Marc Tracy at the NY Times:
“Unwilling to portray themselves as victims (cringe, politically wrong), or as aggressors (toxic masculinity), unable to assume the authentic voices of others (appropriation), younger white men are no longer capable of describing the world around them,” Savage, who is 41, wrote. What they do write, he added, avoids “grappling directly with the complicated nature of their own experience in contemporary America.”
Savage’s essay has attracted both derision and amens in newspapers and journals, on social media and Substacks, over drinks and in group chats. “I think the nerve I hit is fairly obvious,” Savage said in an interview, adding, “being able to put numbers behind it was cathartic to some people and triggering to others.” Humming underneath the disputation is a less tangible but more significant question. Let us say the perspective of the straight white man is being dampened in the world of literary fiction. Should we care?
more here.
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