Alex, thanks so much, because you're the ONLY one who's addressing this miserable state of affairs. As a (female) NYC writer who for the past 30 years has been in workshop, after writing group, after writing retreat, ad infinitum - I've witnessed the devaluation and elimination of men on the lit scene first-freaking hand! I am appalled at the monopoly women wield over everything in this town that even slightly smacks of "the literary." We need to know what the other half of the human race is thinking about stuff and anybody who doesn't care to acknowledge that is either evil or stupid.
Nobody wants to read what they write. Women are the vast majority of book buyers and readers. What are men going to do? Stop playing video games and watching porn and start focusing on reading? It's not going to happen.
Nobody wants to hear some old pigs writing about how they think want to sleep around with young girls even though they're old married men. Men wrote about that for years. Nobody cares about it anymore.
They're just not interesting or worthy of attention.
I'm not at all against talking about this issue and I genuinely think it is worth addressing, but this doesn't strike you as _a problem_?
Let's be clear. Literature survived for centuries being male-dominated. It will survive being female-dominated. I don't at all agree with the comment that men's work is uninteresting and I don't think this is an ideal state of affairs at all, but if this is really how men work, intrinsically--which I do not think is true--that's truly not really worth getting up in arms about.
(Also, I think you mean "conventional straight men." Not every man writes like she described, and plenty of straight great male writers I can think of were very genderbendy. Hemingway was a crossdresser.)
Most scientific evidence shows the opposite, that men are better at large scale coalition building when it involves hundreds or more people but women are better at small scale networking when it involves 4-5 people.
So we'll teach 'em! They teach us how to fix cars and do higher level math...we owe them a few skills! You ready to learn the secrets of effective communication, boys? :)
I'm a middle-aged, straight, white, conservative, rich male who writes literary fiction. It's like a demographic poo Yahtzee. I don't stand a chance.
But I have 85K Twitter followers and an email list with thousands of people, so I can self-publish and sell 5,000 copies of anything I write. Most aren't so lucky.
There is a part of me that still wants to be accepted by the literary world. In my lifetime, it probably won't happen.
New short story collection coming out next month. Wish me luck.
Feel you I gave up journalism in 2012 because I could see the writing on the walls. Soon that world would have no place for me. And by Covid it was apparent that I was right. People forget that these ideas are purely leftist American. Go outside the country and you will find regular people everywhere with pretty even-tempered beliefs.
I gave up journalism in 2020 because I could see the writing on the wall — after giving up book publishing in 1990 after two books , one a bestseller, because I could see that future was bleak for most male writers.
I don’t know a single person who likes Andrew Tate. Not one. There must be some large group of bros in Miami that love him so much there is this strange idea that anyone likes him or would work for him. Throwing out that association is a lil tired in my opinion. Actually speaks to the heart of this idea more than anything we wrote. Male = likes Andrew Tate. His name is associated with crime , abuse, and desperation. Bad. I am more of a Jeremy Wade guy myself lol
Interesting. There are some notable instances in genre fiction of self published authors approached by traditional publishing. Often the publishing houses are looking at leveraging these authors impressive readership and established following. I wonder if it's our own snobbery as readers that bars the way for trad publishers who might approach a self pub author who writes literary fiction. I say keep at it.
I would strongly recommend you check out the gaming world. It is the next frontier in story telling. If you do not want to play, watch others game. The last of us would be a good start, or perhaps Bioshock Infinite. There is another world in gaming that is getting ever more interesting. It is free of the creepy rich ladies and their self-loathing. Snobbery kills creativity every time. There are many interesting places to find creative works. The old places are worse than dead.
If you had something original, worthwhile, or interesting to write about, you would find a real audience.
You don't. So you won't.
Women are the vast majority of book buyers and readers. We don't want to hear some middle-aged pig writing about how he wants to sleep around with young girls as though it's a revolutionary and new view. It isn't. Men have whined about this for centuries. Nobody cares anymore.
What are you going to do? Convince males to stop playing video games and watching porn long enough so they can read books? You think that's going to work?
It's over. You have nothing of value to offer, and being a logical male, you should be able to recognize that and deal with it.
You're not the victim here. Girls in Afghanistan would love to be able to complain about the non-problem you have.
You should be in a coal mine anyway. Nobody cares about what you have to say.
Women are the ones with the interesting stories, and we're the ones who really buy books because we can focus long enough to actually read. We want to read our own stories. There are exceptions, of course, but in general they prove the rule.
Lol. It's not just that most women writers routinely produce boring, midwit garbage to celebrate themselves, it's that there are just about zero great ones who can lift their prose above the level of, say, the pages of the New Yorker. Not a single one even gets into the ballpark with Hemingway or Faulkner or Dos Passos or even a second rater like Updike. An entire gender stuck re-writing EB White. What a drag. You're right about one thing, though. There's nothing we can do about it. The AWFLs (like you, honey) have absolutely destroyed the genre. We should never have given you a seat at the table in the first place.
