My thought: everybody who thought novels were how you got ahead in the high-brow intellectual world was decisively formed by a small intellectual milieu, which shrank and shrank after the 70s but only really honest-to-God died this decade, for which movies (partly excepting "art" movies), TV and non-classical music (jazz partly excepted) didn't amount to much.
The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who has an excellent new book out on romantic poetry, is like this. He's as alive to contemporary trends as you could ask a 92 year-old to be (he really is alive to them! a nice thing about our time is having brilliant people in their 80s and 90s writing about the present) but novels and poems matter to him in a way movies do not. If you can't take Taylor's sympathetic but passé attitude and you aspire to be an artist, why would you you want to be a novelist, not a musician or a movie director?
In my own experience as a college-aged aspiring writer (n=1, of course) it would be hard to understate how politics, broadly speaking, is seen as *the* premier avenue of intellectual engagement for people my age. It often serves as the first introduction that we have to large, shared-interest communities on social media. I probably wouldn't have ended up on the path that I'm on now if it wasn't for my affiliation with political Twitter, which has facilitated the development of my interests but also oriented me to a segregated "lane" where that coveted Slow Boring internship is, in fact, the pinnacle of our aspirations. Even for those less wonkishly-inclined folks, the activist spirit can easily preclude more thoughtful types of self-examination.
In-person communities of creatives or intellectuals are more likely to agglomerate different strains of self-expression, at least outside of explicitly political groups, leading to the cross-pollination of forms of expression, even if ideological conformity is policed. I can't speak to those older than myself, but I'm afraid that social media plays a large role in restricting the formation of cross-pollinating bohemias, ensuring that Arts kids stick to art and Thoughts kids stick to thought while literary fiction suffers as a result. For older generations, could this trend also be attributed to the death of low-rent bohemia, even before social media became such a force to be reckoned with?
I appreciate the perspective! The lack of cross-pollination is unfortunate. That makes sense re: politics and differs a bit from my own college experience in the late 00s, which predated Occupy and the start of full-fledged interest in activism. There was a great deal of excitement for Obama but then life went back to normal. My own friend circle was very jaded about politics. But overall, yes, I agree - as someone who writes on politics, I know the lure, and I understand why an intellectual teen would prefer that to writing a Great American Novel.
The death of low-rent bohemia has definitely hurt the arts in the U.S. and I do think you lose some of the ability for different subcultures to mingle. In NYC in the 70s, for example, John Lennon would hang out with writers and journalists. You could hit up a party and find him in the same place as Norman Mailer *and* some celebrity politician, like a Bella Abzug.
At the younger side of the spectrum, I wonder if attention span plays a role. Nonfiction is usually, to the modern reader, a good article of a few thousand words max. Novels can feel endless. You write what you love to read, and quite a few guys I know love a good enterprise story, but few are spotted reading contemporary fiction. That’s my thought, at least, as the original Matt Yglesias substack intern.
I think attention spans play a role as well. I recall SBF's quip about the pointlessness of reading books. He was probably speaking for a not-insignificant part of his cohort.
As I annoying as I find it, it's probably time for the academy to make a utilitarian argument for reading print books, novels especially. They make you smarter. They strengthen your attention span. Since I read more than the average person, I have a longer attention span which allows me, well, to get a lot of work done and make more money. I get a lot of questions along the lines of "how are you so productive?" and the truth, beyond the fact I just like writing and it's not work to me, is that I don't spend a ton of time on my smartphone and I save streaming shows for the evening. I think reading books instills a certain level of discipline that is lacking in a lot of people who want to be intellectuals.
Matt Y is *not* a novels guy but I respect, at least, he seems to read many books. He's not browsing a few tabs and calling it a day.
Speaking as a writer of some 55 years with five novels and a couple of movies under my belt, now a writer of a Substack, you wrote a real good one here.
A lot of accuracy here! I’ll be honest for me, tho, the fact that fiction is more obscure makes it more, not less, attractive to me. I’ve come more & more to think that obscurity is my lot in life and I should learn how to use it to my advantage. Obscurity, of course, is every writer’s lot, eventually.
