Men Are Reading Less Fiction. That’s A Problem. | Steven Pressfield

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I'm about to hop on a plane. I guess the car should be here in about 25 minutes. And I'm reading this novel, this bit of historical fiction. I don't want to say what it is yet because I don't know if I like it enough yet. But I do love reading historical fiction. I love it. And one of my all-time favorite writers of historical fiction, probably one of the first great bits of historical fiction I read, and I'm nothing against the Westerns that I read as a kid or whatever, was Stephen Pressfield's The Gates of Fire. In fact, I have the last page of the original manuscript signed on my wall, one of my prized possessions.

0:53Ryan Holiday: And I think I love that book because, look, there's things that we talk about, but what fiction does is it shows you, right? That book is honor and courage and shame and sacrifice, loyalty, betrayal, greatness. What it means to keep your word, what it means to fail, what it means to care about something, what it means to be committed to something, what it means to be the kind of person that other people can count on. Look, I think all of us need to watch less news, maybe even listen to fewer podcasts and read more, right? And we need to read more fiction, myself included. I'm not lecturing you, I'm lecturing myself here.

1:31Ryan Holiday: Because a good novel puts you inside of a life, puts you inside of a time, a place. It makes abstract virtues feel real. And you can show the consequences of choice. who can show struggle in a way that a lecture or a list or even one of my books never could. And I think Steven Pressfield understands this as well as just about anyone. He's one of my writing heroes, not just his novels, Gates of Fire, A Man at Arms, Tides of War, The Virtues of War. He has this great new one called The Arcadian. And these are books that I think they're really popular with the military, but with people in all walks of life because they talk about some of that old fashioned stuff.

2:08Ryan Holiday: And Steven Pressfield was out here in Texas recently and we sat down and we talked about why we should read more novels, especially young men, what fiction can teach us and why sometimes stories are a better way of carrying the truth than facts alone. He's got an incredible story. I love his nonfiction too, Turning Pro, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be, The War of Art, The Warrior Ethos. All this stuff is great. He's signed copies of many, many, many of them, which you can grab at the painted porch. Steve doesn't just talk about these things. He's lived in a fascinating life. He was in the Marines.

2:40Ryan Holiday: he's worked 21 different jobs in 11 states before he got his first novel published he got school he drove tractor trailers he worked in advertising he was a screenwriter he worked on offshore oil rigs picked fruit he's just a lovely guy one of our greats and if you haven't read him maybe start with the new one the arcadian or the classic the war of art and gates of fire you can follow him on instagram steven underscore pressfield go to stevenpressfield.com and read more. Have the meta in your life. Read more. It'll make you better.

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6:13Ryan Holiday: I was reading someone, they were talking about that young men aren't reading enough fiction, that like sort of muscular, masculine fiction used to be, you know, you have your Hemingways and you had these great sort of larger than life writers. Not only was that an aspirational occupation for people, but that the fiction was speaking to what it means to be a man, what it means to be a human being, and that that's not what it is today. Like most of the best-selling fiction writers are women and most of the fiction is written for women. I would put you up as an exception to that, but how do you think about the role of fiction in people's lives?

6:56Steven Pressfield: Well, that's really interesting. I haven't even thought about that, but it is true. You think about James Jones, you know, from here to eternity or John Irving and all the stuff that he did. And actually that sort of male writer has now really, really fallen into disrepute. It's like it's a bad thing, right?

7:13Ryan Holiday: I just reread all James Salter's novels. Do you know who that is? Yeah. A fighter pilot who leaves, he has a Russian MiG to his name. Like he leaves the Air Force to be a novelist. That's not a career trajectory so much anymore.

7:29Steven Pressfield: Yeah, it sure isn't. But I certainly think those pieces of fiction were formative for me. Yeah. I mean, now it's like male fiction is sort of like telling the story of your struggle with drug addiction or, you know what I mean?

7:45Ryan Holiday: All the novels are about young novelists living in New York City. Yeah, really.

