Don't really understand this comment, I'm looking at the latest Pulitzer and Hugo winners and seeing what sound like pretty classic masculine tropes. James is about a man who escapes from slavery, fends for himself in the wilderness, violently avenges his wife and daughter, etc. Alien Clay is about a man who rebels against an evil government, is sent to a prison camp in space, bangs his boss (a woman), starts another rebellion, etc. I haven't read these books so maybe the descriptions are misleading, but I don't feel like I'm having any trouble finding masculinity here.

On the other hand I (a man) have read Blood Meridian, and while I loved it, anyone who reads it and thinks "fuck yeah these are real men" is a psycopath. Nobody should want to be associated with those characters (or the real people that inspired them) in any way.

> people feign to wonder where the male readers have gone

I haven't heard this concern, but if this is an issue I can't really believe awards have anything to do with it. Nobody is saying "yeah I used to like books but Hugo nominees these last few years weren't to my taste, so I just stopped reading". At least in my experience the average person doesn't really care about media awards, they are mostly for industry insiders and a small subset of major enthusiasts.

> if this is an issue I can't really believe awards have anything to do with it

That wasn't what I intended to convey. They're altogether not published to the same degree they were.

> I haven't heard this concern

do a search

> I don't feel like I'm having any trouble finding masculinity here.

What were the exact words I used? They're right there. Read them again.

You're right, I guess "overly masculine" is the core of what I didn't understand. I don't know what that means, and while I can imagine someone being disappointed if they couldn't find any books with masculine characters and themes (which I think we agree are not hard to find, even among award nominees), I can't imagine someone finding those but thinking "but these aren't overly masculine, that's what I want". If you have some examples other than Cormac McCarthy books I think it would help explain the concept.

Haven't read any of those Nebula/Hugo books, but there are shifts in style and emphasis that are very indicative of the author's gender. Not at all universal, but given a thousand words of writing, I bet I could identify the author's gender at 80% accuracy.

Interiority being a huge axis here.

Very common modern disease to associate a description of something with approval of its existence

Loathing the inevitability of McCarthy to get the same posthumous treatment as Kerouac did and with those benevolent and corrective blows kill pure art just a little bit more

There really aren’t that many books with genuinely masculine men. I haven’t read the ones you brought up, but usually it’s not the specific events in the story that matter- it’s more about the overall vibe, the way the character carries himself. And a lot of the time, that’s where the sense of masculinity just doesn’t come through anymore, at least not in any way a young boy could look up to.