlimited forms of entertainment.
“Our competition isn’t other publishers,” said Sean Manning, the publisher of Simon & Schuster. “It’s social media, gaming, streaming. All these other things that are vying for people’s time, attention and financial resources.”
Asked whether the publishing industry needed straight men to read more fiction as a purely economic matter, Mr. Manning focused instead on the social benefits of reading.
“It’s a problem if anyone isn’t taking advantage of an incredible artistic medium,” he said. “It’s hurtful not to be well-rounded.”
Mr. Israel deliberately did not include the words “man” or “men” in the name of his book club. He called it “The Fiction Revival,” to underline the idea that there was a kind of reading experience for men that needed to be resuscitated.
Max Lawton, a translator who frequently works on long European novels, scoffed at the “corny idea of the male reader” who is interested only in stereotypically masculine subjects and austere prose.
“Being a reader is not a two-party system — you can read whatever you want,” he said.
Even Mr. Castro, the novelist, rejected the idea of a countermovement in the name of masculine identity. “Resentment, performing or embodying a self-consciously ‘masculine’ identity at the expense of literary value, is cringe,” he wrote in an email. “‘Identity’ is not a literary value.”
One real challenge at hand is a frenzied attention economy competing for everyone’s time, not just men’s. To present the sorry state of the male reader as having solely to do with the gendered quality of contemporary fiction misses a screen-based culture that presents nearly unlimited forms of entertainment.
“Our competition isn’t other publishers,” said Sean Manning, the publisher of Simon & Schuster. “It’s social media, gaming, streaming. All these other things that are vying for people’s time, attention and financial resources.”
Asked whether the publishing industry needed straight men to read more fiction as a purely economic matter, Mr. Manning focused instead on the social benefits of reading.
“It’s a problem if anyone isn’t taking advantage of an incredible artistic medium,” he said. “It’s hurtful not to be well-rounded.”
by Joseph Bernstein, NY Times | Read more:
Image:Porsalin Hindsman-Israel
[ed. I read, on average, probably a couple novels a month - always fiction. There's too much non-fiction on the internet as is. I wouldn't have thought this was anything special re: men vs. women, or any kind of trend, because so many reviews by both are on Amazon, Goodreads, in literary journals, etc.; and, of course, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of male writers. But maybe that's an unreliable sample, and overall numbers actually are this bleak. I know in real life (actually, my whole life) I can't think of or recall more than a handful of guys who I'd call avid fiction readers or at least occasional dabblers (my son being one of them). And that was mostly back in college. Pretty sad, since an active imagination (vs. passive screen consumption) is surely one of life's most delightful of human pleasures. One thing I'd definitely agree with: all those pastels and wild book colors scattered across bookstore display tables are definitely a turnoff and should immediately be suspect.]
[ed. I read, on average, probably a couple novels a month - always fiction. There's too much non-fiction on the internet as is. I wouldn't have thought this was anything special re: men vs. women, or any kind of trend, because so many reviews by both are on Amazon, Goodreads, in literary journals, etc.; and, of course, there doesn't seem to be any shortage of male writers. But maybe that's an unreliable sample, and overall numbers actually are this bleak. I know in real life (actually, my whole life) I can't think of or recall more than a handful of guys who I'd call avid fiction readers or at least occasional dabblers (my son being one of them). And that was mostly back in college. Pretty sad, since an active imagination (vs. passive screen consumption) is surely one of life's most delightful of human pleasures. One thing I'd definitely agree with: all those pastels and wild book colors scattered across bookstore display tables are definitely a turnoff and should immediately be suspect.]