7:50Steven Pressfield: Or they're serial killers or whatever they are, you know? Yeah. I wonder what that's about. I haven't really thought about that. I mean, I guess it's the masculinity, quote unquote, has been so, you know, whatever, deplatformed that it's almost embarrassing. It's like, for me, writing Gates of Fire and setting a story in ancient Greece with the Spartans, part of the reason I did that was so you could talk about honor with a straight face.

8:18Ryan Holiday: Yes.

8:18Steven Pressfield: If you wrote a contemporary story and some character says something, you know, well, we have to stand, you know, to get laughed out of the room, you know. But yet readers, particularly men and women, too, want that, you know. So to put it in ancient characters' mouths, that kind of dialogue, and written in sort of an archaic format, it works. Finally, you can say something like that. And then people are moved to tears, you know, and people are, you know, so.

8:47Ryan Holiday: It's like if you'd written a nonfiction book about honor, that might have sold, even if it was a big hit, it might have sold 50 ,000 copies or 100 ,000 copies. But you put it in a novel and it's sold millions of copies over it and it would have been very much of its moment. Right. Like if you'd written that nonfiction book, it would.

9:08Steven Pressfield: When did you write Gates of Fire? 1998 or six or something like that?

9:12Ryan Holiday: It would have a 90s feel. Yeah. And you read Gates of Fire because it's not just a novel, but it's a novel set in the past. It has a timelessness to it that allows it to reach not just a bigger audience, but I think, as you said, reach them in a much more earnest, emotional way.

9:31Steven Pressfield: I think it does. Or books like that. Yeah. Yeah. The idea of like when you said writing a book about honor, I mean, it's like I would even dream of it. That would be lame. Yeah, it would be. Couldn't be. Yeah.

9:43Ryan Holiday: Forget it. And there'd probably be some imposter syndrome as the author. Like, who am I? Yeah, right. Who am I to lecture you? Unless you're Jim Mattis.

9:52Steven Pressfield: He's like the only guy or, you know, McRaven or somebody like that. That's about the only people who could do it.

9:57Ryan Holiday: I mean, even in my, I don't do fiction exactly, but I try to tell stories about the ideas. Uh-huh. Yes, what you do. Because it's a way in as opposed to—

10:07Steven Pressfield: Do you ever think you will write fiction someday?

10:09Ryan Holiday: I have a novel idea. I want to tell you about it. Uh-huh. Not on camera. Not on camera. It's a weird idea. I was curious about your advice on it. But yeah, the novel as a way of teaching is obviously how we learned most lessons for all of human history. I think you miss something when that goes away.

10:28Steven Pressfield: Yeah, I think I didn't answer your question, I think, but I definitely believe fiction, not even as teaching. I think it's more than that. I mean, now, of course, we have movies like Star Wars has certainly influenced bazillion people or Harry Potter or something like that. But a novel obviously lets you get into the head of a character or multiple characters. You never could in any other medium other than maybe movies. That's what makes people really learn something, I think. Really let it sink in. Yeah. Like a legend, like a myth.

11:03Ryan Holiday: It's a character. It's a human being. Because then to carry you through the novel, it's usually like the two virtues or values or whatever it is fighting each other out. who are you rooting for? Who's going to win? What's going to happen? Where's this going to take this person? That's what the novel allows us to do.

11:20Steven Pressfield: And you get involved emotionally, right? You start rooting for somebody. Oh my God, don't let that happen. You know, that kind of thing. And that's where things sink in. Plus, I don't know, from my point of view, it's just fun. Yeah. Yeah.

11:31Ryan Holiday: I did this piece a couple of months ago where I wasn't talking about novels so much, but I was talking about some of those poems, like Longfellow's A Psalm of Life or Invictus. in the 19th century and 20th century, there were these kind of like, even muscular, masculine, like earnest poems too about like the struggle and the fight. I mean, Kipling's famous, obviously has a lot of racist poems too, but if is such a famous example of like an encapsulation, a distillation of like the values of what you want a young person to do. And like, I don't read a lot of poetry now, but if I walked to the poetry section of a bookstore, that's not what most of the poems would be about.

