87 upvotes, 7 direct replies (showing 7)
View submission: Where Is All the Sad Boy Literature?
But, has there *ever* been an era of sad boy literature? You cite Holden Caulfield but, aside from that, historically, male authors write about adventure, espionage, war. And there’s a whole category of brilliantly written “sad middle aged man” literature. Great literature about men facing the idea of what their life has become and if it’s worth it. James Joyce’s “The Dead” being one of the most moving and profound.
But, honestly, can media stop using female points of perspective to decide it is a deficit in the male world? I mean do men NEED sad boy literature? Maybe they don’t.
Comment by theoutlet at 21/02/2025 at 22:07 UTC*
44 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The Perks of Being a Wallflower was pretty iconic for my generation and it had a great effect on me. I don’t think I’ve read a protagonist that I related to more and it felt pretty good to be seen like that
Comment by robust-small-cactus at 21/02/2025 at 21:53 UTC
56 upvotes, 0 direct replies
can media stop using female points of perspective to decide it is a deficit in the male world?
Admittedly I was pleasantly surprised reading the article in that it was a lot more nuanced than the usual surface-level thought pieces around this, but I still agree with you. Fundamentally it's yet another rehash of an alarmist thinkpiece "it's bad that men don't express themselves in the way *I'm* used to".
Like I dunno, have you tried *asking men* if they'd enjoy reading such a story before deciding the lack of them was a problem?
We don't all have to find meaning and share our journeys in the same way and spaces.
Comment by supernatasha at 21/02/2025 at 23:17 UTC
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I think John Greens heyday was probably sad boy literature (even those were mostly aimed at girls though?). The death of the manic pixie dream girl trope may have killed the genre.
Comment by lookmeat at 21/02/2025 at 22:22 UTC
23 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I think you are hitting the head on the nail. Sad boy literature generally works on a context of adventure. Harry Potter has a few books where he's just moping and being an insuferable teenager dealing with large traumas and insane levels of pressure. Bridge to Terabithia is a very depressing story about a boy who struggles to make friends, finally finds someone to connect with and form a deep bond, and then have them die, leaving him alone again to process grief from a tragedy that would bring even an adult to his knees all on his own.
And we don't need the boy to be the protagonist, which opens us up to The Fault in Our Stars. Also we can get a protagonist that isn't the main character, giving us Thirteen Reasons Why (I don't like the mechanism it uses, but it's the story of a teenage boy understanding the challenges of girls through the loss of his crush to suicide, which he didn't before, I think it fits). And there's also The Perks of Being a Wallflower,
And then we look at men in a wider view than just "white cis men". Take "The Wilted Black Rose" a book about a young man who is dealing with inherited trauma, the complexity of the expectations he has on him as a Black Man. And yeah race is a big part of it, but also there's things that wouldn't apply to black woman. It's a story that sees both issues, and while the intersection and complexity of those issues matter, it also has things that a white man could identify with. It becomes interesting that we tend to erase the priviledged aspect of an identity. A story about a black man is only about blackness in our mind, a story about a gay man is only about the challenges of being gay. But a lot of times in these novels you see that there's the whole complexity and layers in there too, and something to connect, even if you don't fit the situation of the character fully. The point is you can connect. There's a lot of great novels where the protagonist is a black man, but I connected heavily with the challenges of being a Man presented in this book, even as I also gained insight into the plight of race in the US.
Comment by forestpunk at 22/02/2025 at 08:37 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Probably some of the modernists/early postmodernists like Don DeLillo. But I feel like, in retrospect, they're just mocked unmercifully as "aww, poor sad white man thinks he has problems."
Comment by BurntToost at 22/02/2025 at 05:23 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
No Longer Human is definitely in the category of Sad Boy Fiction, though its from the 1940s, I believe
Comment by [deleted] at 21/02/2025 at 23:43 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
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