"I think they do read. They read nonfiction and genre fiction, mostly. And then they probably read the canon. They’re just not reading, like, contemporary literary fiction, and I don’t know if that’s bad or good. I also think it’s a question of generations — they’re wondering what younger millennial men are reading and Gen-Z boys/men. They’re young, and their tastes are as yet unformed, so … get to work!"
Said an unnamed literary agent, quoted in "28 Book Industry Professionals Get Candid About the State of the Industry" (New York Magazine).
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88 comments:
They’re turned off by propaganda no matter how clever you think you’re being…and nobody’s reading your money laundering books, not even the political supporters…
This generation would read the same types of things that males from previous generations have read. The real question is whether such things are still being written and published.
Well they are horribly bad and awful
Almost every modern book that I have read is full of woke bullshit. I used to love Stephen King books back in the early 80s. I pick up one of his latest books written during COVID. It was a four hundred page rant against the unvaccinated and Trump. No thanks Stephen, go back to writing stories like The Stand which had zero politics.
"...they’re wondering what younger millennial men are reading and Gen-Z boys/men. They’re young, and their tastes are as yet unformed, so … get to work!"...."
Yeah? Not only are their 'tastes' unformed, so are their reading abilities, from what I've been seeing reported. But hey, at least diversity is represented and there is equity now, so we have that going for us.
Look at what you publish, do the opposite
here's some interesting reading:
https://www.news.uscg.mil/Press-Releases/Article/4368196/coast-guard-awards-contracts-to-build-arctic-security-cutters/
"WASHINGTON — The U.S. Coast Guard announced the award of two contracts to build up to six Arctic Security Cutter (ASC) icebreakers"
i DON'T Understand? didn't Al Gore promise us, that the arctic would be ice free By NOW?
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/mar/02/facebook-posts/fact-checking-claims-al-gore-said-all-arctic-ice-w/
And what the fuck is up with library staff these days? During COVID they went full on irrational cat lady. Some still wear fucking face diapers today.
I just started reading Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’. So far, so good…
"They’re just not reading, like, contemporary literary fiction, and I don’t know if that’s bad or good". I read some of it and it's bad. So, there is your answer.
Beasts of England said...
I just started reading Umberto Eco’s ‘The Name of the Rose’. So far, so good…
I read "Foucault's Pendulum" when it first came out and got hooked on Eco. I have read all of his books and recommend them. He is an acquired taste, but once you acquire it, you can't wait to read the next one.
Hannah Fry captures the essence of a great read. Books with her name on them are on my shelf but she’s scattered in multiple media and oh yes a professor…
Ht skip the prague cementery
But take dan brown please
As someone who works with high school students, many of whom don't like to read, it's action that gets them moving. "My Side of the Mountain," "Call of the Wild," etc, for boys, "Anne of Green Gables," "A Little Princess," etc. for girls, even if books like those are way below the grade level the students are in, it gets them started.
If you like garish crime stories try gomez jurado
’I read "Foucault's Pendulum" when it first came out and got hooked on Eco. I have read all of his books and recommend them. He is an acquired taste, but once you acquire it, you can't wait to read the next one.’
This is my first, and I’m pleased to report it was a Christmas gift from my girlfriend. She and I are both Latin nerds, so she knew I’d enjoy it. And at about six hundred pages, I’ll be enjoying it for quite a while. :)
I think most modern authors learned how to write in Minneapolis’ Quality Learing Center.
Back in the late ‘40s, Scribner’s asked Robert A. Heinlein to write a series of books specifically aimed at teenage boys, think 15-18 year olds. Thus was born the famous and excellent-selling “Heinlein Juveniles”, the last one published in 1959. They still sell today. But of course, RAH being RAH, they are far more than just “books for teenage boys”; they have plenty of action, but also plenty of “what decision do I make” and “what’s the right thing”. Heinlein was a big believer in being honorable, and that kind of thing jumps off the page in these. You want books that young men will read, start with the magic embedded in these.
For contemporary writers of fiction, I can think of nobody better than Neal Stephenson. He has a few turds in his oeuvre, but Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, Reamde, Seveneves (although I’m one of the minority that like the “5000 years later” section better than the main part”), Termination Shock (which is about far more than global warming), Polostan (his latest), and especially his 2008 masterpiece Anathem (my current pick for best book of the century so far)…all compulsively readable. He’s never really said so in public to my knowledge, but it’s clear that NS is substantially influenced by RAH (Anathem in particular draws from some of the best of the Heinlein juveniles).