12:13Ryan Holiday: Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Most of them would not be for young men.

12:17Steven Pressfield: Yes. Too bad. It is. By the way, I saw, I don't know, it was on a talk show or something. It was Michael Caine.

12:24Ryan Holiday: Yes.

12:24Steven Pressfield: And he read, did you see this? Yes. When he read that If. Yes. And it was, you know, brilliant. I mean, it brought you to tears, you know?

12:32Ryan Holiday: Oh, man. I had this crazy experience. Anthony Hopkins read a couple of my books. And he would, for a while he was emailing me and I, I told him, uh, that I was reading one of these poems to my kids and he like sent me audio of him reading it. When you have a poem and then it's read by some like incredible voice. Like when you like, yeah. If by Michael Caine is crazy, there's a bunch of like really like poems you thought you got emotionally and then a really good voice. Yeah. It's amazing. And it just hits you at this whole other level. Have you had Anthony Hopkins on the podcast? No. Better get him.

13:09Ryan Holiday: I would have him on in two seconds. Yeah, I'm in his memoir. He wrote about one of the exchanges. It was great. Someone was like, you know, you're in. That can't possibly be real. But yeah, I just feel like so much modern fiction is like these kind of unlikable antiheroes. or it's like these whiny losers, you know, who are in publishing, trying to, it's like, I don't need to read any more novels about aspiring novelists cheating on their wives in New York City or whatever it is. Yeah. But there's something, I think done right, there's something earnest about the medium that's very moving. But they tend not like, yeah, you hear about these novels that win these awards and then you look at the sales and you're like sold like 6 ,000 copies you know it's not even actually speaking to a large audience not that that's always the metric of whether it works or not but like you know your F.

14:08Ryan Holiday: Scott Fitzgerald's and your Hemingway's and those they were trying to to speak

14:12Steven Pressfield: to people you know and they did I've never quite understood this phenomenon that there are certain writers and movie makers too that are like the darlings of the critics you know and you can never shake that in any way. And I don't know. I don't know what it's, it's woke in some sense. Although I'm not sure, you know, in a bad sense, you know?

14:35Ryan Holiday: There's something about like, yeah, if you read like what the New York Times, like your novel will sell more copies than most of the books reviewed in the New York Times. Most of the novels reviewed in the Times over the next three or four months, right? Because you have an audience, you've done this a long time. I hope so. Yeah. But they would never think to review this novel. Oh, yeah. No chance. And so I do think that does create some of the media backlash and some of the resentment and where it's like the things that is celebrated in the media or in the culture or the elites is not even close to matching what people want and like and know is good.

15:14Steven Pressfield: Yeah. But there has to be kind of a middle area, too, between. Sure. You know, but it's also like the when movie critics write the 12 movies you should see. Right. Yes. You never heard of any of them. Right. Yeah. Or what's nominated for Best Picture is like a bunch of movies you haven't even heard of. Yeah.

15:31Ryan Holiday: Yeah. Yeah. There's obviously there's a space for discovering great underappreciated things. But there's also something I think about the medium or the culture where the people that are writing novels are almost deliberately not trying to speak to a wide or ordinary audience.

15:53Steven Pressfield: Or the critics that are praising these things are trying to show how smart they are. Yes. That they get something that you and me don't get, you know? Yeah.

16:01Ryan Holiday: But I think generally people should read more fiction and fiction should reach a larger general audience.

16:08Steven Pressfield: Although I understand why people don't, you know. What do you mean? I think people will say, oh, it's made up. It's not real. I want something that, you know. Yeah. And, you know, it's tough to argue against that. But except made up stuff a lot of times is realer than real. It gets closer to the big truths. Yeah. When it's right, it is. Yes.

16:30Ryan Holiday: It does. And I would put in the middle category, I talk about Plutarch a lot. Like most of what Plutarch tells us is probably not true. Right where you read History of the Peloponnesian War. None of those speeches happened. You mean in Thucydides? Yes. The words of this. How do you know that? Well, because he wasn't there.

