Adventure is Out There

My two cents' worth of contribution to the "men don't read" discourse

Norman Rockwell

Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. ~ Louis L’Amour

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered. ~ G.K. Chesterton

If you spend time in bookish circles online, you’re probably aware to some extent of the discussion in recent months around “how men don’t read” or “why men don’t read” any more. While not deeply involved in the debate, as a woman writing in a genre—Western—predominantly enjoyed by men, I have definitely kept an interested side-eye upon it.

Much of the discussion has centered on pointing out, correctly, I believe, how a publishing industry saturated with feminism and political correctness is increasingly failing to produce books appealing to a normal, sensible, red-blooded male reader; and on that particular angle of the subject “there has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said,” that I don’t have much to add there. But my thoughts on the broader topic were stirred up by what I consider the most interesting contribution to the discourse,

Kristin McTiernan

’s in-depth interview with Louis L’Amour’s son Beau L’Amour. It’s a lengthy, thought-provoking read, with insights drawn from Beau’s many years of experience in the publishing industry and as manager of his father’s literary estate.

And for me, it linked back to an interesting Twitter thread by

Frank Kidd

last month which offered a theory about L’Amour’s lasting popularity—and this sparked a whole raft of thoughts and a bunch of journal-scribbling from me on this subject of men and reading.

I’ll quote the entire thread here as one paragraph:

I think a large part of Louis L’Amour’s enduring success compared to his peers (western authors) is he was fundamentally writing a different genre. I might even make the case a lost genre—true adventure fiction. For example, one of his oft used plots is ripped straight out of the Odyssey, son goes on quest seeking long lost father. Additionally, who has written more about lost treasure and gold hunts? This is part of the reason they all contain a romance subplot. Every adventurer needs a princess to win or a damsel to save. The secret sauce [to his stories] is that they were adventure fiction wearing cowboy clothes.

Without drawing any too-simplistic or dogmatic conclusions about this being the answer to the question of L’Amour’s popularity, I think this is a fascinating take. It is certainly true that not every genre Western has those elements of quest, or hunt, or figurative dragon to slay. And it got me thinking: doesn’t this model apply to some other popular “men’s fiction” (yes, I think it’s as silly a term as “women’s fiction,” but it has fewer syllables than “fiction aimed primarily at men”) of the mid-20th century? For example, authors like Hammond Innes, Ernest K. Gann, Nevil Shute; and even some earlier spy fiction.

Take Innes’ nautical and aviation thrillers, for instance, which also usually involved a touch of the crime or spy element: they typically featured an everyman type of hero (though often highly capable in his field) on a quest of sorts—scientific, navigational, or military, or all three—pitted against the perils of the sea and sky plus human antagonists, and often featuring just a dash of romance. A modern version of the adventure story?

And what happened to that type of fiction?

I wonder whether the increase in modernity and technology didn’t play a role. Some of these fields for adventure began to shrink: fewer uncharted wilds, sailing and flying becoming more common and less dangerous, everything a bit more scientific and regulated and licensed and running in appointed channels. Could this be just one of the reasons for the rise of science fiction, and later, dystopian? Those genres allowed for the invention of imaginary frontiers, loaded with all the danger and potential for adventure that an author could dream up, or a new Wild West-like state of chaos among the ruins of collapsed societies.

If there’s at least a grain of truth in these musings, then what could it mean for present and future fiction? I can think of two main observations.

No more worlds to conquer? Perhaps Go back, young man might prove a useful slogan. How about more historical fiction “aimed primarily at men”? The annals of history hold material to inspire enough tales of adventure to keep any man reading, or writing, for all of his natural life. Why hasn’t this wealth been tapped for fiction more consistently? Well, just one possible explanation could be that the need for diving back into the past to seek adventure coincided with the rise of a progressive-minded society—and publishing industry—openly hostile to anything that doesn’t neatly fit with modern ideologies.

But I think the concept of adventure also has an implication broader than mere genre. For that, let’s hear from another Western author whose name is far less known than L’Amour’s, the fantastically underrated Eugene Manlove Rhodes:

There are circles where “adventurer” is a term of reproach, where “romance” is made synonym for a lie, and a silly lie at that. Curious! The very kernel and meaning of romance is the overcoming of difficulties or a manly constancy of striving; a strong play pushed home or defeat well borne. And it would be hard to find a man but found his own life a breathless adventure, brief and hard, with ups and downs enough, strivings through all defeats.