You define nonfiction primarily as journalism and current affairs. But there’s a whole world of personal essays and literary nonfiction that contains some of the finest writing out there
Perhaps it’s because we’re entering an age where truth is stranger than fiction again.
I used to greatly enjoy fiction, low-brow stuff, when I was younger, along with video games, tv, movies… and slowly, I’ve found more interest in what’s actually happening, or happened. There was a long period, roughly from the fall of the wall to the second invasion of Iraq, where politics seemed almost predictable and confined to a narrow band of policies. I think that period, 1990 - 2001, was billed as the end of the history, and the stakes seemed lower. No great power competition (we won!), Cold War dividends, Clinton enjoying weed… politics seemed to be taking care of itself decently.
While there is a large amount of political froth being written, the stakes are genuinely much higher than 25 years ago, and have steadily ratcheted up over time. Superpower conflict has gone from Clancy novels back to being a distinct possibility. Rising populist sentiment against democracy in the US, not to mention the rest of the world. Diminishing economic power of the US compared to China. Small proxy wars spreading, dragging bigger players into. Global warming reaching the point where mass climate migration is starting to reveal itself as a real, highly destabilizing force. These are all big problems, and all getting worse.
Anyone who has a sense of history probably sees that reality is getting more “interesting” - and thus, that’s where peoples’ interests are pointing. Fiction feels a bit frivolous, not serious, in such a time - maybe that’s why serious fiction isn’t taken as seriously.
This is an excellent expansion of the topic and conversation.
I would add podcasts as a vehicle by which men today seem especially comfortable communicating, influencing, and for now at least, it is one they dominate. Basement bros talking sports, comedians dissecting standup, pundits nattering, and yes, people who love books talking about new releases. Just "talking shit" is now a career op and the domain of men aged 30-45. Almost like a time capsule of the 50s and 60s when testosterone was everywhere.
Apparently pods are even a red flag for some women when meeting a guy for the first time, which is kind of hilarious.
Podcasts are a good addition. I would say if you're chiefly attracted to doing podcasts vs. writing on politics you're even further removed from the novel-writing milieu. But yes, the route to podcast fame and fortune is very attractive for the young male. In my other piece I noted Rogan, not Hemingway, would be the model for the young ambitious male.
My favorite podcasters are all male:: Dan Pfeiffer, John Favreau, Jonathan last and Tim Miller. Steve schmitt, Keith Oberman; I agree that in the other centuries, they would’ve been our Jonathan Swifts and Gore Vidals
My counter-take on podcasts is a bit dimmer - they elevate people who are good talkers but not necessarily good writers. I think Gore would've had an excellent podcast. But I'm not convinced the Pod Boys could write The City and the Pillar
You’re absolutely right. I think that the multitasking we’ve all learned works against reading books because when you’re reading books, you can’t do dishes or drive a car.
No, but seriously, I'm pondering this essay. I think you're right that nonfiction and journalism (or journalism-adjacent stuff like punditry) holds more appeal than fiction to a youngish guy in 2024, and it's really interesting when you zero in on the type of writing that guys are especially well represented in, or rather the type of writing that guys are *not* well represented in, namely the personal essay. Is there even one guy out there operating in the same lane as, idk, Jia Tolentino? You'd think there must be given the explosion of that genre of writing as of late. And yet!...
I do wonder whether genuine celebrity journalists still are a thing in this media environment, though, or whether the likes of the aforementioned Haberman and Tur were just a weird artifact of the Trump era, when Democracy could Die in Darkness at any moment!
My thought: everybody who thought novels were how you got ahead in the high-brow intellectual world was decisively formed by a small intellectual milieu, which shrank and shrank after the 70s but only really honest-to-God died this decade, for which movies (partly excepting "art" movies), TV and non-classical music (jazz partly excepted) didn't amount to much.
The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, who has an excellent new book out on romantic poetry, is like this. He's as alive to contemporary trends as you could ask a 92 year-old to be (he really is alive to them! a nice thing about our time is having brilliant people in their 80s and 90s writing about the present) but novels and poems matter to him in a way movies do not. If you can't take Taylor's sympathetic but passé attitude and you aspire to be an artist, why would you you want to be a novelist, not a musician or a movie director?
