Men have bigger problems than not reading novels.
Perhaps predictably, the men-aren’t-reading discourse has made the jump into 2025. The perennial conversation has taken on new weight this year, though, as we begin to be governed by the worst of men, the putrid avatars of a hatefully reactionary masculinity. Increasingly, what’s wrong with men is what’s wrong with America. Would a reading list of novels enlighten them?
The problem with the “dudes don’t read” argument is that the numbers don’t really seem to back the point up. Vox dug into the data behind the chatter in a piece titled “Are men’s reading habits truly a national crisis?” which casts doubt on the statistics most often being cited, and poses some reasons why we might still be assuming men don’t read anyway.
The Pew Research Center compiled findings from 2011 to 2021 that Americans read an average of 14 books and a median of 5 books annually. Younger people read more than over-65s, and more women read than men, but only by a little:
Pew’s 2021 study says 73 percent of men say they’ve read a book in the past year, compared to 78 percent of women. Those numbers are up a tad from 2016, when 68 percent of men said they’d read a book compared to 77 percent of women. Overall, we’re looking at pretty consistent stats over the course of the last decade: Roughly 70-ish percent of men read at least one book a year, and roughly 80-ish percent of women do. Meanwhile, according to the Department of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey of 2023, women spend on average 0.32 hours on leisure reading per day (about 19 minutes), while men’s daily reading time averages out to about 0.2 hours (12 minutes).
It’s not a huge gap. Constance Grady, the Vox writer, followed up on the stats with the researchers, and the new information she found brings us back to much the same place: the gender gap isn’t that stark, nor does it seem to be moving much.
So statistically speaking, no one is really reading. But it’s a problem for men because men seem to be doing more and more poorly, and reading is seen as a possible antidote. Vox again:
Reading fiction has assumed the same role as therapy in public discourse: something good for one’s mental and emotional health that we should all do in order to be better citizens, and something that men — particularly straight men — are simply choosing not to do, to the detriment of society.
This last phrase is the weight behind the panic — broadly speaking, men seem to have fallen through some very rotten floorboards and into a much worse place. Which is to say, women could stand to read more too, but women aren’t endangering as many people as men are — especially straight and white men, who I’m mostly talking about here.
For all the wonderful men that we all might know personally, the ascendent American male archetype is horrible — the hog-men of the political right in this country are wrecking and upturning everything. We’ve all felt the hot breath of these unwell and wicked men on the back of our necks this week.
Part of the identity of this fratty and crass man involves turning your back on books and everything they represent. This man reaches for force and bluster to hide “a bright seam of fear,” as Rebecca Traister puts it. This man prizes business school efficiency and has no time for anything beyond grinding and maxing everything. This man is gleefully rude, unapologetically loud, aggressively in-motion, and perpetually in-the-way.
This man, of course, doesn’t read. The worst of them, Andrew Tate, once said that “Reading books is for losers who are afraid to learn from life. So they try and learn from the life OTHERS have lived.” Zoë Hu published a sharp exploration of Tate’s brutality in Dissent, which highlights not just the violence, but the loneliness of his lifestyle:
For him, power is a vehicle to admiration, and admiration is at variance with intimacy. To be admired by someone is to forever be at a distance from them, and this is where Tate prefers his women.
This aversion to closeness, which is an act of care which takes time and attention, would certainly cause a man to look at fiction with revulsion. Why fill your head with other people’s voices? It’s too close, and could be a slippery slope to empathy.
And there aren’t a lot of business tips in your average novel, either. Hu identifies Tate’s mission as a perverse extreme of a dynamic seen elsewhere in the hustle-verse: “The worst excesses of masculinity find common cause in the dollar — it’s all a business hustle.” Seeing the people around you as exploitable ready-to-hand objects is not just cruel, but also lonely: “What men and boys learn from Tate, in other words, is how to optimize a life bereft of love or friendship.” Reading a novel has no place in this matrix of domination.
But what is the case for reading, beyond that it differentiates you from the worst people around? Even considering the “value” of a novel seems to be ceding ground to a false way of thinking, putting novels in competition, to be ranked and rated and graded.
Reading is wonderful, but I’d have a hard time making the case that it’s an unsinkable, objectively good thing that each and every person must do. And even people who I agree with sometimes treat books as a symbol of values they want to communicate, or as objects with rich veins of knowledge to be extracted. This turns a book into something to be consumed or summarized, implying that they’re good, sure, but not always worth your time.
Novels can be hard too — how often have you been heartbroken that someone didn’t connect with a book you recommended? In the wake of David Lynch’s death, I’ve been wondering about how to make the case for strange and challenging art. I don’t think I could put it better than Michelle Dean did in her essay on Twin Peaks: The Return in Harper’s, : “There is no point, there is no conventional reason to watch, other than for the sheer enjoyment of the lurid but beautiful mind of David Lynch.”
To me, this is the point: a novel may be difficult, but it’s also a chance to experience something that is unique and unclassifiable. Reading novels is a singular way of approaching and understanding the world. This uniqueness means that novels can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution, nor are books the only way to get closer to humanity, or imagine a better world, or to feel empathy for someone you may never meet. A book could fix a man, but it’s not the only way to, and it’s not a sure thing.
There is part of me that is inclined to quietly allow people to enjoy what they enjoy, as long as it’s not hurting anyone. You don’t have to read. But there is another, larger part of me that is a hater: if you’re a grown-up, you should be able to read a book. You should at least try! You shouldn’t turn your back to the world — go to a museum, see a live show, meet your neighbor, help a friend, and call your parent.
All of these things are a chance to step outside of yourself and consider others. We like to imagine men reading because it’s a vision of a man who is patient, sensitive, and restrained. A man reading is a man pausing and thinking, not a man acting or reacting. It’s seductive to extrapolate this image: a nation of men reading might be a place that is more considerate, a place that lifts up everyone, with bread for all, and roses too.
Above all else, a man reading is silent. In short, and even though it won’t solve everything, my advice to my fellow American men is to shut the fuck up and read a novel.
