Why Your Wife is Reading a Novel and You Aren't

Do you read novels?

Would it surprise you to learn the odds are overwhelming that you answered “yes” to this question if you are a woman and “no” to the question if you are a man? It’s said that 85% of the readers of novels today are women. I’ve been puzzling over why this might be true.

First off, I’m not ashamed to admit I have a feminine side and will confess to reading novels. I just finished one called Empire Falls by Richard Russo. It won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, so I knew going in that there was a darn good chance it would be a worthwhile read. And it is – it’s funny and sad and richly textured and Russo has not just created a few characters the reader cares about but a whole small town you care about. This novel, by the way, was made into a miniseries by HBO (which I have not seen yet) with an all-star cast including Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Ed Harris, Helen Hunt, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, etc, etc. Presumably, these men all read the novel, making me feel pretty good about my peer group in the 15%.

But here’s the thing. As I was reading Empire Falls I grew restless at times. I silently shouted (and if you haven’t tried silently shouting, I recommend it) “Quit beating around the bush and tell me what happens!” I still had 200 pages to go and was ready to know how it all was going to come out. It’s the immature male short-attention-span curse that comes from a lifetime of watching movies that resolve themselves in two hours, or better yet TV shows that take 30 minutes to do it. I blame Larry David, of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld fame. He has the most remarkable comic gift of creating layered stories and characters that all wind up colliding in the last two minutes of a half-hour long show. If Larry David can make all this happen to my delight and glee in half an hour, why give Richard Russo 483 pages to do the same thing? My guess is it takes the average person something close to 16 or 17 hours to read 480 pages, and that’s a guess based on nothing but my gut instinct that people read about 30 pages in an hour. Maybe I’m way off. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume I’m right. I just don’t think most men have the patience to keep going with something that takes that long to resolve itself. I mean a movie has to be monumental for us to even allow it to run much over 2 hours long – okay, we say, since it’s The Godfather or Schindler’s List we’ll allow it, but not for normal movies. We’ll allow two to three hours for once-in-a-lifetime blockbuster epics. But 16 hours for a book that’s not even about real people? No way.

That’s not to say men aren’t readers. Who do you think buys all those "14 Steps to Being a Better Leader" books that are out there? Men gravitate to numbered lists, results, “how-to’s,” and quick gratification. My hunch is women, on the other hand, don’t feel the need to be in a hurry. My guess is that when a woman finds a book she loves, she doesn’t want it to end, because she’s enjoying the writing so much. By the time the book finishes there’s a little period of mourning that has to take place before she can give her heart to whatever’s next on her shelf.

On top of that, I don’t think men want to willingly give themselves over to the ambiguous moral universes novelists create inside their books. We like the reality of the universe we live in (which may or may not be ambiguous, depending on the inclinations of any particular man). It’s hard enough for most of us to get through a day in one piece without throwing too many imaginary and creative worlds our way. So we go for non-fiction, while women while away the hours reading lavish stories set in far-away places filled with interesting characters. Sorry guys, but I think women are getting the better end of the deal.

Or maybe I’m out to lunch on this one. Let me know.