Put any man to talk of what he knows best—corn, coal or lumber—and hear matters throbbing with the entrancing interest born only of first-hand knowledge…Let the dullest man tell of the thing he knows at first hand, and his speech shall tingle with battle and luck and loss, purr for small comforts of cakes and ale or sound the bell note of clean mirth; his voice shall exult with pride of work, tingle and tense to speak of hard-won steeps, the burden and heat of the day and “the bright face of danger”; it shall be soft as quiet water to tell of shadows where winds loiter, of moon magic and far-off suns, friendship and fire and song.¹

Rhodes puts his finger on the very core of the appeal that adventure holds for men: its challenge. The grail to be sought and the dragon to be slain can take many forms. Is the romance of driving cattle a thousand miles through flash floods and dust storms, of laying the ties for a transcontinental railroad, of mapping an unexplored canyon, of crossing a frozen wilderness in search of gold, inherent in only those exploits and some others just as strenuous—or is it that some of us are still able to see them through the eyes of a generation that knew how to apply the prism of romance and adventure to their own labor?

This train of thought dovetailed, curiously enough, with the kernel of Ted Gioia’s recent musings on what he would do to revive the James Bond franchise:

A man achieves happiness in life by delivering on his responsibilities. You have no idea how important this one thing will be to your mental health, your sense of self-worth, your relationships, and your ability to find meaning and purpose in your life.

I’m talking about your responsibilities to your family, your colleagues, your teammates, your friends, your communities and groups, your country—and even to total strangers. (Yes, you have responsibilities to them, too.)

But above all I’m talking about your responsibility to yourself. And when I say you owe something to yourself, I mean your higher image of who you should be.

Living up to these demands is what makes a man happy. It’s also what makes him manly.

A real man goes out into the world and gets things done in order to fulfill these obligations. And this is where traditional masculine values come in—toughness, perseverance, endurance, vitality, ruggedness, and all the rest.

If you figure this out, everything else will fall into place.

Perhaps any challenge may be an adventure when rightly considered, as Chesterton put it. Perhaps the fulfilling of responsibility may be a quest. And perhaps the trick of seeing life that way is the secret to writing—and publishing—stories that speak to men’s souls.

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As I mentioned at the beginning, the debate over men and letters holds a certain interest for me as a writer. I don’t pretend to speak for men—you may have noticed how many of these musings are framed as questions—I don’t claim to be an authority on men; I am simply a fellow human being with an interest in what makes people tick, and who sincerely wants to see my fellow-man (ha!) enjoying his literary heritage.

I grew up a voracious reader who devoured all kinds of good stories without caring whether they were “girls’ books” or “boys’ books”; though I was a thoroughly feminine little girl who enjoyed the gentler girls’ classics, I also loved frontier and adventure stories and spent many vicarious hours charting the West with Lewis and Clark, rafting logs down the Mississippi, or battling the Spanish Armada—and I feel for the boys of today whose education doesn’t even give them a chance to discover those things between the pages. Since I started writing, I’ve never really written specifically with just women or men in mind. I’m sure that my fiction sometimes reveals a more feminine mindset or even style, which I think is perfectly natural; and I admit that specific stories or books of mine may hold more of an appeal to women; but the bulk of what I write—definitely my straightforward Western stories, for example—I hope and trust that both men and women will enjoy.

As an indie author, I don’t have to worry about ideological gatekeepers. My challenge is to communicate to potential readers—in this case, the predominantly male audience of the Western genre—“I think you’ll like this.” All I can do up-front is assure you that I am not the sort of woman writer who is out to “reinterpret the past through a feminist lens,” or any other deliberately colored lens, or who is unable to tell any kind of story without getting in some disparaging swipe at the male sex. Well, let this be my one and only statement of that fact. Beyond that…well, my real vocation is writing fiction, not essays; and so my fiction will have to speak for itself.

Though I have had no adventures, I feel capable of them. ~ Anna Katharine Green

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1. Stepsons of Light, 1920