I pulled no string for jambus-bell -- it tolled for me.
As Taylor said, the empress Swift,
"Baby, we're the new romantics:
come on, come along with me;
heartbreak is the national anthem,
we wear it proudly."
word
In my own experience as a college-aged aspiring writer (n=1, of course) it would be hard to understate how politics, broadly speaking, is seen as *the* premier avenue of intellectual engagement for people my age. It often serves as the first introduction that we have to large, shared-interest communities on social media. I probably wouldn't have ended up on the path that I'm on now if it wasn't for my affiliation with political Twitter, which has facilitated the development of my interests but also oriented me to a segregated "lane" where that coveted Slow Boring internship is, in fact, the pinnacle of our aspirations. Even for those less wonkishly-inclined folks, the activist spirit can easily preclude more thoughtful types of self-examination.
In-person communities of creatives or intellectuals are more likely to agglomerate different strains of self-expression, at least outside of explicitly political groups, leading to the cross-pollination of forms of expression, even if ideological conformity is policed. I can't speak to those older than myself, but I'm afraid that social media plays a large role in restricting the formation of cross-pollinating bohemias, ensuring that Arts kids stick to art and Thoughts kids stick to thought while literary fiction suffers as a result. For older generations, could this trend also be attributed to the death of low-rent bohemia, even before social media became such a force to be reckoned with?
I appreciate the perspective! The lack of cross-pollination is unfortunate. That makes sense re: politics and differs a bit from my own college experience in the late 00s, which predated Occupy and the start of full-fledged interest in activism. There was a great deal of excitement for Obama but then life went back to normal. My own friend circle was very jaded about politics. But overall, yes, I agree - as someone who writes on politics, I know the lure, and I understand why an intellectual teen would prefer that to writing a Great American Novel.
The death of low-rent bohemia has definitely hurt the arts in the U.S. and I do think you lose some of the ability for different subcultures to mingle. In NYC in the 70s, for example, John Lennon would hang out with writers and journalists. You could hit up a party and find him in the same place as Norman Mailer *and* some celebrity politician, like a Bella Abzug.
Wanna be my intern? Help juggle the jambus: https://boards.4chan.org/lit/thread/23380190
At the younger side of the spectrum, I wonder if attention span plays a role. Nonfiction is usually, to the modern reader, a good article of a few thousand words max. Novels can feel endless. You write what you love to read, and quite a few guys I know love a good enterprise story, but few are spotted reading contemporary fiction. That’s my thought, at least, as the original Matt Yglesias substack intern.
I think attention spans play a role as well. I recall SBF's quip about the pointlessness of reading books. He was probably speaking for a not-insignificant part of his cohort.
As I annoying as I find it, it's probably time for the academy to make a utilitarian argument for reading print books, novels especially. They make you smarter. They strengthen your attention span. Since I read more than the average person, I have a longer attention span which allows me, well, to get a lot of work done and make more money. I get a lot of questions along the lines of "how are you so productive?" and the truth, beyond the fact I just like writing and it's not work to me, is that I don't spend a ton of time on my smartphone and I save streaming shows for the evening. I think reading books instills a certain level of discipline that is lacking in a lot of people who want to be intellectuals.
Matt Y is *not* a novels guy but I respect, at least, he seems to read many books. He's not browsing a few tabs and calling it a day.
Speaking as a writer of some 55 years with five novels and a couple of movies under my belt, now a writer of a Substack, you wrote a real good one here.
thank you!
A lot of accuracy here! I’ll be honest for me, tho, the fact that fiction is more obscure makes it more, not less, attractive to me. I’ve come more & more to think that obscurity is my lot in life and I should learn how to use it to my advantage. Obscurity, of course, is every writer’s lot, eventually.
You define nonfiction primarily as journalism and current affairs. But there’s a whole world of personal essays and literary nonfiction that contains some of the finest writing out there
I'm aware. I do it.
Are they done writing? Has the all-clear sounded?
Perhaps it’s because we’re entering an age where truth is stranger than fiction again.