Only stupid males like you think that stupid males like them are great. Mid males uplifting other mid male dreck.
You’re a nobody. Nothing you think matters, women don’t care what you think, nobody does.
Men are too stupid to even sit and focus on reading nowadays because the two brain cells they’ve got have been so badly damaged by porn and video games they couldn’t even read the garbage Hemingway produced.
Go play Call of Duty and shut up.
Margaret Atwood, the Brontes, Amy Tan, Virginia Woolf, Donna Tartt could write better prose in their sleep than any of the moids you cited.
I would have to disagree with the Prof. Chill and Jason here. Using the word "broad" is just nasty for no reason, very "Andrew Tate", and now I can see where Kat was coming from when she told me I should work for someone like that. It seems as though you must have met some degrading porn-addicted men at some point which is a shame. At the same time, I do not play video games, and I think with open mindedness you could find that not all folks of the same gender are alike.
I think some of the greatest writing in American history came from Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia E. Butler. Between them they have a stronger catalog than Faulkner and many "great" male writers. That is my opinion. I quite enjoy the writing of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, but also China Mieville. Reading broadly and outside of your favorite writers is almost always refreshing. I assume that would work both ways. As much as I could re-read Phillip K Dick, I like to find new things to read. I don't tend to think in absolutes, so I would not believe that women across the board absolutely despise all male writers, or that having an large audience makes you a great writer. I do not think an audience is necessary to write, 80% of what I write is for my understanding not others consumption. I will say I know quite a few men who play too much video games and are essentially not well read in any way.
If you actually agree with her, you're a fucking loser and a pathetic fool. Which you kind of are anyway for publicly opining that anything Guin or Butler wrote rises to the level of Absalom Absalom or The Sound and the Fury. I mean, get a grip. I used the term "broad" here for effect. And hey, it clearly worked, since it drove the menopausal little dipshit further into frothing rage, parading her impotence and intellectual bankruptcy before all and sundry. Good. Standing by politely and allowing her particular sort of malignant idiocy to color the discourse has been the death of Academe, and I’m not letting it go any more. She represents an entire caste of poisonous, stupid boobs who need to be told, frequently, how stupid and boob-like they are. In truth there are a few decent, workmanlike female writers. They are novelty acts. There are none who punch up into the stratosphere in the same way that Hemingway (for as much as I despise him in any number of ways) did. In the words of Jules Winnfield, "Ain't the same ballpark, ain't the same league... It ain't even the same motherfucking sport."
Hey Prof, Chill. Big fan of Hemmingway, but Le Guin is good reads brother bear. City of Illusion and The Lathe of Heaven are very good. Butler is an acquired taste, also she has books I do not like. The Sound and the Fury was revolutionary 90 years ago for sure. I really liked it in early college. (Also, it will be in the public domain in a few days. Neat!) Give me some good examples from not 100 years ago. It's like talking to a communist and they just keep quoting that old ass book. I know the Greats are Great, what's going on now? Even though you seem incredibly angry, you do not strike me as a fool, and I think being a loser is kind of up to personal interpretation. cheers
Lol. Thanks, Karen, for the laundry list of losers. Sadly, I’ve read all of those broads and they all kind of suck. And not in the good way. Funny, too, that you bring up suicide because it’s a lot like literature. So many, many more women than men attempt it, but again, it’s only the males who actually succeed, you know?
LOL males aren't succeeding at anything nowadays except starting WWIII, suicide, and school shootings, Kevin.
And if you want to talk about cultural impact, entertainment relevance in terms of views, and financial success recently only, then JK Rowling, Suzanne Collins, Gillian Flynn, Stephenie Meyer, Sally Rooney, EL James, Ottessa Moshfegh outrank everyone.
Nothing you do will ever reach anything those women have ever written.
You're a nobody and nothing you do or say matters, especially to women.
Shut up and go play video games.
You should be in a coal mine. That's what you yearn for, deep inside that stupid empty male cranium of yours.
Lol, keep it coming, sugar! I seem to have struck a nerve. If it makes you feel any worse, you'll never reach anything those broads have ever written, either. We can keep this going (I've got my cell phone working down here at the coal seam) but don't you need to run along to some womyn's meeting to discuss your growthfulness, bravery, and empowerment in a nice, safe space?
There’s no such thing as “transwomen” because there’s no such thing as “trans.” Those are men.
And thanks for proving my point. Men fuck up everything they touch, so they don’t belong in women’s spaces. I hope they go into men’s bathrooms and you get beaten up by some asshole with a 20 dollar wig on his head.
I have been on a re-reading binge of mysteries and am again loving the John D. MacDonald Travis McGee novels and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch books. And it occurs to me that these books absolutely embrace a specific kind of admirable American masculinity. Maybe we should all write mysteries...
One of the good things in writing fiction about my reservation is that the warrior ethos is still very much alive. A hunting story closes my new manuscript.
