Publishers, for their part, throw up their hands and say, "These men are not buying books! They are playing video games! They are fooling around with their phones! They are reading naughty manga! They are streaming billions of movies! They do not read!"
It could be a chicken-egg situation; did men drop out of reading or did books drop men?
I actually don't know. I love to read, have since childhood. But I didn't grow up in a bookish house. Mom read one novel during the entire time I was alive, I think -- a tawdry Vegas book that a friend pushed on her. Dad liked science fiction, though, but he had stopped reading books by the time the kids came along. Maybe the lack of peace and quiet around the house turned him toward TV in the evenings, which is more social and requires less concentration. When I discovered his trove of old Science Fiction Book Club novels in the cellar one day, some time after I had become a confirmed bookworm, it was like finding out my dad was Batman. I feel like I hardly know you -- and yet this is so cool!
He did not read again, however; not until his final illness, which lingered for a long while and prevented him from much physical activity. (He liked Planet of the Apes particularly; said it was quite different from the movie, which I already knew.) Later, he was on serious end-of-life painkillers and could not focus enough to read at all.
Most men I knew who were casual readers were fond of mysteries, SF/fantasy, and especially espionage. I even had an English professor who was a huge fan of spy novels. The father of one of my best friends was never without one, especially wartime espionage; my pal said, "Put a swastika and a bloody knife on the cover and Dad's reading it."
Men are being told to read, but it's generally in the same way that they are being told to eat kale and go to the gym. It's good for you. Well, I agree. But if it's no fun, they aren't going to do it. No one pays for homework.
I may not be a typical male about these things, since I have a lifelong reading habit and a professional involvement, but I feel exactly the way the average guy might when looking over a shelf full of modern books: Mildly discouraged. It's hard to find the quiet time to do any reading, so give me one reason why this is worth the trouble. And most publishers, and perhaps writers, can't.
I may not be a typical male about these things, since I have a lifelong reading habit and a professional involvement, but I feel exactly the way the average guy might when looking over a shelf full of modern books: Mildly discouraged. It's hard to find the quiet time to do any reading, so give me one reason why this is worth the trouble. And most publishers, and perhaps writers, can't.
When boys hit high school, the vast majority of books directed toward their age group are written for girls. It got that way because girls were buying more books, and has avalanched since. Even teen books about male characters -- even those written by men -- usually star a male who is a doofus who has a female friend who is a badass.
When I was in high school, there were very few Beverly Clearys for boys; I was reading books for adults from the time I was thirteen, because there was little else to read. I think now that that was a good thing. But all this illustrates that the problem may start earlier; high school is the first time reading assignments are focused on adult literature, but not the books kids would select themselves, so if self-directed reading for enjoyment is to be instilled, it must be done before that.
I'd like your thoughts on this. I know there are serious publishers who would love to crack the code, find the way to get books into the hands of teenage boys and encourage them to be lifelong readers. I've written a couple of books for that crowd, but couldn't get an agent for them; it's hard to write for boys, but harder to find a publisher since no one cares enough to try anymore. Where do we go from here?
In my family, growing up, everyone read a lot.
ReplyDeleteThen I earned a law degree when I was in my early 50s. I did this while working full time, coaching little league, and holding up my end of the housework.
It required a great deal of discipline to read the thousands of pages of dense and complex text in the various casebooks and "hornbooks" that made up the curriculum. You want complex? In Real Property we learned about the "Rule against perpetuities" which can be stated as "No interest is good unless it must vest, if at all, not later than twenty-one years after some life in being at the creation of the interest." Simple eh? No. There are law books with hundreds of pages that are devoted to this one rule.
Anyway, when I was done, I decided that I had done more than enough reading for a lifetime.
Yet I do still read, mostly nonfiction, some fiction, but if a book does not totally engage me within the first few pages, forget it. I don't have time to read mediocre writing. Also, I don't feel any pressure to get through a book quickly, particularly non-fiction. It's OK to take it slowly.
Nevertheless, with so many choices in video entertainment, I do read much less now than I did in my 20s, or 30s, or 40s.
In novels, recent favorites have been thrillers by Daniel Silva, C.J. Box, and Lee Child. Once in a while I will read an "acclaimed" novel, but as Fred notes, for the most part, they are saturated with "woke" and awful. The traditional sources of book reviews (NY Times, New Yorker, etc.) are utterly useless.
I am ~ 2 years from retiring. I expect I will do much more reading then! In fact, I have bookshelves (and kindles) full of books that I plan to read some day.
My reading as a yute started with classic children's books - "The Wind in the Willows", "Old Mother West Wind" and the like. That transitioned to encyclopedias and almanacs (yes, I am THAT old), and then anything aviation-related as a teen - "Stick and Rudder", "The Falcons of France", "Fate is the Hunter" and such.
ReplyDeleteI majored in English Literature in college, with an emphasis on Shakespeare, but also did a lot with Norse Sagas and Russian Lit. After school and in the working world, I tended towards history, particularly military - Barbara Tuchman and Samuel Eliot Morison were two of my favorites. I didn't have the time to read as much as I would have liked, but as time wore on, histories became more revisionist and "woke" and thus less readable.
I'm retired, and read the occasional classic. I'm also doing proof reading for the Gutenberg Project, and that has a wealth of older material that is most pleasant to work with compared to current "woke", "diverse" gibberish.
What will get young males to read again? Reading takes effort. Reading is an active pastime, requires an attention span, and an imagination to bring the characters and situations to life in the mind's eye. TV is totally passive entertainment, requiring no imagination or attention span. Video games are an active pastime, but the mind's eye is replaced by animation. People tend to gravitate towards the easy vs. the difficult, when the choice is available. Perhaps a greater emphasis on reading at an early age and shunning the TV and games until later, but I don't see that happening. It's too easy to park the kids by the electronics than to work with them on their reading.