Warren St. John notes a trend in literature:
Young men, long written off by publishers as simply uninterested in reading, are driving sales of a growing genre of books like Mr. Max's that combine a fraternity house-style celebration of masculinity with a mocking attitude toward social convention, traditional male roles and aspirations of power and authority.
With titles like "Real Ultimate Power," a satirical ode to the masculine prowess of ninjas; "The Modern Drunkard," a paean to getting hammered; and "The Game," a manual for manipulating and bedding women, they collectively represent the once-elusive male counterpart to so-called chick lit, and so perhaps deserve a cheesy epithet of their own. How about: fratire.
Fratire? Damn, we should have thought of that one.
The Modern Drunkard credits the 'net with helping to change the game:
Frank Kelly Rich, the 42-year-old editor of Modern Drunkard magazine and the author of the book "The Modern Drunkard," said that it took the Web to help fratire get around the hang-ups of mainstream publishing houses that professed to be searching for the male equivalent of chick lit, but which were frightened when they actually saw what it looked like.
"The publishing houses filtered out anything politically incorrect or offensive," he said. "It took the Internet to show them what was popular and now they're going after it. Before that, they would just guess."
No comments:
Post a Comment