So much to choose from: the masters of the 50s and 60s. There is abundant novelization of the original Star Trek universe. Next on my list: the works of Ursula Le Guin.
These are still (perhaps unfairly) categorised as classical. Don't forget Gareth Powell and Adrian Tchaikovsky on the space opera front and Tade Thompson for mind-bending stories. Then, further afield, there's Arkady Martine, Martha Wells, Cixin Lui, Anne Leckie, John Scalzi, Becky Chambers, Jeff Vandermeer, NK Jemisin, Andy Weir...
I haven't either. Is there a sci fi community on Substack? I know it's not a stand-alone search category. Fiction in all its genres is somewhat the poor cousin here at Substack.
You really do. Fantasy as well. There are some great Asian writers as well. Also, there are amazing stories being told in the gaming world. Fire up that steam account, get your Twitter app ready, and go where the creativity has been for the last twenty years.
I pivoted in that direction myself after my novel Cloudmaker got the kryptonite treatment in 2021 (you can read about that whole debacle here--https://substack.com/@malcolmbrooks/p-139619211). I'm now deep into a contemporary crime novel, but also by some miracle sold a narrative nonfiction history on proposal to S&S, so that's what I'm primarily focusing on...with every intention of seeing the novel through in the long run...
Yes. MacDonald novels (all color-coded by the way) are remarkable. McGee could be anyone. He just happens to be a private detective. And The Deep Blue Bood-By reads as literary to me as The Moviegoer.
The only answer for the dude writer seems to be to step into the arena. Write the book you'd like to see and do your damndest to get it out by any means. It may not be a GMA pick or universally beloved. But it'll make a difference--even if that's a small, incremental difference.
No one is going to buy it or read it because men don't buy books since they don't read, and women don't want to hear about your retarded stories about how you're tired of having sex with your wife and want to have an affair with a young girl (whoa, never heard stories like that from men before!).
A lot of it probably has to do with cultural territoriality and economics. America is by far the biggest book market and is also, in terms of any one country, the source of the most culturally relevant material. The demographic that controls all that ends up controlling the literary world and suppresses all other rival narratives. An odd Swedish or South African or Singaporean writer here and there are nice ornaments that do not threaten the in-power demographic's control.
Masterfully on point. We need to move on from the stupidity of these last few years. It’s mind blowing how they seem to be selecting artists based mostly on their identity rather than the actual quality of their art. It’s extremely counterproductive and one of the reasons for this reactionary right wing wave. It must stop before it’s too late and all artistic, cultural, and creative institutions lose their moral authority. If they don’t, I’m afraid they will lose a lot of the necessary support and influence on which they depend upon for their success and survival.
I can agree with all of this, but I am always shocked by the total disregard of the way video games more or less destroyed the literary market for men. I read dozens of fantasy books in elementary school and middle school and high school. That entire experience is now happening on the screen, with a mouse or a controller.
To me, blaming the industry is comfortable. But I’m not convinced that mean publishers are the problem - if there was any money on the table at all, everything would change. Maybe if a famous Twitch streamer championed a book, this “American man” segment would read it. But even then, I doubt it. We are witnessing the total collapse of the male inner voice because of this - reading Knausgaard was one of the last times I remembered how literature could make me feel less alone - but we are already two generations too late to recover the American male readership, much less the American male writer.
Males choose to play video games; males overwhelmingly produce and sell video games. Nobody forced them, and they probably couldn't stop now even if they wanted. Not to mention internet pornography.
Males do not read. If they chose to buy books again, then things would change. But they won't, and everybody knows it.
Males are their own worst problem and need to stop playing the victim.
Probably about right. The younger guys I know all -- all -- play video games (a very large proportion of young women do, too). This is where their energy goes. This is how they "relax."
Women still read a lot of trash fiction. Men have stopped reading even that, largely.
Re: why we act like cowards. I tired of being called a misogynist every time I pressed a woman to write better. I also tired of white male friends who blame their failure to publish on this problem. From where I was sitting, during an MFA and after, both demographics needed to produce better work. The part about creativity was missing from my creative writing program. Self-absorbed humans writing about themselves is the problem to me. A vanguard of knaussguards talking auto-biographical shortcuts. You mention lipsyte — his last novel (about alphabet city punk bands in the 90s) may have been about him …. But at least he made it into fiction. Most writers don’t bother. Straight to the memoir for them. Talk about boring. I want story not self-perfection. I want something fun. When we lose the Barry Hannahs we lose fun. That sucks. American literature: scared of its own shadow. Thank you for writing this.