What’s in these books is why men don’t read “modern fiction”; that stuff is written largely by women, largely for women (although wasn’t there speculation that the acclaimed “Neapolitan Quartet” pseudonymous author was actually a man?). But if some editors really want to know how to attract mainstream male readers, check out RAH and NS.
Ha- ai didn’t know there was no paywall but I learned then read. Besides not getting a single inside joke or any of the trade jargon it sounds like the industry is plagued by what plagues most industries at the moment- a good recession to flush away all the dead wood. Nothing fails anymore…
…maybe write about that.
I don't read much "contemporary literary fiction" because most of it seems to come out of accademia where a bunch of aspiring writers sit around in mutual masturbation sessions (Oops, I meant to say seminars) then write books about academia. Instead of writing for an audience they end up writing for each other and with the dearth of men in college today, they end up writing for the childless cat ladies of the world. Too harsh? Maybe but I don't think so. I will join wholeheartedly in the praise for Umberto Eco. Foucault's Pendulum and the rest of his books for that matter. I even enjoyed The Prague Cemetery. I would also recommend Michael Chabon's books. I don't know if Milan Kundera qualifies as contemporary, but if he does, add him to the list. I've heard good things about Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry but have yet to read any of their work. Nevertheless, I regularly get e-mails from Amazon with recommendations of new books, and I can't remember the last time I was tempted to buy one.
I’m surprised there are still (male) editors. I assumed they were all purged…
There are a few IG accounts by young people discovering the classics. Penguin publishing joins the fray, gifting boxes of classic books. VERY wholesome to see a 20-something squee about The Count of Monte Cristo.
"They’re just not reading, like, contemporary literary fiction ..."
We're just reading the good parts of The Handmaid's Tale, over and over and over again.
I'm a trailing edge boomer and I always have a book on the go. You're never alone if you have one. Keep a short story compilation in the car just in case.
The book's biggest problem is its biggest rival - the smartphone, which never leaves our side.
I gave up on contemporary literary fiction long ago. I blame Updike and Mailer, and none since has undone the damage.
Read everything Neal Stephenson wrote, and then read the stuff he recommends. You won't go wrong.
Re: Neal Stephenson, I'd add The Diamond Age.
Men read for plot. Women read for character.
No male writers -> No male readers -> No male writers
It's a vicious cycle. I'm not sure, though, that even when there were male writers of literary fiction how much their books were actually read. They were celebrities and more people probably read about them than actually read them. Maybe even in better times, literary fiction was still a fringe pursuit. In the 19th century before literary fiction and genre fiction separated and there weren't competing media things were probably different.
I get email from Amazon advertising Kindle books because I buy Kindle books. I would estimate that 80% of what they are advertising are books by women and (clearly) for women. I do not buy this type of book, so it's not based on any profile of me.
I think it really all depends on your tastes. With the arrival of Amazon, Thrift Books, and so on, pretty much everything is available. Try Gutenberg Projects online for a variety of free ebooks, that way you can test drive to see if you might be interested in a particular volume. I received 5 books on 17th C England for Christmas, most recently published, two by Duffy, two by Childs, and van der Kiste's new James II book. They're out there, but you'll not find them in bookstores.
They're reading "Dungeon Crawler Carl".
Duty of Inquiry said...
Men read for plot. Women read for character.
Even the best plot needs a reason to turn to the next page.
That is almost always an emotional attachment to the character.
For men it does tend to be more about the McGuffin. But the McGuffin has to be important. Women usually just skip the McGuffin part.
Jeff said...
As someone who works with high school students, many of whom don't like to read, it's action that gets them moving.
The action has to have some sort of impact on the character. It has to be something the reader relates to so they can relate to what the character is trying to accomplish.
So female editors don't care what men want to read. And the male ones are either Jewish or Gay and don't understand what young white men want to read. Crazy.
I guess they could sign up some white male authors but it seems they don't want to do that.
Anyway, I cant imagine being a young man under 40 and wasting my time reading Contemporary Fiction. Why plow through all the leftwing crap to find one or two books that might be half-way good? Just read the classics or Old SF/historical novels. Or play a video game.
Aggie said...
"...they’re wondering what younger millennial men are reading and Gen-Z boys/men. They’re young, and their tastes are as yet unformed, so … get to work!"...."
Yeah? Not only are their 'tastes' unformed, so are their reading abilities, from what I've been seeing reported. But hey, at least diversity is represented and there is equity now, so we have that going for us.
Most boys have moved to anime. US writers and game producers went woke. Chinese and other asian produced video games have wiped out western game companies for the same reason.
Women buy 80-90 percent of all fiction. Just like they consume most of the TV dramas. Probably wont change.
