It’s a lot of pressure to put on the reading man, who for many people remains a fittingly prosaic sight, unworthy of deeper thought or further comment. Perhaps he is passing the time on a commute, or taking a break from the stresses of the day. Little does he know, he’s been drafted into a new front in the culture war over the future of men.
On a recent afternoon in June, Jack Kyono, an assistant manager at McNally Jackson, the stalwart New York book chain, walked the floor of the store’s SoHo location. Mr. Kyono was quick to point out that not all men read in the same way. International tourists are buying different books from older American men, who are buying different books from young professionals. But he broadly agreed with the idea that when it came to reading fiction, straight men were followers, not leaders. They might read Sally Rooney or Ocean Vuong, he said, but only after an audience of straight women and queer people had made them cultural touchstones.
Earlier on the phone, he told me he had noticed a gender divide among the stacks: When groups of women wandered into the store, they frequently browsed together, pointing out books they had read and making suggestions for their friends — an act that booksellers call “the handsell.”
Meanwhile, when men came into the bookstore with other men, they typically split up and dispersed to far corners of the store.
“It’s solo browsing time,” he said.
Navigating the aisles, Mr. Kyono, 27, led us to a cubicle-size display near the back dedicated to science fiction and fantasy, where the shelves were heavy with multipart series with names like “Iron Gold” and “Light Bringer.” Nearby, an alcove of the American fiction section from F through K contained many of the most famous male writers of what Mr. Kyono called the “American high school reading curriculum”: Faulkner, Hemingway, Heller, Kerouac.
“This is a hot corner for men,” he noted.
So, too, was a nook featuring literature in translation. Here, said Mr. Kyono, another kind of male reader snaps up long, ambitious novels from Czech, Romanian and Austrian writers — someone who may fit into the much-debated trope of the “high brodernist,” male readers and critics who prize esoteric, challenging texts in translation.