Ive been thinking about the phenomenon of gas lighting someone about the quality of a their work based on their identity. For example, I was a female entrepreneur and received constant messages that the investing space is misogynist therefore failure to get funding doesn't necessarily reflect a bad product. The problem is that as a founder you need to know when to quit, and with this line of thinking you can't trust your gut when you think you have a bad product. So you press on, convinced that maybe your product is fine it's just the investor who is wrong. This trajectory of aligning quality with identity clouds our sense of reality, whether it's in product development or writing. I feel for the male writers who have to go through this rigamarole in publishing.
shit happens, right? i just don't think it's fair to bark "misogynist" when attempting to discuss the need for active verbs over passive constructions. it's likewise unfair to blame feminists when a woman isn't attracted to you. both reactions are immature. i even heard someone say he shouldn't be subject to critique in a writing workshop because of his mental health issues. the critique is meant to help, not hurt. and attending art school is an admission that you need to learn some shit to get better. we all have our challenges to overcome. easy for me to say perhaps (as a tall white man) but overcome them. i have nothing but empathy for humans with bigger obstacles than mine. the world is cruel. i can't fix it. independent writing is HARD. entrepreneurship likewise. drive on. don't give up.
100% agree. I'm hoping there will be a shift away from this trend of using various labels and identities to shield oneself from accountability. It's a weird world when a person's work and ideas have to be filtered through the context of their identity. It feels regressive and I hope that changes.
When people get out of their own way, and actually write something fantastical and fun, its always a huge breakthrough. Its impossible to not use our real lives in fiction, but it has to be minimized or it ruins the story.
Nice to see you carrying this convo over here from the Hobart interview. I started to feel fucked when I noticed a sizable number of academics and educators dismissing Hemingway. Eye rolls and highlight-delete from the syllabus. By turning back the clock to go after him, I think the map forward is now to redefine masculinity (so that it means femininity) and then reject anything that appears to reach back to the old definition. Over the course of several years, it's no longer really a concerted effort; it's more like a feedback loop. Women writers want to write about women > women want to read about women > they purchase books written by women > publishing companies see what readers are reading > publishers continue to sign more women writers writing about women. When "Little Beasts" came out, I remember distinctly being asked by a professor at a college reading event about how "masculine" my book was (a book about young boys in a tough neighborhood) and if I was actually engaging in a "send-up" or a satire of masculinity. It was inconceivable to him, I guess, that I was genuine and honest in my treatment of boys. As for solutions, I recently read a post on here from a woman slamming Alex's piece (though she didn't call him out by name) for "whining" about men being shut out of publishing. She made one decent point. We should start our own thing. Hell, there's enough of us on this comment thread.
Wow. I've read your pieces before and they're hopeful in the sense that there is someone out there who has the balls to say what is. I've been saying it in my pieces on my substack blog, A Beautiful Spleen. And after a dozen posts I've gone from 35 subscribers to 45, and my blog is free. I've been writing since the 1970s and I refuse to give up. Like one of the blind men trying to figure out what an elephant was, I've learned over decades that the women have taken over publishing and the entire literary scene. And I've figured out that they only way for a man to publish is to write like a woman. That ain't gonna happen. I've been trying to find a publisher for two of my latest books, and after eight months of sending it out I don't seem to be any closer to finding a house. I'm mad enough to say what I think in forums or online, things like what you're saying, knowing that it would hurt my changes... But my chances are a ice cubes on a hot tar street.
I was commercially published four times. But since the 90s no go. So I've published on Amazon and I've sold some books. But the audience I want to reach does not read ebooks published by Kindle. Despite that I continue to try. I'm seventy six. I can't stop writing, trying to connect with readers, even though these witches have made that just about impossible. I will go to the grave cursing them.
Alex, thanks so much, because you're the ONLY one who's addressing this miserable state of affairs. As a (female) NYC writer who for the past 30 years has been in workshop, after writing group, after writing retreat, ad infinitum - I've witnessed the devaluation and elimination of men on the lit scene first-freaking hand! I am appalled at the monopoly women wield over everything in this town that even slightly smacks of "the literary." We need to know what the other half of the human race is thinking about stuff and anybody who doesn't care to acknowledge that is either evil or stupid.
Men have nothing original or interesting to say.
Nobody wants to read what they write. Women are the vast majority of book buyers and readers. What are men going to do? Stop playing video games and watching porn and start focusing on reading? It's not going to happen.
Nobody wants to hear some old pigs writing about how they think want to sleep around with young girls even though they're old married men. Men wrote about that for years. Nobody cares about it anymore.
They're just not interesting or worthy of attention.
That's the truth.
The irony in this idiotic comment is that it has nothing interesting to say.
In other words, you don't know men at all.
You don't have to like men, just understand what it is that really makes them tick without resorting to cheap cliches.
…. as the entire literacy endeavor, and the publishing industry, dies from lack of viable quality alternative voices.
You do not know what you're talking about.
Be quiet.
https://www.publishers.org.uk/publishingin2023/
I'm not at all against talking about this issue and I genuinely think it is worth addressing, but this doesn't strike you as _a problem_?
