the times | Tuesday July 28 2020 1GT 9
arts
Hilary
Mantelas impossible as finding them places
on prize lists. There hasn’t beena
young (if you count young as under
40) white British man on the Booker
shortlist since 2011.
The novelist Luke Brown (the
author of My Biggest Lie and Theft),
who grew up in the deprived
Lancashire town of Fleetwood, says
there’s a perception that “the white
male is a discredited category”. Yet he
points out that some middle-class
metropolitan publishers are apt to
forget that to be a white man is not
necessarily to be privileged. “I do
bristle at the current use of straight
white male as an insult because I
come from a place where nearly
half the town are white men and they
don’t really expect much from life,”
Brown says. “The idea that their voices
should take a back seat is offensive
to me because they’ve never really
had a front seat.”
He makes the interesting point
that young male novelists may be
struggling to position themselves in
the cultural zeitgeist. Twentieth-
century male fiction, especially in
America, was dominated by lurid,
uninhibited writing about sex. Writers
such as Roth and John Updike prided
themselves on pushing into the
grimiest corners of male desire.
A lot of that writing now appears
unpalatable and even offensive to
modern readers.
Nowadays, Brown says, women
seem able to write more freely about
sex than men. He points to Rooney’s
novel Normal People and Kristen
Roupenian’s viral short story Cat
Person. Male novelists need to find
a way of escaping the long phallic
shadows cast by Updike, Roth and
their like and discover how to write
about sex in the 21st century.
“If men dodge this because
they’re scared to what extent they’re
allowed to own the unpalatable
aspects of their sexuality, they’ll only
have themselves to blame in that no
one wants to publish or read them,”
Brown says.
He believes that male novelists such
as him have “a responsibility to argue
our case and to argue that literary
culture cannot be complete without
us, really. We’re half of the population.
Nobody’s calling for the 1980s to
come back, but people should be
interested in the male novelist
because men are still
everywhere and it might be
of interest to understand
what they’re thinking.”
That said, everyone I
speak to is quick to point
out that publishers
remain interested above
all in good writing.
“Nobody’s turning down
masterpieces,” Brown
says. And Alexander,
thinking like an
agent, spots a
challenge.
Our talk,
she says,
“makes
me
think
I’ve got
to go and
find the
best men
nobody’s ever
heard of”.
Brilliant young
male novelists (if you
do in fact exist), she’s
coming for you.The
culture
doesn’t
really
want to
hear from
young,
white men
Max
Porter,
Luke
Brown and
Paul Mendezthere. I put this theory to the agent
and co-founder of the Women’s Prize
for Fiction, Clare Alexander. She
disagrees. “I think it’s not that they’re
not there, it’s that we can’t see them.
There’s not an appetite from
publishers and it’s hard to get men
noticed. Unless they’re
contenders for the Booker or
a major prize, they don’t
have much of a platform.
It’s just very, very hard.”
I asked everyone I
interviewed for this
piece to name as many
important male
novelists under 40 as
they could. All of
them struggled.
Taylor, who has a
reputation as a walking
literary encyclopaedia,
suggests Ross Raisin
(who turns out to be
41) and Stuart Evers
(who is 44). “Oh no!
I thought he was
just some kid,” Taylor
cries. “Well in that
case I’m stumped.”
The resourceful
Alexander puts her brain
to work and spends the
evening firing me emails
with suggestions. Eventually
we cobble together a list that
includes Joe Dunthorne,
Derek Owusu, Guy
Gunaratne, Max Porter,
Paul Mendez, Ned Beauman,
Luke Kennard and Matthew
Sperling. Of those men
probably only Porter (the
author of the bestselling
Grief is the Thing with Feathers)
qualifies as a household name
among the literate public.
Alexander says that the publishing
industry has undergone two key
“inflection points” in terms of the
diversity of the fiction that is
published. The first was in the 1990s,
when publishers woke up to the
commercial potential of literary fiction
by women. The second is happening
now as publishers and agents strive
to introduce more racial diversity to
their lists. Each of these inflection
points, Alexander explains, “brings
new writers to the fore and
eclipses others. It’s not that other
writers don’t exist, it’s that the
industry pursues a particular
thing and it eclipses
everything else.”
