The headline reads “Only 1 in 5 Men read a novel last year.”
That sounds bad. As someone who writes books I hope men read, it’s damn near catastrophic. But what is behind that number, and what does it really mean?
I am starting to become obsessed with the fact that boys don’t read as much as I think they should. (To be fair, nobody on earth reads as much as I think they should.) But think about what that number says. A mere 20% of North American men read fiction last year. A short story. A novel. Anything “made up”.
Like, at all.
But there are things that clickbait number doesn’t tell you: It doesn’t mean men don’t read at all, they’ve just largely rejected novels. In fact, nearly 70% of American men read at least one book last year. (Pew research) They haven’t completely abandoned books, just fiction. Men make up 75% of the market for nonfiction history, 65% of the market for biography and memoir, and 70% of the books on science and technology. They are considerably less than 40% of the market for contemporary fiction.
Is that a bad thing? And why are people (including me) so freaked out?
Why does fiction matter?
Reading is only one way we upload information into our brains. Film, real life, conversation, the interwebs, all count as input. But reading uses our brains in very specfic, mostly healthy ways. And reading fiction exercises different muscles than reading for information retention, to learn a skill, or pass a test.
- ´Fiction is a “Human Simulator” (It helps create a “Theory of Mind”)
- ´It Builds high-performance empathy
- It ´Provides nonthreatening exposure to diverse groups and builds social acuity
- ´It Trains deep focus and narrative imagination
- It Helps us understand metaphor and analogy
Sounds like desirable goals and all. So what’s the problem?
We have trained boys to hate reading fiction.
Until about age 10 or so, boys and girls read at about the same rate. Then about 6th grade, something changes. We stop treating reading as fun, or as entertainment, or a way to develop our mental muscles and turned it into homework. Thick 19th century novels (often curated so as not to offend the sensitive) demand five page essays on theme and symbolism. Reading should be fun and adventurous, and has become the most dreaded thing in a teenage boy’s vocabulary: homework.
And there are lots of other things to occupy idle time and stimulate imaginations (even if they operate very differently on young brains): video games, Netflix, YouTube at the top of the list.
This is the first of four short essays designed to address these concerns, and suggest some ways to reverse the trend. In no way should this be thought of as “anti-woman” or “anti-teacher,” or even just the ramblings of an old cis-het white guy. I write this with love.
In the next episode, we’ll look at “The Middle School Cliff” and what happens at that critical juncture.
Meanwhile…. what books do you think would make a difference to young boys and men? I want recommendations, people. The more recent the better. Comments are open, please use them responsibly.