Let's be clear. Literature survived for centuries being male-dominated. It will survive being female-dominated. I don't at all agree with the comment that men's work is uninteresting and I don't think this is an ideal state of affairs at all, but if this is really how men work, intrinsically--which I do not think is true--that's truly not really worth getting up in arms about.
(Also, I think you mean "conventional straight men." Not every man writes like she described, and plenty of straight great male writers I can think of were very genderbendy. Hemingway was a crossdresser.)
Fine, have fun with your porn and video games, and stop expecting women to come save you when you fuck everything up.
We’re out. If you hate women, you deserve it back and stop crying that you don’t have rights because nobody wants to fuck you.
Move along.
This is doubtless racist, sexist and homophobic, but women are better at the networking and coalition-building needed to dominate a scene.
Most scientific evidence shows the opposite, that men are better at large scale coalition building when it involves hundreds or more people but women are better at small scale networking when it involves 4-5 people.
Interesting.
So we'll teach 'em! They teach us how to fix cars and do higher level math...we owe them a few skills! You ready to learn the secrets of effective communication, boys? :)
I'm a middle-aged, straight, white, conservative, rich male who writes literary fiction. It's like a demographic poo Yahtzee. I don't stand a chance.
But I have 85K Twitter followers and an email list with thousands of people, so I can self-publish and sell 5,000 copies of anything I write. Most aren't so lucky.
There is a part of me that still wants to be accepted by the literary world. In my lifetime, it probably won't happen.
New short story collection coming out next month. Wish me luck.
Feel you I gave up journalism in 2012 because I could see the writing on the walls. Soon that world would have no place for me. And by Covid it was apparent that I was right. People forget that these ideas are purely leftist American. Go outside the country and you will find regular people everywhere with pretty even-tempered beliefs.
I gave up journalism in 2020 because I could see the writing on the wall — after giving up book publishing in 1990 after two books , one a bestseller, because I could see that future was bleak for most male writers.
Its wild. Although the market for white male Tiktokers is still on the menu. But who wants to be on that menu.
*Besides Ian Carroll of cancelthisclothingcompany. Love it*
You should go work for Andrew Tate. He needs help.
I don’t know a single person who likes Andrew Tate. Not one. There must be some large group of bros in Miami that love him so much there is this strange idea that anyone likes him or would work for him. Throwing out that association is a lil tired in my opinion. Actually speaks to the heart of this idea more than anything we wrote. Male = likes Andrew Tate. His name is associated with crime , abuse, and desperation. Bad. I am more of a Jeremy Wade guy myself lol
Interesting. There are some notable instances in genre fiction of self published authors approached by traditional publishing. Often the publishing houses are looking at leveraging these authors impressive readership and established following. I wonder if it's our own snobbery as readers that bars the way for trad publishers who might approach a self pub author who writes literary fiction. I say keep at it.
I would strongly recommend you check out the gaming world. It is the next frontier in story telling. If you do not want to play, watch others game. The last of us would be a good start, or perhaps Bioshock Infinite. There is another world in gaming that is getting ever more interesting. It is free of the creepy rich ladies and their self-loathing. Snobbery kills creativity every time. There are many interesting places to find creative works. The old places are worse than dead.
The gaming world is under attack too by the same kind of people. Google 'Sweet Baby Inc' - it's a consultant company.
That the name on Amazon? I just bought your book.
If you had something original, worthwhile, or interesting to write about, you would find a real audience.
You don't. So you won't.
Women are the vast majority of book buyers and readers. We don't want to hear some middle-aged pig writing about how he wants to sleep around with young girls as though it's a revolutionary and new view. It isn't. Men have whined about this for centuries. Nobody cares anymore.
What are you going to do? Convince males to stop playing video games and watching porn long enough so they can read books? You think that's going to work?
It's over. You have nothing of value to offer, and being a logical male, you should be able to recognize that and deal with it.
You're not the victim here. Girls in Afghanistan would love to be able to complain about the non-problem you have.
You should be in a coal mine anyway. Nobody cares about what you have to say.
Women are the ones with the interesting stories, and we're the ones who really buy books because we can focus long enough to actually read. We want to read our own stories. There are exceptions, of course, but in general they prove the rule.
There's nothing you can do about it.
Lol. It's not just that most women writers routinely produce boring, midwit garbage to celebrate themselves, it's that there are just about zero great ones who can lift their prose above the level of, say, the pages of the New Yorker. Not a single one even gets into the ballpark with Hemingway or Faulkner or Dos Passos or even a second rater like Updike. An entire gender stuck re-writing EB White. What a drag. You're right about one thing, though. There's nothing we can do about it. The AWFLs (like you, honey) have absolutely destroyed the genre. We should never have given you a seat at the table in the first place.
Lol Hemingway and Faulkner are mid.
Only stupid males like you think that stupid males like them are great. Mid males uplifting other mid male dreck.
You’re a nobody. Nothing you think matters, women don’t care what you think, nobody does.