No shortage of good books for men though it may mean looking to the past. Not much out there now for any males except biographies and memoirs. William Finnegan of the New Yorker magazine won a Pulitzer in 2016 for his memoir "Barbarian Days". But he was and is alone in a culled and defenestrated heard of white males. You can't read what's not there.
We're certainly not reading books about men having babies or now toxic we are. Which is all the dreck that these they/thems are writing.
"Literary" fiction is itself a niche genre. I'm sure editors would love to expand its market, but I don't see why the average young man would opt for litfic when he could opt for more entertaining stories better told in the highly competitive field of genre fiction.
Didn't we recently have a discussion about how young white male authors were aced out of the "contemporary literary fiction" writing by DEI starting around 2014, in favor of women and BIPOCs? That would go a long way toward explaining why the same demographic isn't buying the books.
Yes…what Clyde says. I blame the power…held by mostly women
I skim the nytbr mostly for humour
No mention of Alan Furst?
We were focusing on recent series
Yah if you’re an editor kvetching you don’t want to hear focus on the classics…
'Like jacqueline susann and harold robbins' yech
I try to stick to books written by men that were published before 2000
Foreign tomes are a little less contaminated with this mind arson
What men read is Patrick O’Brian’s Capt. Aubrey series, and all of Andrew Wareham. And Fraser’s Flashman and the like.
Was at the supermarket yesterday and in the book section Stephen King was the only male writer. Every other book was written by a woman, about women, and for women. Women have taken over the publishing industry and excluded males, in the same way that Democrat Party members take over non-partisan organizations and exclude Republican/conservatives until it is a Libtard Party company from top to bottom.
Duotrope is a service that issues weekly newsletters featuring writing contests, magazine and publishing house calls for submissions, and literary agents openings for clients. Week after week for five years I've gotten this newsletter and in 5 years I have seen maybe 10-15 total male agents. Every week there are anywhere from a few to a few dozen agents looking for clients and almost every week every single agent is female.
When men ran the publishing industry, women were well-represented in the field, fiction writers, poets, newspaper and magazine staff and columnists because it was understood that women read too and had a different appetite and interests than men. But now with women in control of the industry, the feminazi ideology reigns and women refuse to employ men, publish men, or print works that would interest men. Since men don't want to read books about shopping or having a period, men don't buy them. And girl bosses declare "Men don't read".
What, exactly, would be the "Canon" that men read? Texts that make them think about ancient Rome?
No mention of Alan Furst?
Agreed, very excellent noir-ish stuff about Europe during WWII, focusing at times on Baltic states that get little play elsewhere.
No mention of Alan Furst?
Agreed, very excellent noir-ish stuff about Europe during WWII, focusing at times on Baltic states that get little play elsewhere.
Conn iggulden was pretty good on that score
The roman period
Stephensons baroque age was most interesting although t lost steam by the third book
So... men and women are different? I've got to say- I never saw that one coming.
Mind blown
The Roman Empire, of course. Gibbon’s six-volume The Decline and Fall is very good, and also Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic wars.
Contemporary fiction is mostly crap, written by, for, and about women (King excepted, of course.)
I first read andrew wareham's "poor man at the gate" in 22. Read the whole series of 8 books in 2-3 weeks. I've read 15-20 series and 80-90 of his books since. Many 2-3 times.
All his books are superb his current series "the cruelest war" about ww1 is 5x super.
Publish more stuff like this.
Currently rereading some elmore leonard. More like that please.
I probably download 10 samples a week, buy 1 or 2
Publish something good and I'll buy it.
John Henry
Bernard Cornwell's Saxon series (made into The Last Kingdom TV series) is good reading for men young and old.
And I concur heartily about the Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin books, although they might be tough going for less dedicated readers (if you like reading, like I did and do, you probably don't mind a little tough going even if you're a teenager). Part of the appeal is that they convey a sense that something noble and fascinating is going on, even if you don't fully understand it.
I could never get into the Umberto Eco books (maybe because latin is a mystery to me). Maybe I'lI give it another try. I did like the Dorothy Dunnett Lyman series, even though they are very tough going indeed.
I like delving into serious reading, history and biography, but I'm also a big fan of what I like to call, 'television books'. You read them for pure escapist enjoyment, but they're in one eye, out the other. You forget about them pretty quickly, such that you can re-read them a few years later and it's all brand-new again.
I hear William Gibson is working on another book. He's a trilogy-type guy, and it's the third one.
I've mentioned Furst here before as a guy's writer. I also like the late Philip Kerr (though some of his later Gunther mysteries disappoint).
