9 Comments

Interesting idea that this might be a genre. I guess almost all of Bukowski falls into this category, though Hank Chinaski doesn't really have much to lose. Doctorow explored this "genre" in his short story Edgemont Drive, and of course we have DeLillo, Cheever, and Updike with numerous versions of this untolding self-generated male tragedy. Hell, you can even lump in Chabon, Palahnuik, and maybe later period Heller (Something Happened). Would you consider The Nix as a work that belongs in this category? How about Walker Percy or John Kennedy Toole?

Expand full comment

Observations:

1) I like Richard Russo in general and adore Straight Man, which I have probably read three or four times (the first when I was about 23; the most recent maybe half a dozen years ago).

2) Yes, this is exactly the male gaze.

3) I have for many years wished that someone would teach a class called 20th Century American (White) Men Authors. (Start with Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, work your way through the Johns (Cheever and Updike) and up through Richard Ford, etc., etc. I can never decide if I'd include Kerouac and Salinger or not--there are of course many other possible candidates). I wouldn't want to take the class; I just always thought it would be a funny/not funny response to shoving all writers who aren't white dudes into "20th Century Women Writers" or "20th Century African-American Literature" or "LGBT Literature." I have a perhaps worrisome sense of humor.

4) I reread Straight Man after I had a kid and was fine with it. I have not been able to read On the Road since, even though there are passages in it I will remember for life, and one of my favorite things I've ever written was a comparison of the Dean/Sal relationship to the Falstaff/Hal relationship.

Expand full comment
Dec 4, 2022Liked by John Warner

John, here is your essay via the Internet Archive (hope this link works) --

https://web.archive.org/web/20111007042954/http://bookriot.com/2011/10/06/the-white-male-fck-up-novel-a-guest-post-by-john-warner/

Expand full comment
Dec 5, 2022Liked by John Warner

"but as I’ve aged, I’ve come to appreciate there’s a lot of other stories out there, and the stories by folks who see the world through a gaze different than mine have become more interesting to me."

Mapping the infinite landscape of the human heart......

Thank you for a really thoughtful and thought-inspiring essay.

Earlier this year, I read -- Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/210651/seating-arrangements-by-maggie-shipstead/

Curiously listed by the publisher as "Women's Fiction", it is a really enjoyable and thoughtful WMFUN (the overlap of WF and WMFUN may make for an interesting essay, too!). At the end of the first sentence, you suspect the already-disengaged white male is going to be tripping over himself throughout --

"By Sunday the wedding would be over, and for that Winn Van Meter was grateful."

-- and by the end of the first paragraph, you know you are guaranteed a train wreck. Somehow comforting in its cringeworthy hilarity.

Even his initials are WM, lol.

Expand full comment

Absolutely wonderful reflective view on the male-centric novels written by white males. I loved your capacity to take a step back and write this... as a male. :)

Expand full comment