Is there room for male desire in literary fiction?
What does that even mean, really?
I listed to Ross Barkan on Vox’s “Today, Explained” podcast, and something he said really stuck out to me:
Could Tony [Tulathimutte] have written a straight male fantasy of wanting to subdue a woman the way that character wants to subdue men?1 Tony himself is straight. It was an interesting choice there to inhabit a gay character. Nothing wrong with that. Writers should write about whatever sexuality. I don't believe in limiting anyone in that way. But I thought it was a choice, right? Because straight male lust is very disconcerting. It's not easy to write about. What do men think about? The novel isn't really, the modern novel, the current novel in my view, and this is an argument someone can push back, is not addressing that enough. The nasty, nasty men. The men who are not, maybe they're good at heart, but they have a lot of bad thoughts. And they take bad actions. You don't see that much in fiction today, I would argue.2
I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouth, but the way I interpret this is that he’s saying that we need more books about men who struggle to see women as people, whose desire compels them to objectify women rather than understand them, who are driven by lust to satisfy that desire without regard for the harm they cause to others or, less severely, the reputation they earn for themselves. (I’m trying to present this hypothetical character dispassionately, so don’t read judgement into this description; I think this imagined person could be a value-neutral starting point for a story.)
Perhaps Ross is correct that we don’t see this as much in contemporary fiction written by men—I would argue that this is in fact a common subject in fiction written by women (more on that later), though perhaps its framing in that context is not what Ross is after, precisely. Again, not to put words in anyone’s mouth, but I feel like what’s being asked for here is a sympathetic reading for these allegedly common traits of straight male desire, one that recognizes them as, let’s say, natural, and uses that as a jumping of point for (again, assuming a good faith intent here) a deeper exploration of the psychology at play.
With all that said, my question would be: To what end? I think there’s an implication that the allegedly disconcerting nature of male lust makes it inherently interesting from a narrative perspective. Perhaps male readers would enjoy watching a character feel and think the way they do and struggle against those feelings; perhaps they’d like to see a character act on those feelings because they themselves are unable to, either due to some sense of propriety or social pressure. This assumes, though, that lots of men really do feel that way. If what I noted in footnote 2 is any indication, perhaps he’s onto something; could this character do for literary fiction what Don Draper or Walter White did for prestige TV?3
I struggle with the implication that male desire is necessarily transgressive and thus, provocative or controversial. Perhaps disordered male desire is, and perhaps we are in an era where disordered male desire is more prevalent. But I worry that what people are looking for is the frisson of bad boy behavior rather than an honest assessment of men’s emotional state, and that this could end up validating the former at the expense of the latter. Is male desire best expressed in the “bad thoughts” of “nasty men”? Can we not conceive of a positive representation of male desire that is still narratively satisfying? Or do we grant that male desire is inherently anti-social and inexorably rooted in crass objectification and selfishness?
I agree with Ross that straight male lust can be disconcerting. But it can also be very boring. If you go back and read many of the great white male writers of the mid-century, you’ll find that a lot of their books are weighed down by an assumption that their personal sexual interests are inherently interesting. I remember being struck by the fact that only about fifty percent of William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice is about the titular character’s harrowing experiences during the Holocaust and her efforts to escape her trauma in post-war Brooklyn; the other half is an American Pie-style sex farce about Stingo trying to get laid.
Now, it’s not unentertaining, but I think it says something that Styron felt that those two very distinct stories should get roughly equal attention. I just finished John Gregory Dunne’s Vegas, which is being reissued by McNally Editions in July, and halfway through the book goes on a long, multi-chapter digression to explain how he learned to jerk off. I’m sure this stuff was really revelatory at the time—obviously, this was the first time people felt comfortable talking about this stuff publicly. And it’s pretty harmless stuff—a little crass, maybe a little sexist. And probably representative of how the typical teenage or twenty-something straight man feels about their own sexuality even today: self-centered, frustrated, awkward, embarrassed, and uncomfortably vulnerable.
Stingo’s obsession with sex leads him to objectify Sophie, just another man in a long line of men who couldn’t see past her outer beauty and into her wounded soul. Who only took interest in her because of what she might offer him in return. And he gets what he wants. But it’s forever tainted because he came to it in a way that leaves him little to be proud of. He fancies himself a hero, a good guy, but he has deluded himself. He’s not a monster, but his lust clouds his judgement and perception and subtly guides his actions. That’s interesting. But you could write that today. That’s not controversial. What would be controversial is if he did it all intentionally. If he reveled in it rather than stumbled into it.
