The Salter Method

A retrospective on Martin Amis in the Times of London has voiced a complaint made several times in recent years—that young male writers are at a disadvantage, today, not just because of declining numbers of men reading fiction (a complaint taken up in an engaging recent exchange by Ross Barkan and John Pistelli on Substack, not to mention several other widely shared essays), but because of the impossibility of writing honestly about sex. (That is, about men’s desire for and pursuit of it, especially when these involve women.) Deterred by a not unreasonable fear of cancellation, many young male writers, an earlier essay observed, have adopted a studied sexlessness, typically mixed with moralism and barely concealed resentment.