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Georgina Elliott recently asked in an article in the online magazine Dazed: “Why don’t straight men read novels?”
I’m a middle-aged, straight man who reads novels, lots of them, so I found the question a little odd, but not surprising. It’s no news to me that women buy the vast majority of books in the US – about 80% of the total – so I was aware that men simply don’t read as many books as women.
But I hadn’t considered that it’s a problem with novels in particular that men don’t read them.
When we talk about the kind of novels we generally call “literary,” the truth is that very few people read these books, period. In an article in Granta, literary critic Christian Lorentzen reports that an editor at an independent publishing house estimated that there are about 20,000 people in the country who read fiction. If only 20,000 people read fiction and 80% of them are women, that means that only 4,000 men nationwide read these books.
If that number is correct, I feel like I know a disproportionately large portion of them. But that’s probably the case, considering the circles I move in. Again, men constantly send me their list of the five books they’ve most recently read (most of which are novels).
At Dazed, Elliott explores several theories about why men don’t read novels. One is that men aren’t raised to read as much as women because they lack other men as role models for reading. Elliott also shares the theory that men don’t read novels because they have internalized an ethos that they are expected to be “productive” agents in the world, rather than passively experiencing the lives of others through fiction. Men are more likely to read self-help books than fiction because they see the genre as a “meaningful output,” according to Alistair Brown, a literature professor at Durham University who studies these patterns.
If these theories are true, then I feel sorry for my straight white fellow human beings, because there is more to life than being “productive.” At least, I hope so, because if it isn’t, I waste a lot of time reading novels.
I read novels mainly because it’s a pleasant way to spend my time. I first experienced this as a child and it’s been confirmed to me almost daily since then. As a child, I was sometimes called “lazy” because I preferred reading a book to mowing the lawn or doing homework, but that decision always seemed more sensible to me than lazy.
It still does.
But suppose we want to talk about the benefits of reading novels beyond the pleasures they provide. In this case, I can testify that one of the great benefits of reading novels is that it allows you to learn about the incredible variety of human experience, not in order to find a model for your own life path, but to show that you shouldn’t worry too much about what others think of your own life path.
Novels are not educational like self-help books, but they are descriptive, and as you continue to read them, you will better understand that there is more than one way to live. Looking to a self-help book for answers to the question of how to live a happy life is ultimately fruitless when those answers are inevitably to be found within yourself.
Instead of worrying about how to be productive, we could try to be calm and thoughtful.
The best way to do this is to immerse yourself in the lives of others by reading a novel.
John Warner is the author of Why They Can’t Write: Abolishing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.
Twitter @biblioracle
Book recommendations from Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “The Winner” by Teddy Wayne2. “Muse of Fire: The First World War from the perspective of the soldier poets” by Michael Korda3. “Cowboy Graves” by Roberto Bolano4. “The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War” by Erik Larson5. “Don’t let me down” by Willy Vlautin
— Joe F., Channahon
For Joe, I recommend a novel that is rooted in both history and literature: March by Geraldine Brooks.
1. “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles2. “Pineapple Street” by Jenny Jackson3. “The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt4. “The warmth of other suns” by Isabel Wilkerson5. “Caste: The Root of Our Discontent” by Isabel Wilkerson
— Viola P., Chicago
Viola will be the recipient of my regular public service: the recommendation of the most perfectly constructed novel of all time, Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell.
1. “The Winner” by Teddy Wayne2. “Notes on your sudden disappearance” by Alison Espach3. “James” by Percival Everett4. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver5. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin
— Abby T., Wilmette
Dana Spiotta’s Wayward, published in 2021, was ahead of its time with its exploration of a woman driven mad by the world she is forced to live in and finding escape in a dilapidated house that becomes entirely her own.
