There’s an interesting conversation going on right now about why men aren’t reading fiction. I don’t know if there any recent statistics to back that up (a quick internet search only gave results from 2015), but anecdotally, it seems plausible. Earlier this week a Michigan-based bookstore chain posted on Facebook a display of books that “would make great holiday gifts.”
They’re all geared toward liberal white women.
Maybe their market research shows that’s their primary customer base. Or maybe it's owned and operated by liberal white women. Another post shows an employee in a cloth mask, so that checks out. Maybe those were the only books they had for the new release table. I don’t know. And it wasn’t all fiction. But as a man, there was nothing there that I’d ever open even I was wearing a mask.
Unless it was a blindfold.
Us guys tend to be practical, I will admit. So I have to wonder if we are reading fiction, just not buying it. Earlier this year I was in my local library, a tiny building in a forgotten rural town. There was an older gent there who had read all of the Longmire books and was eagerly anticipating the next. Obviously, he reads. But he doesn’t feel the need to own copies of what he likes. And given his age and the area, I doubt he was a college educated academic who grew up learning all the ins and outs of the library system.
But let’s assume men, on average, don’t like fiction.
Well, why should we? Real men have cars to fix and need to know military battle strategies, just in case. There’s a reason why The Art of War has topped best-seller lists for years, and it can’t just be ruthless businessmen buying it. The clue is right there in the title: War. Sure, the discerning dude can probably find all that information in a novel if he thinks about it enough. But most people (men and women) go to fiction for relaxation, not information. Reading with intent takes work.
We like work, which is why we read nonfiction. But we’re also protective of our downtime.
Easier to just watch a movie.
The problem is, even our current batch of movies are anathema to men. Star Wars became a girl brand. Marvel became a girl brand. No one asked for an action movie about J-Lo called Mother, but here we are. Publishing started catering only to women first, and the film industry has fallen into the same trap. And while there’s always some crossover in taste, by and large, men and women want different things in their stories.
Shocking, I know.
Women seem (I’m a guy, so what do I know?) to want stories about relationships. Men want stories about how things work, and, when they don’t work, how to fix them. Almost everyone loves Raiders of the Lost Ark, but why? When I watched it again yesterday, two things things related to this topic jumped out at me. One was how much time was spent getting the measurements of the staff for the Eye of Ra figured out. Thoughtful, technical stuff. The second thing that stood out was Jones’s line in the final act.
“All I want is the girl!”
There’s something to appeal to everyone.
Is there fiction for men? Yes. But as of right now, we’re more apt to find it in the independent space. It takes a little more effort to find the good stuff than just walking into the bookstore and asking the cloth-masked man what’s new, but it’s worth it. Guys need fiction for escapism, to experience different perspectives, to learn knew things, and exercise the imagination. Reading, engaging in the theater of the mind, can have a much more subtle and lasting influence than a movie, too.
Go read a book.
If you need help finding something good, head over to https://upstreamreviews.substack.com/