Men are too stupid to even sit and focus on reading nowadays because the two brain cells they’ve got have been so badly damaged by porn and video games they couldn’t even read the garbage Hemingway produced.
Go play Call of Duty and shut up.
Margaret Atwood, the Brontes, Amy Tan, Virginia Woolf, Donna Tartt could write better prose in their sleep than any of the moids you cited.
Off with you. Go raise the male suicide rate.
I would have to disagree with the Prof. Chill and Jason here. Using the word "broad" is just nasty for no reason, very "Andrew Tate", and now I can see where Kat was coming from when she told me I should work for someone like that. It seems as though you must have met some degrading porn-addicted men at some point which is a shame. At the same time, I do not play video games, and I think with open mindedness you could find that not all folks of the same gender are alike.
I think some of the greatest writing in American history came from Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia E. Butler. Between them they have a stronger catalog than Faulkner and many "great" male writers. That is my opinion. I quite enjoy the writing of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, but also China Mieville. Reading broadly and outside of your favorite writers is almost always refreshing. I assume that would work both ways. As much as I could re-read Phillip K Dick, I like to find new things to read. I don't tend to think in absolutes, so I would not believe that women across the board absolutely despise all male writers, or that having an large audience makes you a great writer. I do not think an audience is necessary to write, 80% of what I write is for my understanding not others consumption. I will say I know quite a few men who play too much video games and are essentially not well read in any way.
If you actually agree with her, you're a fucking loser and a pathetic fool. Which you kind of are anyway for publicly opining that anything Guin or Butler wrote rises to the level of Absalom Absalom or The Sound and the Fury. I mean, get a grip. I used the term "broad" here for effect. And hey, it clearly worked, since it drove the menopausal little dipshit further into frothing rage, parading her impotence and intellectual bankruptcy before all and sundry. Good. Standing by politely and allowing her particular sort of malignant idiocy to color the discourse has been the death of Academe, and I’m not letting it go any more. She represents an entire caste of poisonous, stupid boobs who need to be told, frequently, how stupid and boob-like they are. In truth there are a few decent, workmanlike female writers. They are novelty acts. There are none who punch up into the stratosphere in the same way that Hemingway (for as much as I despise him in any number of ways) did. In the words of Jules Winnfield, "Ain't the same ballpark, ain't the same league... It ain't even the same motherfucking sport."
Hey Prof, Chill. Big fan of Hemmingway, but Le Guin is good reads brother bear. City of Illusion and The Lathe of Heaven are very good. Butler is an acquired taste, also she has books I do not like. The Sound and the Fury was revolutionary 90 years ago for sure. I really liked it in early college. (Also, it will be in the public domain in a few days. Neat!) Give me some good examples from not 100 years ago. It's like talking to a communist and they just keep quoting that old ass book. I know the Greats are Great, what's going on now? Even though you seem incredibly angry, you do not strike me as a fool, and I think being a loser is kind of up to personal interpretation. cheers
>Hemingway
>Faulkner
>mid
and there goes your credibility
Lol. Thanks, Karen, for the laundry list of losers. Sadly, I’ve read all of those broads and they all kind of suck. And not in the good way. Funny, too, that you bring up suicide because it’s a lot like literature. So many, many more women than men attempt it, but again, it’s only the males who actually succeed, you know?
LOL males aren't succeeding at anything nowadays except starting WWIII, suicide, and school shootings, Kevin.
And if you want to talk about cultural impact, entertainment relevance in terms of views, and financial success recently only, then JK Rowling, Suzanne Collins, Gillian Flynn, Stephenie Meyer, Sally Rooney, EL James, Ottessa Moshfegh outrank everyone.
Nothing you do will ever reach anything those women have ever written.
You're a nobody and nothing you do or say matters, especially to women.
Shut up and go play video games.
You should be in a coal mine. That's what you yearn for, deep inside that stupid empty male cranium of yours.
Lol, keep it coming, sugar! I seem to have struck a nerve. If it makes you feel any worse, you'll never reach anything those broads have ever written, either. We can keep this going (I've got my cell phone working down here at the coal seam) but don't you need to run along to some womyn's meeting to discuss your growthfulness, bravery, and empowerment in a nice, safe space?
There’s no such thing as “transwomen” because there’s no such thing as “trans.” Those are men.
And thanks for proving my point. Men fuck up everything they touch, so they don’t belong in women’s spaces. I hope they go into men’s bathrooms and you get beaten up by some asshole with a 20 dollar wig on his head.
You're right, you do suicides instead. Have at it.
This piece has me ready to run through a brick fucking wall. Well done.
I have been on a re-reading binge of mysteries and am again loving the John D. MacDonald Travis McGee novels and Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch books. And it occurs to me that these books absolutely embrace a specific kind of admirable American masculinity. Maybe we should all write mysteries...
I messed around with some crime fiction a few years ago for that reason.
One of the good things in writing fiction about my reservation is that the warrior ethos is still very much alive. A hunting story closes my new manuscript.
