Tea at Trianon: The Absence of Young Male Novelists

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

The Absence of Young Male Novelists

From Chronicles:

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 overrepresentation from white men. This, of course, can only go on so long before these identity groups, themselves, become the overrepresented 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? (Read more.)