Why Men Should Read Fiction

Vox Day did a very good job, over at Sigma Game, lately explaining why (American/Western) men don’t read much these days. Few real men want anything to do with loony witches, fembots, and caustic blue-haired harpies. Yet those types, along with some other usual suspects, constitute the majority of Western book authors, publishers, distributors, buyers, editors, gatekeepers, and agents. If one reads Vox’s article, then one will gain a decent understanding of the astroturfing of what passes, at least in the eyes of too many postmodern women, for best-selling literature. Add to this tragedy the decline of general intelligence, burgeoning post-literacy or illiteracy, and the shunning of men from traditional male ideas, systems, endeavors, and spaces, and one has a recipe for a rolling disaster. 

Patrick Lawrence wrote the other day about part of that unfolding disaster as it pertains to the peculiar case of Yankee Attorney General Pam Blondie’s circus sideshow release of files regarding the criminal activities of dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. If one has just arrived from another galaxy, then know that Epstein was the poster boy for an international child sex trafficking ring and likely intel asset. Evidently, the only good thing the man ever did was die. Blondie hyped her file release, then crawfished when the event underwhelmed. She now claims she has better information and will release it once certain redactions are made. Lawrence honed right in on one given reason for some of the redactions: “national security”. 

Let us consider: What issues of “national security” would require redaction in regard to a deceased sex-trafficker or his underage victims, unless our government or close allies had been involved in said sex-trafficking ring?

The Yankee empire, its agents, friends, and allies, have a long and wicked history of involvement in related matters. Way back in 2019, I wrote a few bits about the quiet release of another batch of previously classified data, the FBI’s “Finders Files”. Those files concerned a series of 1980s cases of child sexual abuse at daycare centers that became popularly known as the “Satanic Panic”. After the children’s allegations were “investigated”, we were informed the kids made it all up, nothing happened, and don’t you dare suspect anything similar going forward. Thirty years later, we learned that everything the kids said was true, the government knew about it at the time, and there was a cover-up. A few august members of the retarderati responded to my articles by telling me I was a fool for rehashing long-debunked cOnSpIrAcY ThEoRiEs. And, yes, I had linked to the same set of files back then in the articles, but again, the not reading angle. 

What does any of this have to do with fiction? Well, I included the Finders and a fictional version of Epstein, the notorious Geoffrey Steinberg, in my 2019 novel, The Substitute (2023 revision from Green Altar Books). Oddly enough, when he found out I was writing my first major work of fiction, the late, great Thomas Moore said, “That’s great, and you should! Just remember, though, that half the people are illiterate and the other half don’t read.” He was, of course, being jovial, though as we know he was onto something. Those who have read my book enjoyed a narrative telling of the foregoing criminal atrocities and more as seen through the eyes of a former CIA killer. In chapter sixteen, page 191, Tom Ironsides even warns a young FBI agent specifically about the Finders. Agent Pennington was at Tom’s house after the hero inadvertently busted up an Epstein-esque operation within the public school system(s). On the next page, Tom’s former employer thanks him for his help while promising the DOJ will relieve him of the burden of testifying out of deference to … national security. And Tom knows what Lawrence suspects: there is always Yankee government involvement in such filth.

By the way, I noted a long history of such evil. This involvement is as old as, in fact, older than America itself. If one has access to that newfangled internet thing, then please search for the strange case of all the little skeletons found under Benjamin Franklin’s old house on the apply-named Craven Street in London. Yeah.

One beauty of writing fiction is that the author can provide satisfaction for certain unpleasant matters in ways simply impossible for the average man to affect in real life. For instance, in chapter twenty-one of The Substitute, in the subsection “Justice Delivered,” Tom learns that Mr. Steinberg, his tropical island liar, and several dastardly associates are eliminated one evening by a massive thermobaric explosion. (Secret reveal: the blast is caused by a drone cargo 747 loaded with the mythical “C-12” ultra-high explosive [a non-RDX, post-nitroamine agent]. Why? Because.) As a bonus, the reader also witnesses Tom’s fond memories from the time it was his honor to assassinate a chief associate of Steinberg in Sicily. That extrajudicial hit, by the way, will be explicated in my forthcoming novella AURELIUS. 

Remember, all men and women, that fiction has the stirring ability to connect the reader to assorted subjects by creating a personal link between those subjects and the reader’s thoughts and emotions—a powerful and sometimes fun force. 

In conclusion, I recommend a few random novels for the esteemed consideration of my readers here. First, there’s the self-serving mention, again, of The Substitute. Then there’s Counterparts by the late Gonzalo Lira. Next, we have The Ways of the Dead by Neely Tucker. After that, I am currently enjoying the heck out of The Lightkeeper by Sherry Shenoda, a fantastic Christian fictional tale possessed of a keen and unusual literary quality. Finally, and again of self-serving interest, there’s the soon-to-be-published Judging Athena, Christian fiction unlike any other and utterly unlike my ordinary fare.

(Green Altar Books, forthcoming.)

Athena is an exposition and championing of the beauty of marriage and the salvation-fostering benefits thereof. Believe it or not, even though it’s my work, there’s zero cursing, lust, or jaded polemics in it. There is a modicum of turbulent action, partly of a nature related to those instances noted above. However, when those very few scenes come along, they will be welcomed by the reader, and they unfold, divinely inspired, in a different direction than my usual compulsion. The love story itself, as compelling as it is innocent, is a superb singularity. Soon, my friends.

Deo vindice.