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Read this if: You're looking to dip your toes into some existentialism this weekend.  Credit: @hogarthbooks The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
 Happy July! In case you missed it: The BuzzFeed Book Club is reading The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (they/them). It's a dazzling, satirical take on toxic masculinity — and you can check out an excerpt here.
Over in the Facebook group, we'll be posting discussion threads throughout the month, following this schedule:
July 1-16: Parts 1-3 July 17-31: Parts 4-end
We asked Alex to share a little bit about how the book came to be. Here's what they had to say:
In 2015, when the idea for The Atmospherians came to me, masculinity was in the midst of a public reckoning. Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things to Me was bringing attention to the damaging effects of misogynist aggressions both micro and macro. As the #metoo movement emerged, groups like Evryman and The Mankind Project attempted to help men to get in touch with their feelings. But could these groups really fix men? Could men evolve beyond their masculine conditioning? These were the questions asked by my novel's protagonists, Sasha and Dyson, two friends deeply wounded by the men in their lives.
Over the following years, as I wrote and revised the novel, troubling masculine norms—greed, thirst for power, aggression, and violence—continued to flourish in the highest offices in the United States. Men's rights and white nationalist movements were burgeoning across the country. Were things getting better, or potentially worse? This concern bled into my novel—and into my understanding of myself as a man.
Throughout my life, I had quietly questioned my male gender identity, though I was often too scared to commit to these explorations. Over the course of writing The Atmospherians, however, I finally felt comfortable enough to explore this part of myself. I even dressed femme while drafting the book. Confronting the problems of masculine conditioning and its consequences, day in and day out in my novel, led me to confront the version of myself I presented to the world.
In 2019, as I finished the book, I came out as non-binary. For the first time in my life, I feel okay with who I am—though maintaining confidence in my identity is an ongoing effort. Writing The Atmospherians did not teach me how to be my authentic self. But it pushed me to explore in ways I didn't think possible. All this time, I worked on the book intending to salvage masculinity. Instead, I learned to look beneath my superficial self to the person I was underneath.
The Atmospherians is not the book I set out to write in 2014. Rather than attempting to save men, the novel strives to move beyond masculinity. It pushes past my former understanding of myself in search of a place of genuine curiosity, trust, and acceptance of my authentic self.
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