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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36049 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Another thought. Male-oriented romances do exist in droves, but they tend to be chameleons. One, it's easy to mischaracterize a male-oriented romance ("Man believes he cannot do X, woman sees man's potential and falls in love with him despite not doing X. Inspired, man does X.") as a novel about X. Second, the flipside of the open secret that females are hypergamous is that males want to sleep around, or at least be the sort of man who is able to sleep around but virtuously declines. In male-oriented romances, the protagonist will have one madonna they want to prove themselves to, and a gaggle of discreet admirers.

To give an example, Name of the Wind is secretly male Twilight.

I think male romance novels were Westerns. That's the romantic image of the male heroic lead, and the villains he has to overcome, and the woman he wins along the way.

Look at Louis L'Amour's books - some of them are what in other terms would be called family sagas. To take a snippet from a sniffy critic quoted in the Wikipedia article:

His Western fiction is strictly formulary and frequently, although not always, features the ranch romance plot where the hero and the heroine are to marry at the end once the villains have been defeated.

I think male romance novels were Westerns.

Let's test Cormac McCarthy

  • All the Pretty Horses? Check

  • The Crossing? Nope

  • Cities of the Plain? Check

  • Blood Meridian? Nopenopenope

Two out of four ain't bad, but I wouldn't say that his books are entirely full of internal monologues, undercurrents of neuroticism, and sweeping character emotions at all.

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