Editor Who Starts Book Club Has Panic Attack After Reading About 'Contemporary Masculinity'

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.

The NYT is running its regularly-scheduled “male readers don’t exist” piece. pic.twitter.com/v7E2IiIm78
— CoffeeWithTheClassics (@CoffeewClassics) June 26, 2025

Check this thread:

I want to fix this. @ark_press wants to fix this.

The NYT, Simon and Schuester, and others dont know how. They think they do, but they dont. pic.twitter.com/qXSWzCN7xe
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025

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.

I don't think Yahdon Isreal has a solution. pic.twitter.com/4qDePEu5lV
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025

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.

Lit professor Mr. Ryan finds that men in his courses are uninterested "in the material, because they did not see the benefit of novels."

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
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025

… 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.

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
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025

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.

Cultural celebrity stamps, bookclubs, and other approval methods. It isn't about publishing different books, its simply a marketing… pic.twitter.com/GbqpH4qN3h
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025

… 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.

And, it seems that men love to read books on masculine subjects. pic.twitter.com/zzhLmK7OAC
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025

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.

If you can read whatever you want, and men aren't reading the books from… pic.twitter.com/lBFPdXw0SV
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025

"… 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.

So if you want more men to read, publish and market books that appeal to them.
— Passage Publishing (@PassagePress) June 26, 2025

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

Sorry we don’t want to read your endless books about a strong… https://t.co/S17G1joOZe
— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) June 26, 2025

… 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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