One publisher I speak
to tells me that modern
publishing is shaped by
a preoccupation with
identity politics. It’s
“really, really hard” to
publish literary fiction
by young white men
because “the culture
doesn’t really want to
hear from them”. That
preoccupation pervades
wider literary culture too:
landing newspaper
interviews with
young white
male novelists
can be almostaware of who is buying novels.
“When sales and marketing teams in
publishing houses look at a young
literary fiction debut they have certain
comparisons to go to, for example
Sally Rooney, or Naoise Dolan’s
debut, Exciting Times, which has done
very well recently. If you get it right
you hit this readership of young
women who pick up books in a way
that young men don’t. If you make
something the fiction debut of the
summer you can shift so many copies.
There’s just not that confidence there
with young men.”
That’s not to say that young men
aren’t writing books. Ash points out
that “young, bright, brilliant male
writers are choosing to write
nonfiction”. That’s significant because
almost all the growth in publishing
(and it is still a growing industry)
comes from nonfiction. Meanwhile,
sales of literary fiction have been
falling for years. In an article in The
Atlantic the writer Juliet Lapidos
suggested that “women are succeeding
because men are no longer competing.
They’re abandoning the field as its
commercial prospects plummet.”
The thing that makes most people
want to become novelists is reading
lots of novels. If few young men are
reading fiction, that suggests few
young men are also nourishing
ambitions to write it. Perhaps the
young male novelists are simply not
The Booker
nominees
in full
0 The New Wilderness by Diane
Cook (US) Bea’s five-year old daughter
is suffering from the pollution of the
overdeveloped city where they live
together. In desperation, they decide to
flee to the untamed Wilderness State.
0 This Mournable Body by Tsitsi
Dangarembga (Zimbabwe) One of
Zimbabwe’s most respected novelists
tackles colonialism, capitalism and the
difficulties of women in the country.
0 Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi (US) In
Tara’s wild youth she joined an ashram
and chased after an “artist” with her
child in tow. Now that she’s old and
forgetful, her daughter must care for
the woman who never cared for her.
0 Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze
(UK) An autobiographical novel about
the Polish-descended author’s “crazy
and self-destructive” experience of a
life of violent crime in north London.
0 The Mirror & the Light by Hilary
Mantel (UK) The latest from Mantel is
the final instalment in her acclaimed
Wolf Hall trilogy about the life of the
Tudor Thomas Cromwell.0 Apeirogon by Colum McCann
(Ireland/US) Rami, an Israeli, and
Bassam, a Palestinian, have both lost
daughters to the conflict between their
countries. They develop a friendship.
0 The Shadow King by Maaza
Mengiste (Ethiopia/US) This explores
the forgotten history of Ethiopia’s
female soldiers. The recently orphaned
Hirut becomes involved in a scheme to
disguise a peasant as Haile Selassie.
0 Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (US)
A comic novel. Emira is arrested in a
supermarket for kidnapping the white
child she is babysitting. Her white
liberal blogger employer tries to help.
0 Real Life by Brandon Taylor (US)
The story of a black gay biochemistry
university student who must come to
terms with the death of his father.
0 Redhead by the Side of the Road
by Anne Tyler (US) Follows a “tech
hermit” whose dull, balanced life is
turned upside down when a teenager
turns up claiming to be his son.
0 Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
(US) A novel about a boy growing up
gay amid the deprivation of 1980s
working-class Glasgow.
0 Love and Other Thought
Experiments by Sophie Ward (UK)
This investigation into the nature of
reality kicks off when Rachel believes
an ant has crawled into her eye.
0 How Much of These Hills Is Gold
by C Pam Zhang (US) Set in the
19th-century American west, this
follows the bleak journey of two
destitute children of Chinese descent.
James MarriottThe great male
narcissists were
sustained by
female readers