What novels aimed at men are really about 

Men in men's adventure are often loners. It's probably a nice alt-reality for a married man with six kids.

I was thinking about this again this weekend and realized that in part my interest in competent male characters is because my father and grandfather seemed to be able to do so many things, teach themselves to do so many things, pretty well. Excellent use of Star Wars characters to demonstrate your point.

I think the appeal is not so much the job that the main character has, as much as the _mission_ that the job propels him into. The Continental Op, for instance, has a job, but the interest steps up when he has one particular puzzling case. Doc Savage and The Shadow have no real jobs, but the adventure comes when Doc Savage tracks down a weird menace, or The Shadow seeks to thwart a series of crimes.

As you were talking, Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon popped into my mind. It's the end where he tells Brigid that he can't let her go free; he has to turn her in for the murder of his partner. He says: "When a man's partner's killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him, he was your partner, and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's - it's bad business to let the killer get away with it. Bad all around. Bad for every detective everywhere." " I'll have some rotten nights after I've sent you over, but that will pass. If all I've said doesn't mean anything to you, then forget it and we'll make it just this: I won't because all of me wants to, regardless of consequences, and because you counted on that with me the same as you counted on that with all the others." From John Huston's screenplay for The Maltese Falcon.

I've been reading the Joe Pickett series for June on the Range and one of my favorite parts of the books is that the lead male is NOT competent, at all. He's smart, and determined, but he's constantly bested in sometimes the dumbest of ways. I love it. 😁

I believe much of it's about problem solving either through action or smarts. But I still maintain,overall, that women write better mysteries.

I think you’re right. I’ve always thought men attach who they are to their jobs rather than just working to earn a living.

_Day of the Jackal_ Both the Jackal and Commissioner Lebel.

Well thought out and described. I think you've snagged exactly what makes men's series, in particular, popular.

Am i only woman who prefers these kinds of books?! 😅 I hope I'm not. Honestly speaking, i never been drawn to written-for-females books. Maybe it's because i grew up in the male-dominated space (my family mostly makes up of men so my dad raised me as a "son" and i went to school where the majority of students were males). I've also noticed men are often attracted to the topic of honor, politics and competency. That's one of main reasons why do "Epic Fantasy" has more male readers than female readers. As compared to romance fantasy which has mainly female readers. My dad hardly has time for reading but he read various books by Stephen King, Tad Williams, John Gwynne and George R. R. Martin. I once introduced him to Shogun (tv series adaption) and he immediately loved it. I gave him the novel version of Shogun and he began to read it right away. I asked him why he loved it. He told me that he enjoys exploring cultural nunaces of political complexity in Japanese Culture and also the way "Samurai" blends into it in a hostile way.

I wish I could credit who originally made this comparison, but I just don't remember who said it... Jack Reacher is a modern-day version of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, going place-to-place righting things that his personal value-system sees as wrong. Once that was pointed out to me, I understood why Reacher "clicked" with so many people and it grabbed my interest as well.

Many years ago, I worked in a used bookshop and we were absolutely drowning in Wilbur Smith novels. When we discovered that we had a wee mouse in the shop, we christened it Wilbur.

CriminOLLY is not like a regular dad, he’s a cool dad. Happy Father’s Day!

Really interesting topic! I think your analysis is spot on.

Very thoughtful. CO. 😊

When I was a kid, almost the only thing I ever saw men reading were Westerns. My dad read them, my uncle read them, their friends read them, they were always trading them around with each other. I've still got piles of westerns in my house with my dad's and uncle's initials both in 'em, indicating that they'd read it. The "men's adventure" genre -- Executioner books, etc. -- I never saw "men" reading. It was always high school kids, like me. Now that I'm older I still read tons of that stuff, but I seldom saw men reading them back in the day. The only exception was Nick Carter -- I got my dad reading those, and he liked those a good bit.

In Louis L'Amour's Showdown Trail, talking about the wild country they are going through, one of the characters, when asked about the country they were going through retorts "Like it? I love it! This is a man's country!"

Interesting thoughts!

This is so interesting! The first 5 people I thought of that I know personally who love the Jack Reacher books are all heterosexual females - lol. They're just well written, fun to read books!!

That's really interesting. I read more literary than anything, but … hmm. Okay, my favorite book of all time is Desert Solitaire, by Ed Abbey. Ed Abbey definitely represents hyper-masculine writing. Desert Solitaire is a non-fiction musing of his time as a park ranger in Arches National Park and his thoughts on the environment, humanity, and more. His occupation is indeed a prominent part of the narrative, though it's kind of beside the point.

Happy Father’s Day oivle it must getting presents and books , I ready THERAPY with Sebastian fitzek his character that helps but also struggles. Any thank you for update

Male hero fiction is only about competence imo

Thanks for a very interesting video. I think you are broadly right. As an aside, have you ever thought about why so few men (especially younger men) seem to read books these days? Maybe a subject for a video? When I was growing up in the UK in the 70s, men of all sorts read a lot more books - think of those Demond Bagley, Alistair Maclean, Sven Hassel, Leo Kessler, Richard Allen and other books of this era, which were quite big sellers. I do not think the decline in male reading is entirely attributable to phone use, as it began about 20 years back.

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I dunno, I've never pondered this in depth look into characters, especially Star Wars characters. That franchise lost me after Empire Strikes Back 🤭

I think you're on to something with those archetypes. A reverse example might be in satire because it often exposes that men climb in status through deceptive/sham displays of competence and virtue. Gogol's Dead Souls is a classic example of a fraudulent social climber who is also quite banal.

I personally don't think in terms of gender when it comes to what I read. Don't get me wrong, I think it's important for writers and people who are much smarter than me to analyze the effects of gender when writing/dissecting books, I leave all that to them and will listen to their professional opinions and then think about what all that means to me. I generally don't read books that are marketed towards woman, I usually find them shallow or about things that don't matter to me personally at all. I don't care for romance at all either, a lot of those are read by women as well. I don't know what that says about me or women in general but maybe one of those fancy people I talked about up top can tell me lol. So do I think thinking about gender in literature is important? Yes. Does it affect what I'm going to read? Probably not.

Not gonna lie - "aimed at men" sounds a little sexist. Reminds me of a used bookstore I went to once - to pick up a copy of "The Road" - and the owner wouldn't let me look in the "men's section." He kept directing me to the "women's section," which was literally nothing but romance. (No shade to romance novels, it's just not my thing.)