One of the few objects left that can summon a virtuous aura of salvation
January 7, 2025 1:08 AM   Subscribe

The idea of men who need new stories but refuse to read them is also exaggerated and hyperbolic. It has become its own kind of story. It’s a legend, one that’s been repeated for years, haunted by zombie statistics and dubious facts. Its continued flourishing says a lot about what our culture worries about and all the things we hope will heal us. from Are men’s reading habits truly a national crisis? [Vox; ungated]
posted by chavenet (24 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Interesting article.
It makes sense that those on the left, searching for a way to save young boys and men from the influence of the manosphere, would land on reading fiction as a solution
Except that it doesn't make sense if you think about it; there's no reason why books per se much less fiction would be a civilising effect. THinking of the biggest piece of shit you know; now imagine them having a discussion about a Pahlaniuk or Ian McEwen novel. Hey, let's discuss Nabokov. What's a famous book he's written?

Or consider Branko Milanovic who reviewed recently a cultural history of the leadup to the Sarajevo assassination, making the point:
Vojinović emphasizes the extraordinary sway that literature, and especially poetry, held on the young generation. Their desire for self-sacrifice and martyrdom sprang from romantic literature and constraining political circumstances where the system was, as the current expression has it, “rigged”. When youth is idealistic and when making political change is impossible, individual acts of terror appear as the only venue left...
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 1:17 AM on January 7 [8 favorites]


I'll reflect on my own bookish childhood and say that I certainly wished more of my peers had the civilising effect of being readers (of anything). I couldn't have put it into these words back then, but today I can reflect on the internal perspective on my childhood and the outside view on my kids' young years: young people who have the capacity to voluntarily sit still, be quiet, turn inward, and find motivation in something other than performing or acting out for the group (like reading) don't tend to be the bullies. I'd venture that those young ones are more likely to grow into adults who retain some of those skills.

That Andrew Tate quote in the article rings me like a bell, and I can feel my seething resentment at my own insecure childhood bullies resonating through my 40-something body. They couldn't have put it into those words, either, but Tate is verbalizing what I imagine many kids feel: if one of my boys sees me reading he's going to call me a **ssy and tell everyone about it. The Tate quote is the advertising slogan pasted over the top of that felt vulnerability, the performance that hides the fear.

I had a quick think on my reading last year, and fiction was less than 10% of it. I'm not surprised, and the novels I did finish I genuinely enjoyed (well, except for one Iris Murdoch book that took me forever to finish, and I probably only was able to finish it because every page stoked the furnace of my disdain for people born into wealth). I don't know why this is, though? I wonder if I've always been less of a novel reader and more of a non-fiction reader? It feels like there's so much material out there, I tend to have a lot of fiction on the hopeful list of things to read, but when limitless interest meets limited time, I think I probably choose non-fiction more often than not. I feel good about my soul, to refer to the worry noted in the article, but I certainly understand the concern. I, too, could do well to live a bit more in imagined worlds.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 2:19 AM on January 7 [7 favorites]


Fiasco de Gama has it. Because just reading, per se, isn't going to help. It's not like Norman Mailer, Phillip Roth, Ernest Hemingway or, right, Pahlaniuk etc are going to lead men out of toxic masculinity.

There's plenty of fantastic material out there on streaming services that would help people develop empathy and compassion, and plenty of gym rats who are kind, loving souls who neither read nor watch a lot of fiction, and etc, etc. Lots of people aren't assholes, lots of people are. One neat trick won't help you sort them out.

The cause of all of this toxic masculinity is important, but will always be one of multiple converging factors. Most people will get to a kind of chicken or egg analysis, which will be insufficient on it's own. But this one is just preening about how other people feather their nests.
posted by Smedly, Butlerian jihadi at 4:23 AM on January 7 [10 favorites]


I consume a lot of fiction in other media - as I'm sure we all do - but very seldom stray from non-fiction when it comes to prose. Recently, I've been trying to put that right by alternating the books I read between fiction and non-fiction. It's too early to know if the habit will stick, but it's working out well so far.
posted by Paul Slade at 4:27 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]


Further evidence against reading. New Statesman: How 4chan became the home of the elite reader.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 5:10 AM on January 7 [6 favorites]


From the article: “We’re living in a moment in which a lot of people on the left are afraid for the souls of men.”
I think it’ll take a while longer before I stop feeling very betrayed and start worrying about the souls of men. If I survive the next four years, check back with me then. Meanwhile, I’ll try to lose myself in the wonderful new novels out there full of powerful women and non-binary characters.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 5:51 AM on January 7 [8 favorites]


Two thoughts:

1. Reading is a public health measure (if it needs to be considered utilitarian at all). That means that it isn't in fact always going to produce ideal results at the individual level. Something that helps people in the aggregate does not help every individual and it's not a magic bullet - one public health measure (being able to read easily and with pleasure) does not overcome many/every adverse circumstance (bad family environment, school cohort with a bad climate, bullying teachers, etc). "This guy (or even this type of guy) reads books and is still an asshole" isn't an argument against reading as beneficial any more than "this guy exercised every day and still got high blood pressure" is an argument against exercise.

