In his latest newsletter, my buddy Matt shares a link and a comment:

Men might be reading more than the “narrative” about them would suggest. But when has a narrative ever needed real statistics to survive?

This is an odd way to frame the Vox link, however, which confirms that American men (on average and at the median reader level) are reading in as low of numbers as reported. What’s called into question is (a) whether this is a decline, (b) whether this is a crisis, (c) whether it’s a crisis of men specifically in contrast to women, (d) whether it’s related to fiction reading, and (e) whether it’s related to Trump and polarization in voting patterns by gender.

In other words, men aren’t reading more than “the narrative” would suggest—granting that “the narrative” is not a person or essay we can consult. Rather, “the narrative” has framed the issue as an intensifying cultural crisis lying at the intersection of gender and politics, which may or may not be accurate. What remains uncontested is that in general American boys and men do not read books in their leisure time.