All The Sad Young Literary Men Are Jerks

In the middle of last decade, amidst the publication of several novels by and about (to borrow the title of just one) sad young literary men, The Awl’s Choire Sicha wrote a brilliant essay in the New York Observer hazarding a guess at just what was making all the young literary men so sad. “These writers, our boys not overseas, are friendly,” Sicha wrote. “And ambitious and ashamed of ambition.” Sicha was identifying in novelists a broader trend. Men everywhere are (for this process is still happening) responding to feminism by redefining masculinity so that it no longer clashes with their own feminist values. They have earnestly imbibed feminism, but it has dawned on them that if, as the feminists insist, the personal is political, then that goes for them, too. Men, no less than women, cannot only advocate pro-woman policies in the ballot box or on their Twitter feeds, but also in their professional, day-to-day, and intimate interactions.