There’s always something going on with men. They can’t make friends; they’re very lonely; they’re “losing” to women; they listen to Andrew Tate. And, we are told, they do not read. Over the past few years, multiple articles have observed the so-called decline of the male reader, whose tastes once made best sellers of swaggering authors including Philip Roth, John Updike, and David Foster Wallace, and whose disappearance from the contemporary literary scene is troubling. “If you care about the health of our society—especially in the age of Donald Trump and the distorted conceptions of masculinity he helps to foster—the decline and fall of literary men should worry you,” David J. Morris wrote in The New York Times.
男人总会发生一些事情。他们不能交朋友；他们很孤独；他们对女性“失去”；他们听安德鲁·泰特（Andrew Tate）。而且，我们被告知，他们没有阅读。在过去的几年中，多篇文章观察到了男性读者的所谓衰落，他的口味曾经使包括菲利普·罗斯（Philip Roth），约翰·厄普克（John Updike）和戴维·福斯特·华莱士（David Foster Wallace）在内的摇摇欲坠的作家畅销书，而当代文学界消失了。戴维·J·莫里斯（David J. Morris）在《纽约时报》上写道：“如果您关心我们社会的健康，尤其是在唐纳德·特朗普（Donald Trump）的时代以及他帮助促进男性气质的扭曲观念中，文学人的衰落和下降应该让您担心。”
The argument that society’s problems can be traced to the fading prominence of Infinite Jest on dorm-room bookcases feels like a stretch; so does the underlying evidence. The source of such laments seems to be a widely circulated (but poorly sourced) factoid showing that men account for only 20 percent of the North American fiction market—an alarming number that invites all sorts of unchecked speculation. (For example: Does this mean that men who do read mostly stick to nonfiction—history books, self-help guides, manuals on improving one’s business? Is the modern male reader statistically likely to be a walking LinkedIn post?)
关于社会问题的论点可以追溯到无限开玩笑在宿舍房间书柜上的淡出突出的观点。基本证据也是如此。这种哀叹的来源似乎是一种广泛传播（但采购不良）的事实表明，男人仅占北美小说市场的20％，这是一个令人震惊的数字，引起了各种未经检查的猜测。（例如：这是否意味着阅读主要坚持非小说类的男人 - 历史书籍，自助指南，改善业务的手册？
The 80/20 split is probably overblown, as Vox’s Constance Grady found in a recent investigation of the oft-cited statistic. But there is some proof that women consume fiction at a higher rate than men. (Grady cites a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts survey finding that 50 percent of American women had read a novel or short story in the past year, compared with 33 percent of men—still a divide, though not as extreme.) All sorts of explanations for this have been floated: Publishing is overwhelmingly staffed by women, who might be more likely to acquire and market books that appeal to women; the attention economy has drawn men to other forms of entertainment, such as podcasts and video games; nobody reads much right now—the median American consumes just five books a year—and men are just canaries in this coal mine.
正如Vox的Constance Grady在最近对FAST统计统计数据的调查中发现的那样，80/20的分裂可能被夸大了。但是有一些证据表明，女性以比男性更高的速度消费小说。（Grady引用了2017年的一项2017年全国艺术调查基金会发现，在过去的一年中，有50％的美国女性读了一本小说或短篇小说，而男性中有33％，但鸿沟，尽管不是极端的。注意力经济吸引了其他娱乐形式的人，例如播客和视频游戏。现在没有人读得多 - 美国中位数每年只消耗五本书 - 男人只是这个煤矿中的金丝雀。
Read: 24 books to read this summer
阅读：今年夏天阅读的24本书
The last point, in particular, prompts fiction defenders to explain why this is a bad thing. Arguments about why one should read tend to emphasize some positive outcome, as though a book is a public good and you are its beneficiary. “Reading fiction is also an excellent way to improve one’s emotional I.Q.,” Morris noted in his Times op-ed, implying that reading will change men for the better. Perhaps they could appear more sexually desirable to certain prospective romantic partners (according to the filmmaker John Waters), or consider spiritual mysteries that can’t be neatly captured by numbers and facts alone, or strengthen their empathy muscles and become less polarized citizens.
