Just as there are certain social and developmental proclivities that distinguish men and women generally, there are some subtle differences between male and female authors. Unless you’re a tediously strict social constructivist who doesn’t believe in such diversity, you would largely agree that no man could realistically have written Beloved, or A Room of One’s Own, or The Handmaid’s Tale, and that, by contrast, there are certain preoccupations, attitudes, and energies men can bring to literature.

Sadly, through a mixture of the publishing industry being risk averse, the threshold for offence and wounded sensibilities and problematic content being so low, the domination, numerically, of women in all facets of the publishing industry, and a correlating ambivalence toward the kinds of sharp prose of a previous generation of male authors, there is a massive deficit of compelling and exciting male voices in literature. This year’s Booker prize nominees were all talented and worthy, but the books themselves weren’t exactly punching into the mainstream or capturing the public imagination.

It’s a little hard to pin down the exact percentages in the publishing world, but one global survey found 60 per cent of literary agents to be female, while another survey, in the American publishing industry, found that 78 per cent of publishing staff overall were female, including 60 per cent at the executive or board level. According to figures from the Bookseller, 629 of the 1,000 bestselling fiction titles from 2020 were written by women. the paths to success are narrower now for men, because there are fewer prizes open to them, fewer magazines that will cover male authors, and fewer media figures willing to champion them. In March last year, Vintage, one of the UK’s largest literary fiction divisions, announced the five debut novelists it would be championing: all women. Over the past five years, the Observer’s annual debut novelist feature has showcased 44 writers, 33 of whom were female. Last year, men were largely missing among the names of nominees for the Costa first novel award. The Rathbones prize featured only one man on a shortlist of eight. The Dylan Thomas prize shortlist found room for one man.

There is clearly a female hegemony emerging in the publishing world which threatens to make fiction stale and predictable, as well as alienating potential young male readers.

This is a terrible shame, because male authors simply bring things to literature that women don’t, and it’s okay to say so and acknowledge what’s gone missing over the last decade.

One thing male authors can do, and which is missing, is to capture the zeitgeist – that is, the ability of certain authors, and their works, to burst into the wider public consciousness with books that are daring, provocative, capture the moment, are ruthlessly satirical, or visceral, or intensely hip, or all of those things at once, and become sensations or cultural touchstones. These authors are cool in the way that indie musical acts are cool.

Irvine Welsh’s 1993 Trainspotting was, in its moral challenges, a spectacular novel debut written in the voice of a junkie intellectual, Mark Renton, whose struggle against heroin addiction and social deprivation brings competing notions of choice and compulsion into stark relief. The book was a sensation and incredibly hip in the culture.

For most of 2005, Jonathan Safran Foer was the literary world’s hottest star with his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. The September 11th narrative, in the voice of 9-year-old Oskar, captured the media’s imagination and featured many form expanding innovations. The book was delightful, punctured through to the mainstream, and was extremely moving.

In the late nineties, there was almost nothing more hip, stylish, satirical, and compelling than Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, which was a smash hit among all demographics, and was brought to the screen in an equally successful zeitgeist-capturing film. It explored masculinity, fascist instincts, consumerism, and alienation in stylish, witty prose.

With the publication of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers made his entrance into the American literary landscape. It was a rich, fascinating memoir that helped create a literary aesthetic for a whole cadre of young American writers.

Michel Houellebecq produced Atomized in 1998. It had an immediate impact, and became a bestseller for its often exhilarating way of moving from particular scenes to loftier views of the human condition, mingling compassion and scorn for individuals caught in the toils of their historical moment.

Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho captured the zeitgeist of 80s consumerism and yuppies in a blood-soaked satire. Patrick Bateman, corporate Raider and sometimes serial killer, guides us through the upscale Dante-esque Manhattan that comprises the novel’s milieu.

Secondly, men are better at exploring the territory of dystopian fiction, full of portents about technology, science, medicine, societal breakdown, the threats of autocracy, and failed ethics.

1984 was exquisite in its purity – a perfectly depicted totalitarianism, down to the erasure of the orgasm and room 101, and the expression 2 + 2 = 5

J.G Ballard’s Crash had a huge impact on other authors of his generation. The work attempted to understand modern society’s exhilarating and often destructive relationship with technology.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go explored medical ethics, cloning, and technology in a shocking almost terrifying way with clones designed to be hosts who could produce organs for donations to regular society. The novel explores, in a clinical and methodical way, the potential depravity and unconscionable world that could arise in a morally decrepit future.

This brings us to the last way in which male authors are slightly unique, and a mode of writing that is sorely lacking in contemporary literary culture: the male ability to combine depravity with the high literary

Nabokov’s masterpiece, Lolita, is the work of a high-souled genius, taking sordid material and depravity and writing it in a way that is unquestionably brilliant, witty, and of the highest literary style, and yet accessible to a large audience. It caused a sensation and resonates still today.

Thomas Harris’ Silence of the Lambs chilled and enthralled readers with a depiction of a psychopath who was urbane, intelligent, ironical, suave, and unsettlingly compelling.

Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece, The Road, combined some of the highest literary prose ever written with some of the most visceral and unsparing depictions of depravity, viciousness, and debased humanity ever written.

Men and women bring different proclivities and attitudes and interests to their writing, which is good. But the current generation of male writers, whilst capable of astonishing prose, and with compelling stories to tell, are missing some essential elements that make novels so appealing to mainstream audiences and cause a sensation with their daring, ability to capture the zeitgeist, and willingness to confront the darker, depraved compulsions of individuals and the potential, or very real decay of ethics and egalitarianism of society.

These voices are missing. And they’re needed.