Yes, and I think science fiction with a sense of exploration and optimism serves that purpose as well.
I haven't read much sci fi for a long while. I need to revisit.
So much to choose from: the masters of the 50s and 60s. There is abundant novelization of the original Star Trek universe. Next on my list: the works of Ursula Le Guin.
I've read tons of classic sci fi. I haven't read much contemporary sci-fi.
There are a bunch of great British authors that write galaxy spanning space opera: Reynolds, Hamilton, Banks, and Asher
These are still (perhaps unfairly) categorised as classical. Don't forget Gareth Powell and Adrian Tchaikovsky on the space opera front and Tade Thompson for mind-bending stories. Then, further afield, there's Arkady Martine, Martha Wells, Cixin Lui, Anne Leckie, John Scalzi, Becky Chambers, Jeff Vandermeer, NK Jemisin, Andy Weir...
I haven't either. Is there a sci fi community on Substack? I know it's not a stand-alone search category. Fiction in all its genres is somewhat the poor cousin here at Substack.
You could start here : https://open.substack.com/pub/lunarawards?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=wtpo
I don't write sci-fi so I don't know where the specific sci-fi world is on Sunstacj.
You really do. Fantasy as well. There are some great Asian writers as well. Also, there are amazing stories being told in the gaming world. Fire up that steam account, get your Twitter app ready, and go where the creativity has been for the last twenty years.
I'm a D&D and RPG played, both board and video games, so I spend time in the fantasy world that way but not much with novels. I reread Tolkien a lot.
Yes…and there’s a reason that TV series featuring Navy Seals, rogue detectives and the like get renewed on a regular basis.
That's a great point.
I pivoted in that direction myself after my novel Cloudmaker got the kryptonite treatment in 2021 (you can read about that whole debacle here--https://substack.com/@malcolmbrooks/p-139619211). I'm now deep into a contemporary crime novel, but also by some miracle sold a narrative nonfiction history on proposal to S&S, so that's what I'm primarily focusing on...with every intention of seeing the novel through in the long run...
I started Richard Stark's Parker series and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I saw the movie first, "Payback," starring Mel Gibson.
I am In the middle of Pete Hamill right now. My solution is to reread the great real men from the past.
Yes. MacDonald novels (all color-coded by the way) are remarkable. McGee could be anyone. He just happens to be a private detective. And The Deep Blue Bood-By reads as literary to me as The Moviegoer.
The only answer for the dude writer seems to be to step into the arena. Write the book you'd like to see and do your damndest to get it out by any means. It may not be a GMA pick or universally beloved. But it'll make a difference--even if that's a small, incremental difference.
Preach!
No one is going to buy it or read it because men don't buy books since they don't read, and women don't want to hear about your retarded stories about how you're tired of having sex with your wife and want to have an affair with a young girl (whoa, never heard stories like that from men before!).
No one cares.
You're a AI vixion aren't you? Most likely created by a 'gamer dude' to mix things up on here.
Apparently Kat Highsmith cares, but I'm not sure she's a woman. Doesn't act like one.
Reading your remarks make me glad I have never heard of you before.
This is the way. Consider writing for games as well.
A lot of it probably has to do with cultural territoriality and economics. America is by far the biggest book market and is also, in terms of any one country, the source of the most culturally relevant material. The demographic that controls all that ends up controlling the literary world and suppresses all other rival narratives. An odd Swedish or South African or Singaporean writer here and there are nice ornaments that do not threaten the in-power demographic's control.
Banger! So tired of the partisan academia industrial publishing complex.
Masterfully on point. We need to move on from the stupidity of these last few years. It’s mind blowing how they seem to be selecting artists based mostly on their identity rather than the actual quality of their art. It’s extremely counterproductive and one of the reasons for this reactionary right wing wave. It must stop before it’s too late and all artistic, cultural, and creative institutions lose their moral authority. If they don’t, I’m afraid they will lose a lot of the necessary support and influence on which they depend upon for their success and survival.
I can agree with all of this, but I am always shocked by the total disregard of the way video games more or less destroyed the literary market for men. I read dozens of fantasy books in elementary school and middle school and high school. That entire experience is now happening on the screen, with a mouse or a controller.
To me, blaming the industry is comfortable. But I’m not convinced that mean publishers are the problem - if there was any money on the table at all, everything would change. Maybe if a famous Twitch streamer championed a book, this “American man” segment would read it. But even then, I doubt it. We are witnessing the total collapse of the male inner voice because of this - reading Knausgaard was one of the last times I remembered how literature could make me feel less alone - but we are already two generations too late to recover the American male readership, much less the American male writer.
Males choose to play video games; males overwhelmingly produce and sell video games. Nobody forced them, and they probably couldn't stop now even if they wanted. Not to mention internet pornography.
Males do not read. If they chose to buy books again, then things would change. But they won't, and everybody knows it.
Males are their own worst problem and need to stop playing the victim.
