Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?

The louche or unabashedly noxious young man has mostly vanished from contemporary American fiction. He is neither author nor subject; there are few, if any, male equivalents of Ottessa Moshfegh or Lexi Freiman, nor of their scatological, misanthropic protagonists. (Only Teddy Wayne, of the leading male novelists under 50, seems interested in such disreputable males.) One can argue this is progress or something else entirely, but it is a trend that is hard to deny. Male lust and male rage is for the internet now. On the physical terrain, in the realm of literature, it is mostly excised.