Today, Explained - All the sad young literary men

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Writer Ross Barkan says young men's voices have vanished from literary fiction. Economist Joel Waldfogel offers a reality check from the world of publishing. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. A reader by the book wall at the 2025 Turin Book Fair. Photo by Stefano Guidi/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

British writer and critic Jude Cook announced last month that he's starting a small independent press that will publish mainly literary fiction and memoirs by young men. Mr. Cook told The Guardian that literary fiction, this is highbrow stuff, has come to be dominated by women, quote, giving rise to a situation where stories by new male authors are often overlooked with a perception that the male voice is problematic. After that, we reached out to Jude Cook, who told us he'd rather not talk because, quote, the discourse has got slightly out of hand. Today Explained loves nothing more than out of hand discourse.

And so we're gonna examine the claim that young white straight men are being shut out of high-end fiction. Most of the classic examples of prestige white male authors are now middle-aged or senior citizens. Jonathan Franzen is 65 years old. That's coming up. Support for Today Explained comes from Adio. Adio is A-T-T-I-O. What do they do?

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And this week we're talking to Adam Mosseri, who runs Instagram and who also runs Threads. And he told me what Threads was originally gonna be called. I called it Textagram as a joke, which unfortunately stuck as a name for months before I managed to kill it. Textagram, great name. You're making me regret telling you this.

That's this week on Channels, wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. This is Today Explained. My name is Joel Waldfogel and I'm a professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. I also have a connection with the economics department here. Very cool. Are you a big fiction reader?

I'm not a big fiction reader. Oh, no. Why not? Well, I have been in my life. I have been in the course of my life. I did a big project after I finished college. I decided I really wanted to read through the important pieces of American literature. So I have been a big reader, but lately I consume other forms of creative output.

Let's put it that way. That's an economist way to say it. You're watching a lot of Netflix, totally fine. You know, that's true. I'm enjoying the fruits of the digital renaissance. That's how I would put it. All right, the reason that we called you Joel is because you wrote a very interesting paper

about gender in publishing. Tell me how you became interested in that. Yeah, sure. I spent some time at the Copyright Office as the Kamenstein Fellow there. And one of the things they were interested in was what's happened to the share of copyrights that have been granted to women. And so I was looking at that and how it's really grown substantially over time. One of the big categories of copyrights, the one that people are most familiar with is books. And it's remarkable just how the share of copyrights granted to females has risen from really low numbers,

if you go back 50 years, to more than 50%. It really passed 50% about five years ago. And that's an unusual kind of statistic, because when you look at other creative or innovative areas, you just don't see that level of balance, that level of female participation relative to male. Take me back in time and tell me where this story starts. I can go back to the early 19th century.

I can look at the card catalog of the Library of Congress, biggest library in the world. And by looking at the names of authors, I can infer the gender of authors. And back in 1800, about 5% of the books published were written by women. And it rose very slowly over the 19th century. By 1900, it was still something like 10%. And it continued to rise very slowly into the mid-20th century. And only at about 1970 did it do almost literally a hockey stick.

That is, the female share just quickly rose from something like 15 to something like, well, by 2015 or so, over 50%. So it's a really remarkable transition that's happened fairly recently. What did happen? Well, I think a lot of it is female college going. So if you look at the share of women going to college, that's really when it bumps up.

And so that means both that we have a bunch of women in a position to write, as well as a bunch of women who are likely to be people wanting to buy books. So it's both the supply side and the demand side. But I really think it's the, you know, taking a lot of women and think about the social change of the 20th century that really liberated women in many ways to participate in various kinds of economic activity, one of which is writing books. Do you think there's also been a change in attitude? Because yes, college education did free women up to do many things, but also along with that attitudes had to change. Like, is a woman worth reading?

