Washington \u2022 It was one of the most erotic things I ever heard. A man I know said he was reading all the novels of Jane Austen in one summer.<\/p>\n
At first, I figured he was pretending to like things that women like to seem simpatico, a feminist hustle. But no, this guy really wanted to read \u201cNorthanger Abbey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Men are reading less. Women make up 80% of fiction sales. \u201cYoung men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally,\u201d David J. Morris wrote in a Times essay titled \u201cThe Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fiction gap makes me sad. A man staring into a phone is not sexy. But a man with a book has become so rare, such an object of fantasy, that there\u2019s a popular Instagram account called \u201cHot Dudes Reading.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some of the most charming encounters I\u2019ve had with men were about books.<\/p>\n
Mike Nichols once turned to me at a dinner in Los Angeles and told me his favorite novel was Edith Wharton\u2019s \u201cThe House of Mirth.\u201d I was startled because I have read that book over and over, finding it a great portrait of a phenomenon that is common in politics. Someone makes a wrong move and is unable to recover, slipping into a shame spiral. (This does not apply to Donald Trump.)<\/p>\n
I went to interview Tom Stoppard in Dorset a few years ago. The playwright has no computer and is not on social media. He writes with a Caran d\u2019Ache fountain pen with a six-sided barrel.<\/p>\n
Stoppard had a romantic-looking bookcase full of first editions of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens. He complained that his book collection was regularly raided by \u201cAmerican burglars.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was ensorcelling. I felt the same when I interviewed Ralph Fiennes, and it turned out that he loves Shakespeare and reciting Beckett at 3 a.m. under the stars.<\/p>\n
He recalled that his mother, a novelist named Jennifer Lash, read him bedtime stories from Shakespeare, including \u201cHenry V\u201d and \u201cHamlet.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother said, \u2018I\u2019ll tell you a story. There was this young man and his father\u2019s died, and he\u2019s a young prince.\u2019 And she told it to me in her own words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump projects a crude, bombastic image of masculinity. I can always escape by rereading Dickens\u2019 \u201cOur Mutual Friend,\u201d and falling back in love with Eugene Wrayburn, an indolent, upper-crust barrister who turns out to have every quality a man should have.<\/p>\n
I asked my friend Richard Babcock, a former magazine editor and novelist who taught writing at Northwestern University, about the male aversion to reading. His new novel is \u201cA Small Disturbance on the Far Horizon,\u201d set in the Nevada desert in 1954 under the shadow of nuclear bomb testing. It follows three people whose lives are entwined. \u201cThe book is about guilt, adultery, murder, a chase through the mountains \u2014 you know, the usual day-to-day stuff,\u201d Babcock said wryly.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot to blame the current cultural landscape on Ronald Reagan,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I think the obsession with money and wealth that arrived in the 1980s may have encouraged the false idea in men that there was little to learn from a novel. If you want tips on how to crush your rival, better to read nonfiction.<\/p>\n
\u201cSimilarly, with the education focus turning to math and science, gateways to good-paying jobs, the value of the humanities has been degraded. And we don\u2019t hear enough about how novels, sweeping over landscapes, personalities, ideas, events can open perspectives and discipline the mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Susan Sontag once said novels can \u201cenlarge your sympathies,\u201d preventing you from \u201cshriveling and becoming narrower.\u201d That\u2019s more essential as everyone is hunching over fiendish little personal devices.<\/p>\n
She called fiction an ax that \u201ckind of splits you open,\u201d shakes you out of your crusty habits and preferences \u201cand gives you a model for caring about things that you might otherwise not care about.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Babcock points out, the decline of literary fiction with everyone has left romance and historical fiction, traditionally favored by women, the dominant genres. Still, he said, he is \u201ca bit distrustful of the men-don\u2019t-read-novels lament,\u201d noting that \u201cmy friends eagerly read novels, even returning to the classics, such as \u2018Anna Karenina\u2019 and \u2018Middlemarch.\u2019 Some wonderful male writers are turning out thoughtful, dramatic books, such as Daniel Mason\u2019s \u2018North Woods\u2019 and Ben Shattuck\u2019s \u2018The History of Sound.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
A couple of years ago, I wrote about how getting my master\u2019s in English literature from Columbia University underscored for me that we need the humanities even more when technology is stripping us of our humanity.<\/p>\n
Works like \u201cFrankenstein\u201d and \u201cParadise Lost\u201d shed light on the narcissism of the powerful, male tech geniuses birthing a world-shattering new species, AI.<\/p>\n
After that, a New Yorker named Paul Bergman emailed me an invitation to his book club \u2014 all men, lawyers and a judge who had gotten to know one another from the Brooklyn U.S. attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the last 45 years,\u201d Bergman wrote me, \u201cwe\u2019ve been sharing our thoughts on books we\u2019ve read.\u201d Would I join a few sessions on \u201cMiddlemarch\u201d?<\/p>\n
Dear reader, I did.<\/p>\n