Posted on 08/14/2026 10:53:48 AM PDT by Angelino97
Here’s an interesting question: how many white American men born after 1984 have had a literary piece published in The New Yorker? The answer is zero. How did we get here, and who let this happen?
Every literary generation used to produce its Roth, Updike, Bellow, Wolfe, McCarthy, or Franzen. Today’s literary establishment shows no interest in producing young men of comparable prominence—especially if they’re straight and white.
This is not a new or underdiagnosed problem; in fact, it appears to be a point of pride for the new generation of literary critics and publishers alike. Penguin Random House has no problem publishing it’s demographics yearly and celebrating the slow but consistent decline in white editorial staff.
Acclaimed novelist Joyce Carol Oates had no issue tweeting that “a friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested.” And, without a hint of irony, followed up that statement with “this is heartbreaking for writers who may, in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own ‘privilege.’”
Although she is willing to recognize that young white men may be talented and barred from literary opportunities, she cannot help but equalize the statement with ludicrous notions of “privilege” where there is anything but.
None of this is especially controversial within the industry itself. By 2021, there was not a single white male millennial on the Times’s “Notable Fiction” list; the same was true in 2022, and only one appeared in each of the next two years.
Demographic transformation of American publishing is measured, publicized, and, in many quarters, celebrated. The question is not whether the literary establishment has changed, but whether its new priorities have altered the kind of literature it is capable of producing.
If the aspiring Roth or McCarthy today finds fewer editors willing to take his manuscript seriously (not because of its prose but because of the demographic profile of its author), that represents more than an injustice to individual writers. It represents a narrowing of the imaginative possibilities of American literature itself.
Beyond the disparities in race among novelists and literary agents lies the much more pervasive racial disparity in short-form magazines where fiction writers can build a portfolio. These magazines brazenly cater to just about every favored identity group imaginable.
They offer fee-free submissions for minority groups; they have exclusive windows to segregate who may submit; and they champion these groups as combating historical over-representation from white men. This, of course, can only go on so long before these identity groups, themselves, become the over-represented ones.
The most commonly offered explanation for this obvious discrimination against white men is that publishing is simply “correcting historical imbalances.” An industry that once professed indifference to the identity of the author increasingly treats identity as a meaningful criterion in and of itself.
Literary merit is now expected to coexist with representational goals, institutional diversity targets, and a moral vocabulary inherited from Marxist cultural theory. The result is a publishing culture that increasingly evaluates fiction not as art but rather as an instrument of social justice.
What does this mean for us? What does this mean for the West?
Many conservatives are quick to dismiss fiction and literary pursuits as lowbrow or frivolous. These shortsighted people tell us that stories are just something for children or young adults to read for pleasure and do not have the same impact on our culture that as other pursuits. It is not uncommon for even the most bookish of Republicans to view the whole question with disdain, but that attitude ignores several key truths.
First, novels are among civilization’s most powerful instruments of cultural transmission. Long before a people codifies its values in law, it embodies them in myth, folklore, drama, and fiction. A society’s fiction reveals what it admires, what it fears, what it finds amusing, what it regards as sacred, and what it believes worthy of preservation.
While conservatives buried themselves in historical reports, manifestos, and memoirs, those on the left gleefully captured the hearts and imaginations of the American people. Novels serve as basis for movies and television series; they inspire people to act; they are quoted and cited ad nauseum in debate and discussion.
The right wing has been all too happy to concede this ground to a political class eager to deconstruct and destroy the West.
The right has ceded the literary world under the mistaken assumption that novels are luxuries while politics is reality. In truth, politics follows culture, and culture is transmitted through stories. Before a people votes together, it imagines together. The abolitionist movement had Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Progressivism had The Jungle. Anti-totalitarian liberalism had 1984 and Animal Farm.
The disappearance of young male authors is not just another sign of a decline in literacy, or another case of DEI taken too far; it is the drying up of the fertile ground in America from which all ideas spread.
If conservatives wish to preserve Western civilization, they cannot content themselves with competing in elections while abandoning those institutions that shape imagination. They will need publishers, journals, literary prizes, patrons, critics, and, above all, novelists.
Politics may determine who governs a nation. Stories determine what kind of nation we’ll have.
Who reads the New Yorker?
My nephew is a published author. Does very well.
He publishes under a female name and just flat lied to his publisher about his ethnicity and origin. His wife talks with the agent.
At a convention for fans and authors in July, I met a lot of young male authors. I know this is anecdotal, but LitRPG seems to be doing fine!
Same people that read books by fags, Karens, and subversive foreigners.
It really doesn’t matter. We have entered a post-literate world, and it’s just going to get worse.
Effete, pseudo-intellectual snobs, hipsters, and Karens.
Did you read the whole article?
Because you embody what the article criticizes:
The right wing has been all too happy to concede this ground to a political class eager to deconstruct and destroy the West. The right has ceded the literary world under the mistaken assumption that novels are luxuries while politics is reality. In truth, politics follows culture, and culture is transmitted through stories.
I went to our local library last week and I was looking the the shelf with the bestsellers. I swear 90% of the authors were women.
Publishers who are worthless but have also always been worthless.
Mem are publishing and reading independently.
Blacks hire blacks.
Indians hire Indians.
Homosexuals hire homosexuals.
Women hire women.
White men hire the most qualified person — which is sometimes a woman, an Indian, a homosexual, or black.
Over time, all the people in power are the type of person who do not hire white men.
I left out: most book editors are women. And they don’t publish books by men.
This is perfectly true and has been for some time. I have a personal friend who couldn't even get his manuscripts read by editors until he adopted a female nom de plume. If you can't get past that first hurdle you're out of the race before it begins.
Relying on self-publishing is definitely back-of-the-bus status because it's publishing without publicity unless the author is wealthy enough to afford that for himself. There are paid reviewers - Kirkus, for one - but that's not going to reach the audience a sympathetic review in the NYT does. So yes, this is open racial and sexual discrimination and absolutely everyone in the industry knows it.
Me. Just went through three back issues one my morning flight.
How true.
Why bother writing when you ramble incoherently on YouTube (or X).
Men have to strike out and do their own thing. Go around the idiots.
Most Males no longer read, unfortunately
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