If I could do things over, I'd have joined the military rather than gone to college, or at least stuck with ROTC. Instead, I majored in English. That means I read a lot of novels. I had a great class on dystopian literature and another great class on Russian literature. I also ended up in a feminist literature class where I had to read Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" when it was pretty new, not a miniseries on streaming services. This would have been the late '80s. I thought the book was hysterical crap then and have made no effort to watch the TV show, though I get a good laugh at the handmaid cosplayers who show up at protests. Atwood is Canadian, but she was triggered by Ronald Reagan's presidency and considered the U.S. a theocracy.
Anyway, there's a piece in the New York Times on Thursday about why men aren't reading novels. (I admit I haven't read a novel since I graduated. No, that's not true … I read "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson, considered a "cyberpunk classic." And my wife had gotten me started on some Scottish murder mysteries by J.D. Kirk.
Novel-Reading Men, declare yourselves.
— CoffeeWithTheClassics (@CoffeewClassics) June 26, 2025
The NYT is running its regularly-scheduled “male readers don’t exist” piece. pic.twitter.com/v7E2IiIm78
Check this thread:
I want to fix this. @ark_press wants to fix this.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
The NYT, Simon and Schuester, and others dont know how. They think they do, but they dont. pic.twitter.com/qXSWzCN7xe
Publishers don't understand men, just like Democrats need to spend $20 million studying men's "syntax." They're trying to walk back decades of "all sex is rape" and "toxic masculinity," and men — outside of White Dudes for Harris — aren't feeling it.
"Yahdon Israel, a 35-year-old senior editor at Simon & Schuster" wanted to encourage men to read, so he started a book club. His first assigned reading examined "contemporary masculinity", and caused him to have a panic attack.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
I don't think Yahdon Isreal has a solution. pic.twitter.com/4qDePEu5lV
The dude starts a book club, talks for two hours, has a panic attack, is diagnosed with depression, and grapples with painful realizations about toxic masculinity in his own life. Sounds like an example of "healthy masculinity" to me.
Mr. Israel believes that he can shape masculinity with more reading. Men would be more sensitive, less violent, more self-aware, more democratic.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
More feminized. pic.twitter.com/UTUHenwUv4
The crude talk shows of the "manosphere." Joe Rogan, we get it.
Bookstore manager Jack Kyono thinks that men read fiction after "straight women and queer people have made them cultural touchstones".
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
The effects of this are unexamined. pic.twitter.com/34WaeoxDSv
Lit professor Mr. Ryan finds that men in his courses are uninterested "in the material, because they did not see the benefit of novels."
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
Next, the bookseller shows his "Customer Favorites" display - where every novel is dedicated to a female audience, and decided by marketing… pic.twitter.com/JV9s3Aar7x
… geared toward women.
Emory Professor Dan Sinykin points out that from 1855 to the 1970's, we saw a shift away from publishing domination by "a damned mob of scribbling women", to a "boys club with cultural cache". But, starting in the 1980's, "a new generation of women came to dominate the publishing… pic.twitter.com/qmeR1aJVax
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
… industry". Subsequently, men read less.
Here, they hint at their core misunderstanding of the problem: Mr. Castro, novelist, rightly knows you cant create art from identity.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
But, theme and subject matter aren't identity. So far, the books for women have been described by...theme and subject matter. pic.twitter.com/QMJJM5xKRx
At the end, you get to the NYT favored solution: To generate more male readers, we need to encourage men to find books like the women do.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
Cultural celebrity stamps, bookclubs, and other approval methods. It isn't about publishing different books, its simply a marketing… pic.twitter.com/GbqpH4qN3h
… question.
Of course, when they try to market books to men, they choose old books from the age of male writers. Lonesome Dove by McMurtry, Blood Meridian by McCarthy, Screwjack by Thompson. They don't market John Green. pic.twitter.com/UsPyZrP5mG
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
Here's the disconnect: Why do women, who have as much competition for attention as men with screen-based culture, read more than men? It seems that, for whatever reason, women read more.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
And, it seems that men love to read books on masculine subjects. pic.twitter.com/zzhLmK7OAC
The simple answer of "men aren't interested in what you are publishing, they are interested in other works" avoids Israel, the man who had a panic attack after reading a book about, toxic male masculinity.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
If you can read whatever you want, and men aren't reading the books from… pic.twitter.com/lBFPdXw0SV
"… major publishers, then perhaps they aren't interested in the books you are publishing!
Men still read science fiction. Men still read Faulkner, Cormac McCarthy, Hunter S. Thompson. Men still read books that appeal to them.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025
So if you want more men to read, publish and market books that appeal to them.
It's kind of like Hollywood … if you want people to come back to the movie theater, try putting out some good movies.
To understand why men aren't reading more, the New York Times asked a guy in the midst of a nervous breakdown about his "toxic masculinity" https://t.co/DZOWRm0TlJ
— Oliver Traldi (@olivertraldi) June 26, 2025
Femboys must be mocked https://t.co/xfSp6omD63
— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) June 26, 2025
Indeed. And that comes from the author of several novels that appeal to men, Townhall's own Kurt Schlichter.
We didn’t disappear we just read old books because the entire book publishing industry has basically stopped bothering to publish books by men (who aren’t already established authors) or aimed at men in any way
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) June 26, 2025
Sorry we don’t want to read your endless books about a strong… https://t.co/S17G1joOZe
… independent woman who’s trying to balance life and love in the big city
The novel-reading man didn't disappear. Publishers largely stopped accepting books written by men, and librarians stopped buying the few that got past the publishers. This is why I stopped going to the library. I mostly re-read books from authors I've had on my shelves for years.
— Richard Evans (@rich_evans13) June 26, 2025
A better question to ask themselves is why men have stopped reading the New York Times. It's because of trash like this.
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