16:51Steven Pressfield: Ah, I mean, the way I heard it was that he went to great pains if he wasn't there to talk to people who were there and who were eyewitnesses.

17:00Ryan Holiday: What I mean is that there was never a recording of Paracus' funeral oration, right? So what we have is Thucydides' version of it, which I would say gets close or closer to the big T truth, even if it's not the literal recording. So what I mean is that I think also historians have taken as their job to capture literally what happened and everything has to be footnoted. And if it can't be footnoted or verified, they'll spend a lot of time trying to disprove it when really the purpose of history is actually the same purpose as literature. Do you know what I mean? Like the purpose is to capture the essence of what happened and to trans, to communicate the lesson of the event and the personality and the struggle.

17:57Ryan Holiday: I mean, you must be dealing with this with the Stockdale book, you know, every day, right? But I even think in the stories that I'm writing in the book, sometimes I know it didn't literally happen that way. Or there's this story that I tell in Right Thing Right Now. Do you know the story of Regulus, the Roman general? Yeah, who turned himself in after.

18:20Steven Pressfield: Yes. That is an amazing story, yeah.

18:23Ryan Holiday: There's not that much proof that it happened. It's a story told over and over and over again in these different ones. Because Cincinnatus is another great example. You know the story of Cincinnatus. No, no. He's the Roman general. Rome's army is basically captured or on the verge of defeat. And so there's an old Roman general named Cincinnatus, who they make dictator of Rome to save the country. And he leaves his retirement. He saves the Roman army. And he lays down his powers 17 days later and returns to his farm. And it's this myth, Cincinnatus, that Washington is referring to when he resigns his commission and then when he leaves the presidency.

19:05Ryan Holiday: So it's not like we have monuments and scrolls and documents. There's not a lot of historical evidence for Cincinnatus. But it doesn't matter because generations of Romans believed in the myth of Cincinnati to the point that it was true enough that 2 ,000 years later, Washington makes it as his model. If it wasn't true, it should have been true. Exactly. It's like if it wasn't true, you would have to invent it. So I'm telling the story as per the ancient sources. I'm telling you what the ancients believed. I'm not adding details and inventing things. You know, I'm making it real by describing, I don't know, the sea, the wind at its back.

19:49Ryan Holiday: You know, I'm coloring the story, but I'm not telling the story and then going, and by the way, this is bullshit and an idiot if you believe it, because I think the essence of that story is really important. Yeah. So I think there's nonfiction and fiction, and then there's actually kind of a fluid.

20:07Steven Pressfield: What is the thing from the man who shot Liberty Valance, the quote of if you have a choice between the fact and the legend, print the legend. Yeah. I forgot. Yeah. That was a line from the movie or was a true. Sure. Newspaperman said that. I don't know. Right. But I'm from that school, too. Yes. Print the legend. You know, it's a lot more fun.

20:28Ryan Holiday: But, yeah, the purposes of those, across those three different types, the mission is the same, which is you're supposed to teach people things about the human experience, I think, ultimately. If not, why are you doing it?

20:45Steven Pressfield: Yeah. Like Braveheart is a great example of that. You know, who knows what the actual story of William Wallace is.

20:51Ryan Holiday: Yes.

20:51Steven Pressfield: But I'll take the movie anytime.

20:53Ryan Holiday: Yes, totally. Hey there, just a heads up. I'm going to be on tour this fall. You can see me in Australia, in New Zealand, in October, in August. I'm mixing my months up here. But in August, you can see me in Chicago, in Minneapolis, in Detroit. Then I'll be on the East Coast sometime in November and December. Anyways, grab tickets to that, dailystoiclive.com. Hope to see you there.

21:47Ryan Holiday: We'll be right back. Aw, I love a story that ends well. Next up, love stories. Are they all they're cracked up to be? It feels good to worry less. It feels good to GEICO.