尤其是最后一点促使小说捍卫者解释为什么这是一件坏事。关于为什么应该阅读的论点倾向于强调一些积极的结果，好像一本书是公共利益，而您是它的受益者。莫里斯在他的时代专栏文章中指出：“阅读小说也是提高情绪激动的智商的绝佳方式。也许对于某些潜在的浪漫伴侣（根据电影制片人约翰·沃特斯（John Waters）的说法），他们可能会更有性欲，或者考虑精神上的奥秘，而精神上的谜团单独通过数字和事实来整齐地捕捉到，或者增强了他们的同理心肌肉并变得更加两极分化的公民。
But as someone who belongs strongly in that fifth (or perhaps much more) of the male population that reads fiction, I can say that I’m usually not thinking about what I stand to learn. Rather, I’m aware of what is happening to me right now—and that affirmative thrill is the reason I can’t seem to stop accumulating new books to read, even though I could use the space in my apartment for something else.
但是，作为一个在读小说的男人中强烈属于的人，我通常不会在想我要学到的东西。相反，我知道我现在正在发生的事情，即使我可以在公寓中使用其他空间来做其他东西，但我似乎无法停止积累新书的原因。
The concept of reading as an empathy machine—to borrow a phrase that originated with the late movie critic Roger Ebert—is appealingly idealistic. Stories that burrow into characters’ trains of thought can capture true interiority in a way that film or nonfiction cannot. For a similar reason, personal essays are more likely to go viral than an academic paper about the same subject, because reality is more engaging as a described experience than as a series of logically arranged details. When I read Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, I tunnel through space and time into 1950s working-class Naples. When I read Don DeLillo’s Libra, I can feel the particulars of Lee Harvey Oswald’s life. I believe this makes me more empathetic, and I enjoy believing that it does; it’s flattering to think I am becoming a better person by reading a book, even if it’s obviously not always true (I know some veteran readers who are truly awful people).
阅读作为同理心机器的概念 - 借用源于已故电影评论家罗杰·埃伯特（Roger Ebert）的短语，这是一个吸引人的理想主义。钻入角色思想列车的故事可以以电影或非小说类型的方式捕捉真正的内在性。出于类似的原因，个人论文比有关同一主题的学术论文更有可能传播开来，因为现实比描述的经历更具吸引力，而不是一系列逻辑上安排的细节。当我阅读埃琳娜·费兰特（Elena Ferrante）的我的出色朋友时，我在1950年代的工人阶级那不勒斯（Naples）遍布时空。当我阅读唐·德里洛（Don Delillo）的天秤座时，我可以感受到李·哈维·奥斯瓦尔德（Lee Harvey Oswald）一生的细节。我相信这使我更加同情，我喜欢相信它的确如此。认为我通过读书成为一个更好的人是很讨人喜欢的，即使这显然并非总是如此）（我认识一些真正可怕的人的资深读者）。
But empathy is a bit too touchy-feely as a consistent motivation—at least for me. Sometimes I’m in a standoffish mood and don’t particularly want to feel; men don’t have a monopoly on misanthropy, but I’d argue that we’re the more churlish gender—and the one more expected, and therefore allowed, to shake a stick and bark “Stay away from me.” So many books (thrillers about burly ex-military cops, literary novels with creepy narrators) are more interesting precisely because their protagonists are nearly impossible to identify with. For example, the Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor’s novel Paradais is partly about a teenage gardener in a gated community who befriends an off-putting loner with a monstrous plan to sexually assault his wealthy neighbor—gripping characters, but not exactly sympathetic ones.
