Ross Barkan
Appearances
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
There's a long history of writers portraying toxic masculinity and rough male characters, and it feels that you see less of that today. I also think at the same time, young male writers, white and non-white, we're taking less of an interest in fiction. It's a chicken and egg challenge where is it –
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
the publishing industry deciding this is no longer something we're going to push or take a real interest in, or is it market forces as well?
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
I think you hear it behind the scenes. It's that you're never told to your face. And I'm not complaining. I don't consider myself a victim. I've had a successful career. I'm very happy with it. I really have no complaints. But my book was rejected a lot by a lot of publishers, but so are many books too, right? You never know why a book gets rejected.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
I mean, I appreciate your equanimity, but... To echo Joyce Carol Oates in a sort of notorious but not wrong tweet from several years ago, and I'm paraphrasing, is that Agents and editors are at least in the 2010s and early 2020s were just less interested in male straight male fiction. I want to broaden it a little bit because you see even among like black and Hispanic readers.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Asian straight men, there are some, but it's less common. And certainly the white male is now even less common. So I think publishers in general in that era were trying to diversify, which was fine. You had social justice politics. You had what they call woke. And in a way, woke worked because it – broaden things out and broaden new voices. But, you know, it is also zero sum, right?
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Some come up, some go out. And so for me, it's observing that trend.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
It's a large part of the country, right? I think you have a lot going on with young men today, white and non-white alike, straight men. They are falling behind academically. They're increasingly alienated. They're increasingly angry. They are increasingly online. And fiction, in my view, is not grappling with all of that.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
He's a fantastic writer. I'll start there. He's a great pro stylist. There's a short story I love about a young Asian man who is having these very lurid sexual fantasies about dominating other men. Fantastically written. He's sort of the Roth of our era in terms of his ability to make a sentence really sizzle.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
But, but, but, but, this is the caveat which people seem to be afraid to point out, but I will point it out. It's not a straight male fantasy. Could Tony have written a straight male fantasy of wanting to subdue a woman the way that character wants to subdue men? Tony himself is straight. It was an interesting choice there to inhabit A gay character, nothing wrong with that.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Writers should write about whatever sexuality. I don't believe in limiting anyone in that way. But I thought it was a choice, right? Because straight male lust is very... Disconcerting. It's not easy to write about. What do men think about? The novel isn't really, the modern novel, the current novel in my view, and this is an argument someone can push back, is not addressing that enough.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
The nasty, nasty men. The men who are not – maybe they're good at heart, but they have a lot of bad thoughts and they take bad actions. You don't see that much in fiction today, I would argue. But it's not just portraying incels, but even – the sorts of men who came in mid-century novels who were suburban husbands trying to do their best and maybe having affairs as well.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
And I think any time literature only focuses on one thing, if it neglects the working class, if it neglects the black experience, neglects the Asian experience. We've seen a lot of great work being done to account for perspectives that were left out of literature for a long time. But I also think it's important to know for better and for worse what the men of the 2020s are up to.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Yeah, no, I'm sympathetic for sure. I think that's an honest argument. The problem is you'll hear from people who say this isn't happening, and I find that very tiring. I think the honest thing to say is that it's time to rebalance the scales or turn the tables. But look, there are winners and losers, right? Women were losing. Now men are losing.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
But I will say there's no solace offered to the 26-year-old male who must pay for the sins of the past, right? The reality is... You know, you live one life. You've got one shot for success, for glory, for all those things, or any appreciation, right? If you are...
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
blocked from that in some way due to some rebalancing of the scales and you are the loser at the end of that equation, you're not going to be happy. The young male writer can't sit at home and think, well, golly, it was good Norman Mailer and John Updike had such a great run. I'm happy for them. I never met these men. They died before I was born. There's only so much you can do with that, right?
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Only so much comfort you can take in... the prizes Saul Bellow won and Philip Roth won. It's a difficult thing, right? What do you say to the person that they're sitting on the sidelines because of something that their grandparents did?
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Most of the classic examples of prestige white male authors are now middle aged or senior citizens. Jonathan Franzen is 65 years old.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Certainly the elephant in the room is that there were once a lot of young white male authors, and now there aren't.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Anyone who went to Action Park understood you could get really messed up going there. Not only did we know that, it was a huge part of the appeal.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
So for many decades, there were prominent young male authors in the literary world, whether it was Norman Mailer, Updike, Bellow, Roth.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Through the end of the 20th century, you know, with the emergence of Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Leatham and Jonathan Safran Foer.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Into the beginning of the 2010s, Chad Harbach with The Art of Fielding. And then there was a shift. The young male author started to disappear. The male author under the age of 40 in particular and under 30 even more so. And
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
While my essay does not grapple with race to any great degree at all, certainly the elephant in the room is that there were once a lot of young white male authors, and now there aren't. There's less of them. If you look at the prestigious, successful contemporary novelists under the age of 40, they're mostly women. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
I'm just pointing out a fact, whether it's Sally Rooney, Emma Klein.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
those are the writers who are at the top of this particular literary space. And that was not true from most of the 20th century into the beginning of the 21st century.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
I think so. Yeah. I think there's less of me, for sure. I mean, there would be an era where there were a lot of novelists like myself, Jewish. I mean, Jewish or not Jewish, but certainly white men.
Today, Explained
All the sad young literary men
Not in the real world. In the real world, I have enormous privilege. But no, in the literary, in all seriousness, to an extent. I mean, in the 2010s, the literary world was less interested in what straight men were publishing. I think you have a general lack of the heterosexual male perspective in newer fiction.