Are Men Done with Fiction?

Gifted Underachievers · Jul 10, 2025 · 12m

James has been looking for fiction that reflects his own experience in modern North America—his years as a single dad, his struggles to establish a career while looking after his family and trying to have a life. He’d love to read stories that explore this territory, but…there’s a problem. Not much is being published in that area, it seems. His experience is nothing like the lives reflected in earlier works of fiction about men (Cheever, Updike, etc.), nor is it anything like the experience related in the novels touted as “must reads” by men’s magazines (Cormac McCarthy’s nihilistic…