2. To my mind, reading is good not necessarily because of its affective quality but because when you can read easily and with pleasure, your world is richer and makes you happier and more at home. When you can read easily, the world is immensely less frustrating - text doesn't stand between you and what you want to do, it helps you, or at least it's negotiable. You have an affordable, portable way to entertain yourself that is independent of electricity or cell service and that offers you more than just whatever is current on YouTube or TikTok. Text is also much denser than video (I'm sorry, I'm with Adam Kotsko on this one) and when you can read easily, you get a richer, more complex and hence more satisfying worldview, even if it's "everything is fucked up and needs to change". (My feeling is that one reason all these video people get so angry when they are challenged is that they know that their understanding isn't deep, even if they watched a three hour video of nonsense.)

Reading isn't, can't be and shouldn't be just some kind of ideological probiotic, which is how the crude form of "reading beats the manosphere" argument goes. Reading doesn't make you a warmer or more empathetic person (necessarily) but it does make you someone who can read and understand more complicated material instead of being a rube, and the Tates and Musks and RFKs rely on people being rubes who will take their snake oil for a cure.
posted by Frowner at 6:00 AM on January 7 [28 favorites]


ading doesn't make you a warmer or more empathetic person (necessarily) but it does make you someone who can read and understand more complicated material instead of being a rube, and the Tates and Musks and RFKs rely on people being rubes who will take their snake oil for a cure

I would add to Frowner's excellent point (emphasis mine) above that reading is necessary, but sadly not-sufficient. There are plenty of Level 2 and up 'rubes' ready to be exploited by simple text. One example from thousands: Look at the broadsheets in the UK, and the daily mail: all readers, all riled up.
posted by lalochezia at 6:25 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]


Also, reading (while fun and exciting!) is much less dopamine-hit-ish than video. The enjoyment of reading is more of an even-keel thing, regardless of whether you're reading Very Serious Material or thrilling wonder stories. We could all use a little bit less of being jerked around by focus-grouped dopamine nonsense.

Unless you're going to take an "all passive entertainment is bad" stance or a "you shouldn't be sitting around amusing yourself, that's not your duty" stance, as various critics of reading have, reading (or hearing) text should be the regular-degular of mental life for most people. Video is very useful in some cases and it's very fun and rewarding in others, but it works best when it is in addition to background intellectual skills and knowledge gained by reading. So much of the internet is this way - wonderful when it's in addition to non-internet habits and materials, destructive when it totally replaces them .

One example from thousands: Look at the broadsheets in the UK, and the daily mail: all readers, all riled up.

Yes, people can certainly read bad and stupid material and get all riled up, or read smart and good material badly and get all riled up (my entire college career!) but even there I think print is better because it's slower and intrinsically less riling. If I have to choose between people who read bad and stupid stuff in print and people who absorb a constant stream of bad and stupid tweets/ TikToks/YouTubes, I will definitely pick the readers.
posted by Frowner at 6:35 AM on January 7 [10 favorites]


45% of Trump voters were women.

Fascism is not a gender-specific problem.
posted by Lemkin at 6:38 AM on January 7 [8 favorites]


Fascism is not a gender-specific problem.
While it is true that historically there have been plenty of fascist women, the very definition of fascism includes promotion of masculinity. (Good references on the subject can be found in the Wikipedia article on it).
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:48 AM on January 7 [6 favorites]


Translation: They're not reading the right, ie. my, books, clearly it's a goddamn crisis. -- some author.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 7:37 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]


Yeah, reading as virtue signifier is weird. I started Infinite Jest in maybe 2002 or 2003 on the recommendation of a woman I've known since early childhood. I didn't know anyone else who was reading it and my girlfriend at the time got so annoyed by me, like, reading, that she hid the book from me. So when we thankfully split up, I dove into it and finished it. That was 2004. When I went to talk to people about it, I discovered that it was held in contempt by many as bro lit, something people read and talked about to feel smart and which was actually a mark against you if you mentioned it. And then I read Every Love Story Is A Ghost Story and it is hard to read any of his stuff now.