但是，同理心有点过于敏感，因为我至少对我而言。有时我心情僵化，并不特别想感受。男人对犯罪没有垄断，但我认为我们是更加脆弱的性别，而且是一个更加期望的，因此允许摇晃棍子并吠叫“远离我”。如此众多的书（关于魁梧的前军事警察的惊悚片，带有令人毛骨悚然的叙述者的文学小说）更有趣，因为他们的主人公几乎无法认同。例如，墨西哥作家费尔南达·梅尔乔（Fernanda Melchor）的小说《帕拉达斯》（Paradais）的一部分是关于一个封闭的社区中的一个十几岁的园丁，他与一个令人反感的孤独者与一个令人难以置信的孤独者结交，并有一个可怕的计划来对他富有的邻居进行性侵犯，但并不完全同情。
Read: An unabashedly intellectual murder mystery
阅读：毫不掩饰的知识谋杀之谜
Instead, it’s how Melchor tells her story—in a dense, logorrheic style that piles on sensory details and intrusive thoughts—that makes Paradais so effective. In one representative passage, Polo, the gardener, attempts to blend in at a children’s birthday party as his attention wanders from the women in attendance (“their hair straight and inert, as neat and lifeless as wigs”) to their bland husbands (“just as ridiculous in their pink polos and pastel shirts”) and unruly offspring (who “screeched and launched themselves at the juddering bouncy castle like raving lunatics”). As Polo thinks and thinks and thinks, Melchor refuses to separate his observations with periods; the misanthropic remarks accumulate at the speed of thought, communicating the depth of his distaste with dizzying urgency. The intensity of this style feels more compelling than it would if Melchor had written, “He looked around and realized he hated these rich people.”
取而代之的是，梅尔乔（Melchor）讲述了她的故事 - 以一种密集的，logorheic的风格依靠感官细节和侵入性思想，这使帕拉达斯（Paradais）如此有效。In one representative passage, Polo, the gardener, attempts to blend in at a children’s birthday party as his attention wanders from the women in attendance (“their hair straight and inert, as neat and lifeless as wigs”) to their bland husbands (“just as ridiculous in their pink polos and pastel shirts”) and unruly offspring (who “screeched and launched themselves at the juddering bouncy castle like raving疯子”）。正如马球的思考和思考和思考一样，梅尔乔拒绝将他的观察结果与时期分开。不太人性化的言论以思想的速度积累了，使他的厌恶的深度与令人眼花surr紧的紧迫性传达。这种风格的强度比梅尔乔（Melchor）写道：“他环顾四周，意识到自己讨厌这些富人。”
I do not need to feel the exact feelings of a doltish, unfulfilled Mexican teenager who will eventually play a role in a heinous crime. But I can recognize the singularity of his experience, and the specific way in which Melchor renders this experience. I am not attempting to understand Polo, but I am following along at the pace of his perception, and my awareness of how Melchor has manipulated reality into something feverish and all-consuming makes me think of moments when I’ve also experienced events at the same pitch. This is not empathy, per se, but an escape from my own consciousness and surroundings—something I need, from time to time.
我不需要感受到一个愚蠢的墨西哥少年的确切感觉，他们最终将在令人发指的犯罪中发挥作用。但是我可以认识到他的经历的奇异性，以及梅尔乔（Melchor）提供这种经历的特定方式。我并不是想了解马球，但是我跟随他的感知速度，以及我对梅尔乔如何将现实操纵为狂热和无所不在的事物的认识，这使我想到了我在同一球场上体验事件的时刻。本质上，这不是同理心，而是逃避我自己的意识和周围环境的逃脱 - 我不时需要的东西。
Conversations by men about men are self-selecting by nature; surely millions of men live their life every day without caring about what other people are saying about them. But a real demographic of men is besieged, every day, by a corner of the media universe—the so-called manosphere—that dictates where they should be spending their attention. You have possibly encountered a video of one of these manosphere men, sitting in front of a microphone, stridently theorizing about how a dude should be. Men should strive to stand out, they often say. They should broadcast their opinions, judge other people, stand up for their gender—as though investing a single man with enough authority could fix everything.
男人关于男人的对话是自然而然的。每天都有数百万人过着自己的生活，而不必关心别人对他们的看法。但是，每天都被媒体宇宙的角落（所谓的manosphere）所包围的人口被围困，这决定了他们应该在何处引起注意的地方。您可能遇到了坐在麦克风前面的这些Manosphere男子之一的视频，对家伙应该如何看待。他们经常说，男人应该努力脱颖而出。他们应该宣传自己的意见，判断其他人，为自己的性别而奋斗 - 虽然投资一个拥有足够权威的人可以解决所有问题。
Many of these outspoken personalities advocate for men to throw off society’s flattening influence, but they tend to make starkly similar points in starkly similar ways. Beyond the intellectual reservations they raise, I find them deeply boring. Contrary to their rebellious posturing, there is nothing more conformist than adhering to a stranger’s standards of how you should behave.
