The Cult of Nonfiction

Further thoughts on the vanishing male novelist

What, other than literary fiction, is occupying the young male today? I posited, among other attractions, online gambling and video gaming. This drew strong reactions, particularly from gamers who suggested almost as many women are playing today. Fair enough, if men still seem drawn to the more immersive and addicting franchises like Fortnite and Call of Duty or the multigenerational pastime of Madden. John Pistelli, the novelist and literary critic, offered a thoughtful response to my most recent essay on the vanishing male in contemporary literature, arguing that “men who already have intellectual and literary ambitions are probably now drawn to writing nonfiction, particularly theory and philosophy of various sorts, rather than fiction.” Pistelli notes, since the 1980s, theorists have had a dominion over novelists in the academy—in English classes, theory is used to deconstruct the novel, after all. I agree with Pistelli and I would go even further: nonfiction, more than theory itself, is the greater lure for bookish men who seek status and acclaim.

There was a time, in the era of the New York Intellectuals, when writing a novel was what serious people did. Lionel Trilling and Elizabeth Hardwick, who both ascended to the peak of high culture as literary critics, published novels. Joan Didion’s first published book was a novel and Susan Sontag, despite the renown she won as a critic, always wanted to be known as a novelist. Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin, the famed tabloid journalists, were novelists too, and Hamill in particular seemed to labor in the long shadows of Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer—striving to be taken as seriously, his prime, as both men. In the nineteenth century, the novel was feminized, and many of its leading practitioners were women. This changed in the twentieth century, when the modernists led an assault on sentimental domestic fiction, Lost Generation luminaries like Hemingway built the cult of the swaggering male novelist, and the New York Intellectuals—the women included—cemented the concept of novel-writing as something that should preoccupy all ambitious people, men in particular.

That has changed. What I’ve seen, among men of my own generation—those born in the late 1980s and early 1990s—is a longing, among the writerly types, to become media fixtures. And one doesn’t do that, in most cases, by becoming a novelist. A male egoist now seeks out reporting or punditry. I speak from experience. Compared to publishing a novel, the gratification of nonfiction is near-instant, and there’s a far better chance of gaining a readership, getting on television, and making money. The mainstream media might be decaying, but there are still prizes to be had if you hustle hard enough and tend to your careerist garden. The 2010s, especially, was the height of media celebrity. This was not just true for men. Donald Trump’s ascension wasn’t merely manna from heaven for the cable TV networks; it was career-making for the reporters and pundits themselves. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times became a quasi-celebrity, as did Katy Tur, whom Trump personally targeted. Glenn Thrush, an otherwise anonymous Times reporter, was a character on Saturday Night Live. Jim Acosta got his shoutout. And all kinds of reporters were cashing in on their Trump books, most of which were entirely forgettable but made them a good deal of money. I begrudge no one for this. When you see opportunities, take them.

Journalism itself still attracts plenty of young men—there are more prominent male journalists and media personalities under forty than novelists—even as women, slowly, achieve parity. There are more male editors at news organizations than male editors at publishing houses. Men are in no short supply on cable TV. It’s plausible, as the media contracts further in the coming years, young men who like to write or talk politics or have some showy intellectual ambition will turn away from these worlds as well. But not yet. If the novel has lost its luster for them, the media has not. Even as public trust in the media plummets, the prestige hasn’t been lost—and most people, when encountering a working journalist, especially at a major outlet, will show a degree of deference. There is hatred of the media as a generalized entity, but less so of the individual who has a fancy press pass and wants to talk to you.

I am not completely sure if theorists have drawn men away from novels. I am more sure punditry, in addition to journalism, is very alluring. Famed or Twitter-famed political analysts abound. There’s Nate Silver, Steve Kornacki, and “I’ve Seen Enough” Dave Wasserman. There are historian-pundits like Michael Beschloss and Timothy Snyder, who each gained great online fame in the Trump years for feeding liberal fears of a fascist takeover of the United States. There are the celebrity-wokes (Nikole Hannah-Jones, Chris Hayes) and anti-wokes (Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi). There the great ponderous ones—Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Gopnik, and David Brooks—who lord over the left-liberal imagination. Leading novelists are drawn to punditry, too. Viet Thanh Nguyen is now a contributor to Mehdi Hasan’s new media organization, along with Greta Thunberg and Cynthia Nixon. If a writer (or thinker or, just as accurately, a talker) craves intellectual credibility, tangible recognition, and a bit of cash, a novel really is not the way to go. In fact, you’ve got to be a bit quixotic, or maybe daffy, to attempt one—you’ve got to believe, truly, in the power of fiction, to exalt one artform above others. I do. Does a brainy 19-year-old Yalie? I don’t know. He might dream, rather, of interning for Matt Yglesias’s Substack.

But aren’t I hypocrite? I can extol the Novel and flog my own as much as I want, but this newsletter you are reading remains, chiefly, a nonfiction project. I owe my living—the cash I bring in, the adjunct teaching position I hold—to nonfiction. I owe my reputation, that intangible bit of currency most of us covet, to nonfiction. You are here, reading these words, because of my dedication to the craft of nonfiction. I would’ve been content, starting at age twenty or so, to publish novels for money, but that wasn’t a viable career path if I was going to pay my own rent and pay it through writing; I was bullheaded enough to believe I could do it this way, and I eventually did. Fiction wasn’t paying for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City. Nonfiction would. I don’t want to lay it all on economics, though. I liked the idea of a byline, and I liked the idea of one I didn’t have to wait years for. I wrote a piece, an editor made a few tweaks, and it existed, right there, for anyone to read. What power. What a charge. What gratification, absent any slog. How I could swagger about, at twenty-three or twenty-four, with my staff job. The invites I received to the little parties, the appearances on panels, a free trip to Portugal, the time I showed up on CNN. Journalists, on balance, get more perks than novelists. It’s enough to feed the cult of nonfiction indefinitely.