Men read novels too

When I purchase Playboy, I read the articles, and that is how I learned that Anthony Jeselnik runs a book club with the aim of persuading men—that is, males—to read novels. The American comedian reads a lot of them – he claims to read about a hundred a year, well done – and wants to challenge the traditional male view of reading; one doesn’t read to absorb facts (a bit like the joke about Chuck Norris staring at a book until he gets all the information he needs), but rather to enjoy a pleasure for its own sake.

Since stand-up comedians are now the last people to be taken seriously, Jeselnik has made it a point of honour to bring men back to fiction – that is, the type of reading most associated with women, according to market data, and the most pointless, according to the most common cliché used by those who cannot be bothered to read. The novel, which contains imaginary events, is in itself a waste of time, to which the reader must willingly surrender in full awareness.

Men are more reluctant, and Jeselnik goes to great lengths to emphasise three fundamental points: firstly, whilst the events recounted in the novel may be fictional, the emotions one feels whilst reading it are real; secondly, a novel should not be read with the intention of understanding everything it contains because, as a reflection of life – which is largely incomprehensible – it must retain some areas of mystery; thirdly, just as real encounters and events largely end up being forgotten without us for that reason giving up on experiencing them, novels should be read with the spirit of someone who immerses themselves in the moment of reading, not of someone who wonders what will remain of it.

It is unclear whether Jeselnik has a background in phenomenology, but he would certainly deserve one: in three steps, he demonstrates how reading a novel is not a waste of time, since reading a novel is, in itself, time. The fact is – and he finds this bitter – that the most frequent question asked by club members when he suggests a book is: ‘How long is it?’. It is pointless: when men talk amongst themselves – and this is perhaps why the article appeared in Playboy – the conversation always ends up revolving around size.