I used to greatly enjoy fiction, low-brow stuff, when I was younger, along with video games, tv, movies… and slowly, I’ve found more interest in what’s actually happening, or happened. There was a long period, roughly from the fall of the wall to the second invasion of Iraq, where politics seemed almost predictable and confined to a narrow band of policies. I think that period, 1990 - 2001, was billed as the end of the history, and the stakes seemed lower. No great power competition (we won!), Cold War dividends, Clinton enjoying weed… politics seemed to be taking care of itself decently.
While there is a large amount of political froth being written, the stakes are genuinely much higher than 25 years ago, and have steadily ratcheted up over time. Superpower conflict has gone from Clancy novels back to being a distinct possibility. Rising populist sentiment against democracy in the US, not to mention the rest of the world. Diminishing economic power of the US compared to China. Small proxy wars spreading, dragging bigger players into. Global warming reaching the point where mass climate migration is starting to reveal itself as a real, highly destabilizing force. These are all big problems, and all getting worse.
Anyone who has a sense of history probably sees that reality is getting more “interesting” - and thus, that’s where peoples’ interests are pointing. Fiction feels a bit frivolous, not serious, in such a time - maybe that’s why serious fiction isn’t taken as seriously.
It's an interesting point, and one Roth fretted about himself in 1961 https://www.commentary.org/articles/philip-roth/writing-american-fiction/
This is an excellent expansion of the topic and conversation.
I would add podcasts as a vehicle by which men today seem especially comfortable communicating, influencing, and for now at least, it is one they dominate. Basement bros talking sports, comedians dissecting standup, pundits nattering, and yes, people who love books talking about new releases. Just "talking shit" is now a career op and the domain of men aged 30-45. Almost like a time capsule of the 50s and 60s when testosterone was everywhere.
Apparently pods are even a red flag for some women when meeting a guy for the first time, which is kind of hilarious.
Podcasts are a good addition. I would say if you're chiefly attracted to doing podcasts vs. writing on politics you're even further removed from the novel-writing milieu. But yes, the route to podcast fame and fortune is very attractive for the young male. In my other piece I noted Rogan, not Hemingway, would be the model for the young ambitious male.
My favorite podcasters are all male:: Dan Pfeiffer, John Favreau, Jonathan last and Tim Miller. Steve schmitt, Keith Oberman; I agree that in the other centuries, they would’ve been our Jonathan Swifts and Gore Vidals
My counter-take on podcasts is a bit dimmer - they elevate people who are good talkers but not necessarily good writers. I think Gore would've had an excellent podcast. But I'm not convinced the Pod Boys could write The City and the Pillar
You’re absolutely right. I think that the multitasking we’ve all learned works against reading books because when you’re reading books, you can’t do dishes or drive a car.
What did you think or Portugal?
Lisbon is a nice city. I was there when Trump won which was ... strange. I filed this Web Summit, when it was held there. https://www.villagevoice.com/blame-everyone-but-blame-democrats/
And the moral of the story is:
https://youtu.be/7QbmtncSCro?si=iK--WCqjbc6rqQ4S
No, but seriously, I'm pondering this essay. I think you're right that nonfiction and journalism (or journalism-adjacent stuff like punditry) holds more appeal than fiction to a youngish guy in 2024, and it's really interesting when you zero in on the type of writing that guys are especially well represented in, or rather the type of writing that guys are *not* well represented in, namely the personal essay. Is there even one guy out there operating in the same lane as, idk, Jia Tolentino? You'd think there must be given the explosion of that genre of writing as of late. And yet!...
I do wonder whether genuine celebrity journalists still are a thing in this media environment, though, or whether the likes of the aforementioned Haberman and Tur were just a weird artifact of the Trump era, when Democracy could Die in Darkness at any moment!
wtf ross I'm not a GAMER >:( UNFOLLOWED!!!!!!1
I used to play Tekken, Marvel v. Capcom 2, Madden, NFL Blitz, DBZ Budokai, the Bleach fighting game on the Wii, who says I'm not a gamer
It says a lot about your integrity and even-handed personality that you didn't just go "lol ok clefairy" ;-)