I could argue that I’ve learned a lot about what it means to be a man from reading women authors who are better able to express and depict the effects of male desire from an external perspective than I could ever appreciate from an internal one. Laura van den Berg’s short story, “Lizards,” for example, is a haunting illustration of how one can fool themselves into thinking they are acting out of concern for someone else, when they are really just satisfying their own desire at the other person’s expense.
From my review of van den Berg’s collection, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears.
A perfectly normal, seemingly well-meaning husband is slowly seduced by the prospect of pacifying his all-too-human wife with a drugged-up seltzer drink.
“Now each time his wife simply becomes too much he offers her a can of sparkling water.”
No more nagging about the dishes, no more complaining about her job, just a sleepy, compliant woman who demands nothing from him. “He likes to think of himself as more evolved” than the crass misogynist who sells him the drink, van den Berg writes. But he doesn’t hesitate. He just convinces himself he’s doing it for her benefit.
This—a man who is corrupted by his desire but still convinced that he is a good person—is more interesting to me than a man who willingly lets his desire run amok.
Barkan’s reference to Tulathimutte‘s story reminded me of Alyssa Songseridej’s Little Rabbit, which imagines an opposite-sex relationship replete with red flags—age gap, power imbalance, sado-masochistic sex—but depicts it as a positive, practically liberating experience. It is a book about female desire, but one that presents an image of healthy, constructive male desire, too.
From my review:
What she has struggled to articulate becomes palpable; that to truly be herself, as a person and an artist, she must submit not to the expectations of others or the shame and fear that plague her, but to her own desires.
But what about male writers? Who are the men who are writing men well these days?The authors who I believe fit this bill recognize that male desire is more than just a preoccupation with sex, but with becoming a fully realized person rather than just a broad caricature of a man.
Michael Magee’s Close to Home is one of my favorite books of the last few years, an extraordinarily sensitive exploration of working class masculinity that gets to the heart of men’s struggle to be vulnerable with one another without appearing weak in a world that’s hostile to honest displays of emotion. (My review at the Washington Post).
Edward J. Delaney’s work, I think, deserves far more attention than it gets. His writing is also rooted in working class communities and his characters are often men wrestling with regret, with loss, and with their uncertain place in the world. I highly recommend his novel Follow the Sun. He has a new book coming out this July, as well, Hard Margins, which I enjoyed quite a bit.
You can read my reviews of his work here:
The Big Impossible at WBUR.org.
Follow the Sun in the Providence Journal.
Broken Irish in the Boston Globe.
Is there a place for depictions of the type of desire Barkan is looking for in fiction today? I don’t know. Perhaps we’ve read too much about it in the nonfiction section over the last decade or so to want to see much more of it in our fiction. It’s not as if we’re hurting for unrestrained male lust here in 2025, it’s just finding its outlet on podcasts and social media and in politics rather than on the page. Contemporary culture seems to want to reduce men to their basest desires and aims to cast any attempt to transcend the lizard brain as effeminate or woke or what have you; in this context, good literature will remind us that there’s more to being a man than ceding executive function to your brain stem and thoughtlessly indulging your id without concern or consideration for others.
Obviously, switching it from a same-sex relationship to a male-female relationship would change the dynamic entirely. As readers we would bring completely different expectations and preconceived ideas to the text, and rightfully so. Even Spinal Tap understood this:
Worth considering that this character was the preeminent prestige TV protagonist in the previous decade—Don Draper, Walter White.
My favorite part of Mad Men is how all the young men in Don’s orbit are desperate to emulate him, not realizing that he is an empty shell of a man who is plagued by manic depression, and end up ruining their lives to varying degrees because of it. But I’m sure a lot of viewers were seduced by Don’s meretricious charm, too.
The part in Sophie's Choice where they go to the beach or something and she's talking to him about unspeakable horrors she's suffered and he's like >:( i thought i was gonna find out what it's like to get a blow job >:( pops up in my memories like an intrusive thought
It's a deeply stupid argument, advanced by extremely dull people, in the interest of the world being a little less interesting every day. You are right to question it.