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.
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? :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Joe Wilkins's new novel, "The Entire Sky" has two American male characters split by 50 years, set in rural Montana. It covers a lot of ground in this area and is such a good read.
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.
This is doubtless racist, sexist and homophobic, but women are better at the networking and coalition-building needed to dominate a scene.
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? :)
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.
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*
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
I don't write sci-fi so I don't know where the specific sci-fi world is on Sunstacj.
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!
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.
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.
This is my manifesto. I've been waiting for this for years. Maybe all my life. I hoist your flag proudly.
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.
Perfectly said - all of it.
Absolutely 💯
💯
Joe Wilkins's new novel, "The Entire Sky" has two American male characters split by 50 years, set in rural Montana. It covers a lot of ground in this area and is such a good read.