这些直言不讳的人物中有许多人倡导男人摆脱社会的扁平影响，但他们倾向于以明显的相似方式提出明显的相似观点。除了他们提出的智力保留之外，我还发现它们非常无聊。与他们叛逆的姿势相反，没有什么比遵守陌生人的表现标准了。
Read: Reading literature won’t give you superpowers.
阅读：阅读文学不会给您超级大国。
Literature, meanwhile, allows me to occupy a place that is totally for myself, and unaccountable to other people’s expectations. The author Percival Everett is fond of noting that he considers reading to be a subversive act. “No one can control what minds do when reading; it is entirely private,” he once said. This, to me, is the best argument for why a man should read, and why he should seek new mental frontiers beyond the accumulation of information. Reality is linear, but reading skips backwards and forward, allowing me to consider the world from a removed vantage point. Instead of feeling squeezed by my earthly existence and my own bodily limits, I leap into other minds and perspectives—not just those of men, but also those of women and nonhumans—and consider those expectations. I am reminded that everyone is unexceptional and everyone is exceptional. Facts can sometimes tell us this about humanity, but fiction does this best of all.
同时，文学使我能够占据一个完全适合自己的地方，并且对他人的期望不负责任。作者珀西瓦尔·埃弗里特（Percival Everett）喜欢指出他认为阅读是颠覆性行为。他曾经说：“阅读时没有人能控制思想的行为；这完全是私人的。”对我而言，这是一个最好的论点，说明一个人应该阅读的原因，以及为什么他应该在信息积累之外寻求新的心理领域。现实是线性的，但是阅读向前和向前跳过，使我可以从删除的有利位置考虑世界。我没有感到被我的尘世生存和自己的身体限制所挤压，而是跳入其他思想和观点（不仅仅是男人，也是女人和非人类的观点），并考虑了这些期望。提醒我，每个人都不是，每个人都很出色。事实有时可以告诉我们有关人类的信息，但小说却做到了最好。
It is seductive, too, to keep things to yourself. To incubate your own thoughts and ideas without having to express and justify them in real time as you might when talking with other people. Too much isolation can lead someone askew—ask the Unabomber—but this kind of solitary contemplation offers a retreat from social pressures. I have often felt powerless, or lonely; these are, in the end, just conditions of being alive. (They are certainly not gendered or tied to any particular demographic trend.) But fiction can remind you that you exist along a continuum of human experiences, and that your own everyday ennui is less of a dead end and more of a data point. Yes, men could use more empathy; they would also benefit from a heightened sense of perspective.
保留自己的东西也很诱人。孵化自己的想法和想法，而不必像与他人交谈时像您那样实时表达和证明它们。太多的隔离会导致一个歪斜的人 - 掩盖无祖的人 - 但是这种孤独的沉思可以从社会压力中撤退。我经常感到无能为力或孤独。最终，这些都是活着的条件。（当然，它们与任何特定的人口趋势都不是性别的。）但是小说可以提醒您，您沿着人类的经验连续存在，并且您自己的日常Ennui不再是死胡同，而是更多的数据点。是的，男人可以使用更多的同理心；他们还将从高度的观点感中受益。
Too often, “man time” is described as putting on a football game or picking up a fishing rod—retreating into some kind of brainless entertainment that is occasionally punctuated by moments of joy. Freedom can certainly be found in the physical world; Everett is also an avid fisherman. But if you can’t go outside at the moment, or if you can’t stand staring at another screen? Well, pick up a novel. It may shock you, the worlds you end up exploring—and the feelings you will stir up from nothing at all. You will find it easier to walk through life, ready for what comes next.
通常，“男人的时间”被描述为戴上足球比赛或捡起钓鱼竿 - 重新制作到某种无脑的娱乐中，偶尔会被欢乐时刻打断。自由当然可以在物理世界中找到。埃弗里特也是一个狂热的渔夫。但是，如果您目前不能出门，或者您不能盯着另一个屏幕？好吧，捡小说。这可能会震惊您，您最终正在探索的世界 - 您根本不会振奋的感觉。您会发现更容易走过生活，为接下来的事情做好准备。