O'Brien is great, and the Hornblower books are still around and worth reading. I haven't read Wareham, who was a big fave of Doc Kennedy's.
And speaking of G M Fraser (Flashman) his memoir of tommyhood under Slim in Burma is one of the great ones--
Quartered Safe Out Here.
Charles stross laundry series lovecraft and le carre twist was interesting for a while
I'll echo the Eco reccos--The Prague Cemetery is needlessly convoluted and obscure.
I got two other books by the author of "Germania", Simon Winder, who writes about travel (no, more like wandering) in Mitteleuropa. Offbeat and erudite, with a keen sense of how much was destroyed after the kings departed. "Danubia" and "Lotharingia"--available in print and audio through a portal near you!
I've published 6 books. 5 through Amazon, one vi Taylor & Francis CRC Press.
Since 2011 I've earned $45m royalty (not sales, royalty) on my Packaging Machinery Handbook. "achieving lean changeover (CRC Press has maybe earned me $1p00 in the same period.
What do I or anyone else need a publishing house for? What can they do for me?
I can't even get a break on author copies. T&f gives me 10% off but then charges shipping & handling so it is more expensive than Amazon with prime.
John Henry
Lee Child's Reacher series is probably the last/latest "contemporary fiction" series I read. More technically, I did read C.W. Lemoine's Spectre, but that was only 3 books and a short read. I'm pretty sure I read another Reacher afterwards. I still follow the made for television Reacher series, and I watch Lemoine's weekly podcast on YouTube.
The biggest problem is the industry embraced anti-toxic masculinity and DEI. Major publication houses and industry awards punished authors who wrote the books that I enjoy. Lee Child is a possible exception, but as a Brit, he's still left of the modern Tories, which is to say progressive to US standards.
I agree with the article that non-fiction is popular with men, but I don't that is selling well in written form these days. Even the books I mentioned above I consumed as audiobooks more often than reading. Because I can consume them while driving. With podcasts, I can get most of my non-fiction in audio form too, whether it is history, technology, finance, or self-help.
Would also commend two histories--Alan Allport's "Britain at Bay, 1938-1941", the first of two volumes on the WWII experience in the UK. Full of revisionism of the best kind, puncturing equally the official and the popular mythologies.
And Williamson Murray's "The Dark Path" about the last 500 years of power politics, which saw Europe's rise to dominance through the unfolding of political, military, and economic revolutions and their interactions, and the last century which has seen Europe (the West) decline in relative power even more quickly than it rose.
And he isn't optimistic about our chances to avoid a hard and bloody landing when the balloons pop.
What, exactly, would be the "Canon" that men read? Texts that make them think about ancient Rome?
Since we here in the Boys' Club are sneering at effete fiction, and thinking about the Roman Empire all the time, may I recommend the historical works of Tom Holland?
Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, Herodotus, Polybius, Thucydides and even the great Julius Caesar can be some rough sledding to read in translation, and Gibbon is hardly any easier, even in abridged form. Holland covers the same ground in a detailed but very readable style. I'm now reading his history of the Persian Empire, which is fascinating and certainly crosses paths with the more familiar stories of the Greeks and the Romans.
Anything by Mary Beard is also worth reading. Her popular history of ancient Rome, SPQR, is mandatory for anyone interested in the era.
Thank you to all the commenters over the years.
I'm always looking for something new to read and constantly getting g book & author ideas in the comments. Often no more than a passing mention is enough to send me to Amazon to download a sample.
Going now to see about Alan first who I'd not heard of. And Flashman who I had heard of but never read.
And to the Neal Stephenson fan, I agree. I've read everything he's written I think. Most pretty good though nothing can top Cryptonomicon.
"Cobweb" and "interface", written with his uncle in the late 80s come close.
John Henry
Stephensons baroque age was most interesting although t lost steam by the third book
I made it through all three books of the Baroque Cycle, but only barely, and also Cryptonomicon. I was just holding one of them in my hand a few weeks ago and thinking it was time for another month or two of getting lost in the world of Isaac Newton.
Edward Rutherfurd's Sarum is a sweeping work of historical fiction covering prehistoric Britain to the modern age. Having a lot of British ancestry, I like learning about the lives of my ancestors on the island, and Rutherfurd makes it pretty pleasurable. I liked it better than Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series (Pillars of the Earth, etc.) which was interesting in parts, but a bit too heavy on the gratuitous and wildly unlikely romance-novel sex scenes.
he isn't optimistic about our chances to avoid a hard and bloody landing when the balloons pop
Nor am I, but it will offer plenty of moments of clarification and opportunities for rueful reflection to certain groups of people who think themselves made of finer clay than the rest of us. The chance to extirpate and rebuild the most corrupt, tyrannical, and stagnant aspects of our civilization doesn't come along more than three or four times per millennium, and should not be foregone if things come to pass as I suspect they will.
