The tenuous condition of the novel was made clear in The Guardian last month where the statistics on buyers and readers affirmed that without female readers, as the article quoted Ian McEwan, the novel will die.
For those of us slogging away on keyboards and working out original stories, it is fortunate that women comprise about 52% of the population or else we might be retraining to do something useful.
The 80/20 rule governs many things and the male novel reader is no exception. Men do read novels but they prefer tightly defined genres, sci-fi and horror. The article was discussing literary or commercial fiction, that is, which is not bound by such predefined rules on plot character and so on.
I do not intend to suggest measurable benefits of literary novel reading, apart from augmenting my bank account, because I do not believe such evidence based argument works. Like any social activity it is practiced because it gives intangible pleasures, not quantifiable benefits; for instance, broadening the mind and enabling social contact and discourse. To advocate measurable benefits in this case is a form of philistinism.
There is an MBA school which has novel reading on its curriculum. It is promoted as a way to extend the understanding, even the imagination, of the students into situations that they might encounter. Tolstoy as your wing-man. Such utilitarianism is essential to a philistine.
It’s perhaps in cooking that solving the dilemma of the male novel reader can be found.
In Eating for England Nigel Slater gives some unflattering portraits of the typical male cook. It is a culturally British stereotype which in these ‘woke’ times could cause offense because of its simple reductionism. Nevertheless, Slater’s caricatures are true in a way that clichés are true.
Slater’s male cooks are show offs, easily taken in by the expensive and measurably best, things like Extra Virgin Olive Oil and flashy fatuous appliances. He draws a nice cameo of the typical cook before the era of food porn, that is with the signature dish, dosed with chili or Tabasco, or both, and equal portions of smug pride and defensiveness about its qualities.
In the last twenty years the social acceptability of culinary knowledge amongst Anglo-Saxon males has birthed, according to Slater, into the pedant who knows mushrooms, vinegars, condiments, Chinese seasonings in the way engineers can roll off car stats and various amplifiers’ RMS: the measurable signs of status and achievement.
What occurred with cooking needs to happen with male novel reading habits.
It’s hard to believe that Eliot (George), Dickens, Trollope, Balzac, Maupassant and others all depended on female readers, primarily, because male and female literacy at that time would have been asymmetrical, biased to men, so the potential female readership was smaller. Additionally, the stories were in paid periodicals and male earnings were higher. An academic may qualify or refute these conjectures.
Social acceptance and utility in the way that women consume and join together over books is one way to increase novel reading. Another way may be to promote a book’s features, for example, one of my favorite books, Absalom, Absalom! has the longest sentence in the canon of English literature. A book jacket proclaiming a 1,288 word sentence just says, big measurable syntax. Come on lads, get it in!
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