And of course I was enamored of Alice Munro, who, well. I'm glad that nothing terrible has come out about Bolaño. Yet.

Reading is good for the brain in the way that exercise is good for the physique, but neither make you a good person.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:02 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]


The gist of the article, which lies beneath a click-bait title, seems to be that there is no hard evidence that the small (10 percentage points or so) disparity between the amount of fiction that men and women read is anything new, or anything more than a cyclical talking point whenever there's a need for a click-bait titled article on societal trends.
Do men read Sally Rooney? maybe not, but they do read Jack Reacher novels and sci-fi enough that the gap just isn't big enough to use as a predictor if doom.

What's more worrisome to me is that kids just don't seem to be given time to read past the early school years. There's a moment, late in elementary school or early middle school where suddenly the pressures of other classes begins to nudge away the time that used to be dedicated to learning to read, as if that learning doesn't require more and more time as texts become more complex.
Of course the lure of screen time is a big factor, and that genie's out of the bottle, but it's still hard to see a future where any demographic reads more in years to come.
posted by OHenryPacey at 8:16 AM on January 7 [5 favorites]


Something I've been really struck by recently is how very many men I like and respect basically never read books by women.

I recommended several (books by Rachel Cusk, Kelly Link, Naomi Alderman, May Sarton) to a friend, and he seemed completely ambivalent until I mentioned a book by a man (Tim O'Brien), one I hadn't liked as much. I didn't even tell him what the book was about before he started acting questions and opening his phone to read a review.

Perhaps men in search of new stories need to pick up a book by a woman...for once.
posted by yellowcandy at 8:18 AM on January 7 [9 favorites]


The first half of the article is an excellent dig into a popular stat which turns out to be bogus.
So, so much of our discourse around reading is like this: bad data, plenty of anecdote.
posted by doctornemo at 8:46 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]


Please, can we have a 2025 without the word Zynternet?
posted by doctornemo at 8:47 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]


I like reading Patricia Highsmith. I don't know what that says about me.
posted by valkane at 9:08 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]


Do men read Sally Rooney?

What we choose to read often follows gender lines, particularly for men. But as Esquire columnist Ben Jhoty has discovered, if your reading habits have a conspicuous gender slant, you are likely missing out

from Is Sally Rooney changing men’s reading habits? [Esquire Australia]
posted by chavenet at 9:25 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]


This makes me think of the literature that inspired all of the nationalistic and militaristic stupidity that went into WWI. You can't blame Tiktok for that, or TV, or even radio.

It was the poetry of Romanticism, it was thrilling adventure fiction, all about war and heroism and dying gloriously.
posted by clawsoon at 9:27 AM on January 7 [2 favorites]


I think "caring about the souls of men" is cover for " they still have too much power over the rest of us and we' d like a way to make them less violent and dangerous."

Books can be a tool, but they aren't one easy trick to end patriarchy.
posted by emjaybee at 9:59 AM on January 7 [4 favorites]


Further evidence against reading. New Statesman: How 4chan became the home of the elite reader.

And yet, a new secret generation of autodidacts – frustrated with the state of modern academia and the dilution of the traditional cannon – are turning to the website as an unlikely home for literary ambition.


reading is booming!
posted by chavenet at 11:10 AM on January 7 [3 favorites]


The thing is, people who read, read more. And then when they’re done, they read more.

A lot of adolescent white boys read all the toxic stuff, sure, and then when it’s time to read Toni Morrison in college they are in the habit of reading so they actually do, they pay attention because it’s eye-opening! It cracks the foundation.

Starting somewhere beats not starting at all — guys can benefit from having read all those things that they cherished that served to prop up the perma-adolescent white boy worldview that is white supremacist cisheteropatriarchy: in a just world it would lead them to awakening in a first-year college humanities course in a classroom small enough for everyday discussion that gives them a constructive space for talking with other people from other backgrounds with their own views about their reactions to books full of new ideas that make us think.

Damn, that’s a lot to ask but I’m trying to be optimistic. This stuff should be what those billionaires who give all their money away, pay it towards.

Smart money has Andrew Tate in a dead pool.
posted by Ice Cream Socialist at 1:39 PM on January 7 [4 favorites]


Further evidence against reading. New Statesman: How 4chan became the home of the elite reader.

This New Statesman article starts to explain something I've been wondering about recently, namely why the heck is everyone recommending that I read Aristotle? The algorithm has (rightly) gleaned that I like reading and getting suggestions of books to read, but recently that has turned into a tidal-wave of bros explaining that I need to read Aristotle, Plato, and (of all people) Boethius.
posted by selenized at 9:10 PM on January 7 [1 favorite]


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