Aggie at 6:22 has a point about "television books". I read (and listen to Audiobooks) a lot. Much of modern fiction aimed at males--see T. Jefferson Parker; Don Winslow; James Lee Burke; Michael Connelly; much of Lee Childs; Robert Crais and others are things to pass the time of day. I enjoy them--but a week later I can't remember much about the book. OTOH, I can read and remember much of Trollope, all of O'Brien, Dickens etc. I'm an Amazon Prime member and am offered several free books a month--but I look at what's on offer and conclude that reading any of them is just simply not worth my time.
"I think they do read. They read nonfiction and genre fiction, mostly. And then they probably read the canon. They’re just not reading, like, contemporary literary fiction, and I don’t know if that’s bad or good.
We're not reading it because it's DEI crap published by companies that hate white male readers.
So it's good we're not giving those scum our money, but bad that American publishing is dominated by such worthless shits
If you're looking for suggestions: PG Wodehouse, and almost anything published by Baen Books
We're reading about how to do stuff that's more fun than reading.
I would also recommend Michael Chabon's books.
I read Summerland out loud to my son and heir when he was 7 or so. 2 or 3 pages a night before bed, for a good 8 months. A kaleidoscopic adventure we still talk about from time to time.
I second the recommendations of the Flashman series, a lot of swashbuckling fun. Also the Cadfael series, sort of a medieval Sherlock Holmes, made into a TV series starring Derek Jacobi.
Neal Stephenson. PatrickO'Brian. John McPhee. Jane Austen. Lois McMaster Bujold. Ursula LeGuin. Twain's "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte", "Reach for the Sky" and "The Great Escape" by Brickhill. "The Blind Watchmaker" by Dawkins, "Longitude" by Dava Sobel, "Starlight Nights" by Leslie Peltier, "Iron & Silk" by Mark Salzman, "From Heaven Lake" by Vikram Seth, "Sailing Alone Around the World" by Joshua Slocum
Men want hero stories. Military history. Hard Sci-Fi. Jeezus. This isn't that hard.
I have listened to over a 1000 books on Audible since i joined. Each month I get an email that supposedly lists books I would be interested in reading. Not a single one. They are all books as mentioned earlier in the comments
LOL. What will men read? Men read Louis L'Amour. Men read Zane Grey and Max Brand. Men read Mickey Spillane. Men also read LotR in rather large numbers. Along with Asimov, Heinlein, Bradbury, Clarke, hell, the list is endless. Tom Clancy ring any bells? They KNOW DAMN WELL what men will read. But they do not want to publish it.
The comments are generally providing evidence for the quoted assertion: people aren't reading 'contemporary literary fiction.'
Throughout the 90s, Best American Short Stories of [Year] used to be a good way to find literary writers whose longer work I enjoyed: Jayne Anne Phillips, Barry Hannah, Tobias Wolff, Mark Helprin, Robert Stone, Dom Delillo, Charlie Baxter, Tim O'Brien.
But something changed in the early 2000s, and even though some of those writers are still publishing, their newer works feel flat and derivative. It's not just the stupid politics, but the sense that the writers are in some fundamental way groupthinking, so there's no innovation.
The one exception is, of all things, a German, W.G. Sebald, whose work just blew me away. I had to buy everything he wrote, and I've read most of the books 2 or 3 times, and the Rings of Saturn 4 or 5. I can't really explain it: the books are fiction, but they read like a cross between long historical essays and travelogues of walking tours, but they somehow capture an absolutely profound sadness and transmute it into austere beauty.
Sebald was German and wrote in German, but we was a professor in East Anglia in the U.K. and supervised the English translation of his book. He died in a car accident in 2001 at age 57, so his 3 of his 4 books were all published in the 90's and the fourth, Austerlitz, came out just before he died.
Sebald is regularly compared to Borges, and I get that, but to me he's more like the German-writing-in-English version of Nabokov-writing-in-English: more controlled and restrained, more understated, but the same perfection of language. If you turned a Joseph Cornell box into a novel, you'd get The Rings of Saturn. And vice versa.
But take dan brown please
In a novel about art history and he gets Leonardo's name wrong. In the title of his book! The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle guy got it right. How is it possible that you are that lazy, and your publisher is that dumb?
I've attempted, many times, to explain to people that DaVinci is NOT Leonardo's last name. It fell on deaf ears.
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