"Men, we are assured, will return to reading when they see their own experiences reflected in contemporary fiction. A number of books over the past few years have attempted to capture a sliver of this audience. Call them novels of masculine tedium. These books, like Sean Thor Conroe's Fuccboi; Adem Luz Rienspect's Mixtape Hyperborea; Tony Tulathimutte's Rejection; Sebastian Castillo's Fresh, Green Life;and most recently, Jordan Castro's Muscle Man,all depict the male psyche as a pulsing wound of self-conscious neurosis."
"Their men go online way too much, where they are bombarded by visions of contemporary masculinity: left-wing Twitter posturing, philosophy videos posted by lifting influencers, Wikipedia rabbit holes on all things crunchy and prehistoric. All this scrolling feeds a gnawing anxiety about the status of men today, imperiled by shifting cultural norms and technological addictions - an insecurity at the core of debates about the place of men in literature today."
Male readership of fiction has long been smaller than female readership, and recent commentary frames that gap as culturally significant. Some commentators argue that exposing young men to the right stories could shift political orientations, but literary fiction's political efficacy is questioned. A wave of recent novels aims to mirror male experience by depicting neurotic, internet-influenced men. These novels show men absorbed by online culture and anxious about masculinity, feeding insecurities tied to changing social norms and technological dependency. Writers increasingly adopt online idioms in attempts to lure distracted male readers away from screens.
#male-readership-decline #masculinity-and-identity #contemporary-fiction #internet-culture-and-anxiety
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