Is a question that is not answered by, does she have a college degree? Do you think there are other societal changes going on here? Well, surely there are. I mean, it's interesting, if you go back early in the century, there were, you know, fairly prominent examples, very prominent examples of very successful women authors. So I don't know that it's not an alien thing to read, you know, Virginia Woolf or something, you know. So there have been in the bestseller list a lot of women, even as back as early in the 20th century. But I think what's interesting to me is that this increase in female authorship,

it occurs across all genres of production. So it's not just fiction, it's all kinds of nonfiction. So women are really becoming more involved in the production of all kinds of books. What about the industry that gives you the opportunity to publish a book? That would be the publishing industry. Is it also changing starting in 1970? Well, it's hard to say, you know, because I look at enormous numbers of books. And so there's sort of like the publishing industry has, I think, historically been very an elitist industry, and there's sort of a high echelon of the fancy publishers. And then there are many, many other kind of echelons of books. And by recently,

you know, there's an enormous amount of self-publishing. And so it might be, it's entirely possible that there are barriers and challenges, maybe historically for women, at the kind of the high end. But there have been, you know, since 1970, I think a lot of ways to get published, and especially since 2010 or so when people could begin to self-publish. Right. You think about other creative outputs, as you would term them, Netflix shows. I'm joking with you, of course. But if you want to be in film, if you want to be in television, there's an enormous industry that you have to work your way through. I could self-publish a novel tomorrow, and perhaps I will. There are not gatekeepers the same way that there used to be.

That's really true. And it's both an absence of gatekeepers and also really the production process to be a vulgar economist. It just involves me and a pencil or me and a laptop or somebody, not me, I'm male, I guess. But anybody, whereas with music or with movies or with television, it requires a fair bit more coordination and sometimes capital investment and therefore gatekeepers.

Although having said that, since digitization, all of these industries, it's become much easier to enter. But still, writing is literally solitary. it's become much easier to enter. But still, writing is literally solitary. I just have to coordinate with myself. I can do it maybe in spare time. Even if I have a kid or something, if I have a lot of family obligations, I could still maybe find time to do it. So it is interesting the way writing, unlike some of the other activities, is available to people regardless of the constraints on their time. So as you're looking through this vast trove of data, did you get a sense of what kinds of books women are writing?

There are some kind of stereotypical patterns that are true. So for example, a lot of the romance novels are both written by women and read by women. And there are other categories that are more historically male in their writing and probably in their reading. But that said, what I find really interesting is that there's growth in the female share writing in all of the categories. If the number of women publishing books is growing, does that necessarily mean the number of men publishing books is shrinking?

Well it literally isn't. Huh! One answer is, in some sense, it has to crowd it up. But let me just tell you some facts. There just has been very big growth in the number of new works by men, just bigger growth in the number of new works by women. Now, if I'm going to be kind of an egghead of an economist about it, you know, we could say, well, if the women hadn't increased, would the men have grown even more? And maybe, maybe, but it's not as though there's been an absolute decline in the number of books by men. There's been a big increase by men and a bigger increase by women.

We were inspired to do this episode because we read about a new publisher, Conduit Books, and the man who created Conduit says that he wants to publish literary fiction and memoirs written by men, especially men under 35, because he believes they are not getting published enough. When you look at the data and when you look at the industry, is this a demographic that is being underserved? Well, it's hard to say. In some sense, all sorts of books, regardless of genre and author type, have been increasing. That's true in all the creative industries. There's just a greater variety of everything.

That said, I think literary types tend to focus on the prestige publishers. And there could well be trends at the prestige publishers that are focusing more on women. I don't know. So I'm not denying the perspective of people who think that some of these voices aren't being, let's say, promoted or launched into the industry at the same echelons they used to be. What I think is true though is that there are enormous opportunities for everybody to get some work out there. Every sort of book has experienced increase in the number of works being created. We've worried, I think, we as a society for a long time that we're not getting innovation out of everybody.

Not everyone is allowed to participate in the innovative process and maybe we're missing out. So there's this expression, lost Einsteins or lost Marie Curie's. And again, go back to 1800, only 10% of books or 5% are written by women. Women aren't really participating. Maybe there are a bunch of women with great ability that we're just not tapping into. And one way to think about this study of mine is, well, let's look at this long swing of time where we go from not using women to using women as much as we use men to create this stuff. And it turns out that

that's enormously valuable. It's not just, for example, women who are benefiting as consumers, although that would be great, it's also men. So this is like a win-win kind of innovation or creation. And so that, I think it augurs well for, you know, how important it might be to get everybody involved. MUSIC Joel Waldfogel of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Business sees a win-win, but coming up it wouldn't be high-end literature without the sad young literary men. What do they think?