Yup, my point exactly. Can’t make a market out of thin air!
Probably about right. The younger guys I know all -- all -- play video games (a very large proportion of young women do, too). This is where their energy goes. This is how they "relax."
Women still read a lot of trash fiction. Men have stopped reading even that, largely.
Re: why we act like cowards. I tired of being called a misogynist every time I pressed a woman to write better. I also tired of white male friends who blame their failure to publish on this problem. From where I was sitting, during an MFA and after, both demographics needed to produce better work. The part about creativity was missing from my creative writing program. Self-absorbed humans writing about themselves is the problem to me. A vanguard of knaussguards talking auto-biographical shortcuts. You mention lipsyte — his last novel (about alphabet city punk bands in the 90s) may have been about him …. But at least he made it into fiction. Most writers don’t bother. Straight to the memoir for them. Talk about boring. I want story not self-perfection. I want something fun. When we lose the Barry Hannahs we lose fun. That sucks. American literature: scared of its own shadow. Thank you for writing this.
Ive been thinking about the phenomenon of gas lighting someone about the quality of a their work based on their identity. For example, I was a female entrepreneur and received constant messages that the investing space is misogynist therefore failure to get funding doesn't necessarily reflect a bad product. The problem is that as a founder you need to know when to quit, and with this line of thinking you can't trust your gut when you think you have a bad product. So you press on, convinced that maybe your product is fine it's just the investor who is wrong. This trajectory of aligning quality with identity clouds our sense of reality, whether it's in product development or writing. I feel for the male writers who have to go through this rigamarole in publishing.
shit happens, right? i just don't think it's fair to bark "misogynist" when attempting to discuss the need for active verbs over passive constructions. it's likewise unfair to blame feminists when a woman isn't attracted to you. both reactions are immature. i even heard someone say he shouldn't be subject to critique in a writing workshop because of his mental health issues. the critique is meant to help, not hurt. and attending art school is an admission that you need to learn some shit to get better. we all have our challenges to overcome. easy for me to say perhaps (as a tall white man) but overcome them. i have nothing but empathy for humans with bigger obstacles than mine. the world is cruel. i can't fix it. independent writing is HARD. entrepreneurship likewise. drive on. don't give up.
100% agree. I'm hoping there will be a shift away from this trend of using various labels and identities to shield oneself from accountability. It's a weird world when a person's work and ideas have to be filtered through the context of their identity. It feels regressive and I hope that changes.
When people get out of their own way, and actually write something fantastical and fun, its always a huge breakthrough. Its impossible to not use our real lives in fiction, but it has to be minimized or it ruins the story.
Nice to see you carrying this convo over here from the Hobart interview. I started to feel fucked when I noticed a sizable number of academics and educators dismissing Hemingway. Eye rolls and highlight-delete from the syllabus. By turning back the clock to go after him, I think the map forward is now to redefine masculinity (so that it means femininity) and then reject anything that appears to reach back to the old definition. Over the course of several years, it's no longer really a concerted effort; it's more like a feedback loop. Women writers want to write about women > women want to read about women > they purchase books written by women > publishing companies see what readers are reading > publishers continue to sign more women writers writing about women. When "Little Beasts" came out, I remember distinctly being asked by a professor at a college reading event about how "masculine" my book was (a book about young boys in a tough neighborhood) and if I was actually engaging in a "send-up" or a satire of masculinity. It was inconceivable to him, I guess, that I was genuine and honest in my treatment of boys. As for solutions, I recently read a post on here from a woman slamming Alex's piece (though she didn't call him out by name) for "whining" about men being shut out of publishing. She made one decent point. We should start our own thing. Hell, there's enough of us on this comment thread.
This is my manifesto. I've been waiting for this for years. Maybe all my life. I hoist your flag proudly.
Wow. I've read your pieces before and they're hopeful in the sense that there is someone out there who has the balls to say what is. I've been saying it in my pieces on my substack blog, A Beautiful Spleen. And after a dozen posts I've gone from 35 subscribers to 45, and my blog is free. I've been writing since the 1970s and I refuse to give up. Like one of the blind men trying to figure out what an elephant was, I've learned over decades that the women have taken over publishing and the entire literary scene. And I've figured out that they only way for a man to publish is to write like a woman. That ain't gonna happen. I've been trying to find a publisher for two of my latest books, and after eight months of sending it out I don't seem to be any closer to finding a house. I'm mad enough to say what I think in forums or online, things like what you're saying, knowing that it would hurt my changes... But my chances are a ice cubes on a hot tar street.
I was commercially published four times. But since the 90s no go. So I've published on Amazon and I've sold some books. But the audience I want to reach does not read ebooks published by Kindle. Despite that I continue to try. I'm seventy six. I can't stop writing, trying to connect with readers, even though these witches have made that just about impossible. I will go to the grave cursing them.
Nice to know you're out there.
Perfectly said - all of it.
Absolutely 💯
💯