02/26/2026
Agreed. Everyone can benefit losing themselves in a character's world. It has been studied and found to reduce stress, muscle tension and heart rate.
Literature is often pushed on allegedly reluctant men as a machine for empathy. Jeremy Gordon reads it for a different reason. (From 2025) https://theatln.tc/WN79TnWT
The factoid claiming that men account for only 20 percent of the North American fiction market—an alarming number that invites all sorts of unchecked speculation—is probably overblown. But there is some proof that women consume fiction at a higher rate than men, Gordon writes.
“Arguments about why one should read tend to emphasize some positive outcome, as though a book is a public good and you are its beneficiary,” Gordon writes. “But as someone who belongs strongly in that fifth (or perhaps much more) of the male population that reads fiction, I can say that I’m usually not thinking about what I stand to learn. Rather, I’m aware of what is happening to me right now—and that affirmative thrill is the reason I can’t seem to stop accumulating new books to read.”
So many books (thrillers about burly ex-military cops, literary novels with creepy narrators) “are more interesting precisely because their protagonists are nearly impossible to identify with,” Gordon continues. Following these characters’ perceptions “is not empathy, per se, but an escape from my own consciousness and surroundings.”
“A real demographic of men is besieged, every day, by a corner of the media universe—the so-called manosphere—that dictates where they should be spending their attention,” Gordon writes. “Men should strive to stand out, they often say. They should broadcast their opinions, judge other people, stand up for their gender—as though investing a single man with enough authority could fix everything.”
But literature “allows me to occupy a place that is totally for myself, and unaccountable to other people’s expectations,” Gordon continues. “Instead of feeling squeezed by my earthly existence and my own bodily limits, I leap into other minds and perspectives—not just those of men, but also those of women and nonhumans—and consider those expectations. I am reminded that everyone is unexceptional and everyone is exceptional. Facts can sometimes tell us this about humanity, but fiction does this best of all.”
🎨: The Atlantic. Source: FPG / Archive Photos / Getty.