Certainly the elephant in the room is that there were once a lot of young white male authors and now there aren't. rib-eye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart, groceries that over-deliver. This is Today Explained.

I'm Noelle King with Ross Barkin, writer, journalist, columnist, essayist, novelist. Ross wrote an essay called From Misogyny to No Man's Land, The Vanishing Male in Contemporary Literature. So, for many decades, there were prominent young male authors in the literary world, whether it was Norman Mailer, Updike, Bellow, Roth. The 2010 National Humanities Medal to Philip Roth. Mr. Roth is the author of 24 novels, including Fortnoy's Complaint and American Pastoral.

The Nobel committee cited Bellow for his human understanding and his subtle analysis of contemporary culture. Through the end of the 20th century, you know, with the emergence of Jonathan Franzen and Jonathan Leitham and Jonathan Safran Foer. While still in his 20s, Jonathan Safran Foer wrote two critically acclaimed novels, both of which were turned into films. Jonathan Franzen is here. Congratulations first. Thank you.

National Book Award. It's the first time I've been happy in two months, these last two days. 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 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. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I'm just pointing out a fact, whether it's Sally Rooney, Emma Klein. In the first of a three book deal with Random House, author Emma Klein writes, the girls. Book shops opened their doors early for eager fans of Sally Rooney today, as the buzz around the publication of her fourth novel grows and grows. 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. How old are you?

35. You're 35. OK, you're a white man? Correct. Yeah? OK. I wonder about the kind of driving force for this essay and whether you are the vanishing male writer of what you wrote.

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. I'm inclined to find your argument very compelling. I was a teenager in the 90s, a young adult in the 2000s. That's when you read a lot of fiction, right? And I do remember David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Saffronford, Jonathan Franzen. Jonathan Lethem.

And so what you're saying actually really does track to me. The question I wonder about is the why. And let me ask you first to answer the why from your personal perspective. You're a novelist, you're 35 years old, you're a straight white guy. Do you feel like those identities are holding you back in some way? 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, it's, 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. 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, were taking less of an interest in fiction. It's a chicken and egg challenge where is it 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? So some of it is internal. Maybe there are fewer men who want to be great novelists, but maybe publishers are saying,

hey, we're just less interested in the perspectives of straight white men. When you approach publishers with your novel Glass Sentry, did you hear that? I think you hear it behind the scenes. You're just never told to your face. 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. What do you hear behind the scenes? 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, we're just less interested in straight male fiction. I want to broaden it a little bit because you see even among like black and Hispanic 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, we're trying to diversify, which is fine. You had social justice politics, you had what they call woke and, in a way woke worked because it broadened things out and broadened new voices, but it is also zero sum, right?

Some come up, some go out. And so, for me, it's observing that trend. What do you think we lose when we lose the perspective of those young white men? It's a large part of the country. 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. But I did actually see that in one book in the last year, Rejection by Tony Tultemudi. There were characters who were highly online.

The most acclaimed story was about an incel. That book was incredibly powerful and it got praise, right? It did get the cycle. What do you think about that? He's a fantastic writer, I'll start there. Oh yeah, oh. 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. You know, he's sort of the Roth of our era in terms of his ability to make a sentence really sizzle. 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. 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. 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.

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 you know, 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.

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. So we've seen a lot of great work being done to account for perspectives that are 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.

Earlier in the show, we heard from an economist, Professor Joel Waldfogel, that if you look at the stats going back to the year 1800, women back then are made up about 5% of published authors. It's 10% through about the 1900s. And then in 2015, women surpass men. More women are publishing books than men, although both genders are still publishing a lot of books, it should be said. Are you at all sympathetic to the argument

that you guys had your turn for centuries, the attention, the prizes, the accolades, and now doors have been open to women and they're putting out really good stuff. So we're just leveling the playing field out. 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. 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 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. 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? You 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? Ross Barkin, his novel is The Glass Sentry. You can find links to some of the novels we discussed today in our show notes.

You really should read Rejection. Miles Bryan produced today's episode, Amin El-Sadi edited. Patrick Boyd and Brandon McFarland engineered. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. you