No Country for Young Men

Young White Males are not welcome in the world of literary fiction.

These days I loath to crawl down into the filth and muck of culture war commentary but the current literary discussion on Twitter compels me.

The lefty elder writer Joyce Carol Oats went against the grain and stated a fact that anyone with the slightest interest in the publishing and literary world already knows. That young white men are not welcome and are actively discriminated against in the literary publishing world.

Honestly, this isn’t shocking. We all know this. It has been blatant across the board in almost every artistic community from theater to film. Hollywood has open racial quotas and you can find numerous articles discussing how agents drop white actors because of these race-based requirements.

Anyone who isn’t stupid or a dishonest piece of shit knows that the publishing industry is dominated by upper-middle-class cat moms and wine aunts who only want to publish SSRI Memoirs about Ivy League women riding the cock carousel. Alex Perez wrote about this over a year ago in his fantastic article The New Literary Bad Boys.

The publishing world is still dominated by a very specific type of rising star. She is online, progressive, and impeccably feminist. She has an elite background, and got her BA at a northeastern liberal arts institution, before picking up a post-graduate qualification or two. Currently, she resides in a gentrified part of Brooklyn. Ironically, these beneficiaries of a push for inclusion have shaped a literary scene that is as lacking in diversity as their apartment blocks. They consider two types of books worthy of publication: the female-narrated, elite-world comedy of manners and the multicultural narrative of brown victimization and suffering. What they especially don’t consider worthy, which explains its disappearance from the publishing industry altogether, is the heterosexual male bildungsroman. Lads: it’s over. 

What is interesting is that a boring leftie like Oats is pointing this out. The replies are the predictable dishonest bullshit gaslighting. The usual, “This is not happening, but if it is it’s a good thing because white men suck.” If you have any doubt that racist hatred towards young white males exists spend a few minutes looking through the replies.

Out of curiosity I ducked into Barnes & Noble today and took a look at the New Releases. A quick scan makes it clear that 85% or more of the newly released hardcover novels are written by women and looking at the shelves I couldn’t find one novel written by a young male author. I took a few pictures.

But this isn’t happening according to literary agents on Twitter.

So, let’s be honest. If you are a young white guy you are not welcome in any mainstream professional artistic community, least of all literary publishing. Not that the literary publishing world is welcoming to non-white masculine men either. Kyle Connor from Orange County isn’t being replaced by DeAndre Jones from Compton. Both are tossed in the waste bin in favor of wine aunt fiction and the occasional upper-class immigrant oppression story.

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Why do I care?

Simple. Because I am a white man and because I enjoy reading novels by other white men.

The most ridiculous and disgusting line of thought found in the above discussion is that because publishing has been historically dominated by white men, no shit, the printing press, and the industry was invented by white European men, it’s ok for young white men today to be discriminated against and their stories should be ignored.

Young white men today, from the later end of Gen X, Millennials, all through whatever the hell the current young adults are called need a voice more than ever. We live in an atomized bug world where the normal is ignored and degeneracy and atypical stupidity is celebrated front and center. Entire generations of males, white or otherwise, are demonized, ignored, poisoned with SSRI, and left to a life of emptiness glossed over with videogames and pornography.

Our society no longer champions the athlete, the artist, the achiever, instead, it applauds the failure, the obese mutant, the self-castrated loser, the cultural mockery.

So, I care because I want to read today's young Hemingway, Fitzgerald, McCarthy, and Pynchon. As a millennial man I want to read literature written by other males of my generation and I know that many like me want the same thing.

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Is this a good thing?

The most dangerous game you can gamble on is one where you don’t understand the rules while your opponent does.

Young men writing and submitting for an industry where they are not wanted and actively discriminated against is a tremendous waste of time and demoralizing to those who do not know the rules of the game.

Accept reality and move on.

Don’t stop writing, don’t stop putting what you have to say out there. There is an audience, but you have to find it on your own because all the mainstream channels are closed off if not outright hostile. Build new communities—team up with others and trade services. Find independent publishers and editors. Commission art and advertising work from friendly artists and creatives.

The faster you accept that the traditional world is closed off to you the faster you can move on and create great work.

Most of all remember that the audience is there. If you create good work people will read it and share it with others.

You can be sure I will.