One of the marks of a good book is that it makes you reconsider similar but superior books—makes you remember why they mattered to you when you first read them, and why (or if, or how) they continue to matter now. Such is the case with Steven Gillis’s recently published first novel, Walter Falls (2003), which reminds me in particular of two similar but superior first novels: Frederick Exley’s A Fan’s Notes (1968) and David Gates’s Jernigan (1991).[1] I don’t mean this as an insult—Mr. Gillis’s novel has much to offer us, and one of the things it has to offer us, one of the things for which we should be grateful, is that it gives us the opportunity not only to evaluate his book and to reevaluate Exley’s and Gates’s, but also to examine the worth of the subgenre in which all three reside, that confounding strain in contemporary American literature that I’ll call the Smart-but-Self-Destructive-White-American-Middle-Class-Male-in-Crisis novel.

It’s a sloppy term, an even sloppier acronym (SBSDWAMCMICN), but then again, sloppiness is an essential part of the self-destruction that makes these books so wonderful, so terrifying, and so damn much fun to read even (especially) when they shouldn’t be. By saying these books’ narrators (all three—except for some poorly considered, third-person grandstanding in Walter Falls—are first person novels) are self-destructive, though, I don’t mean simply that they are men behaving badly, as is the case, for instance, in Larry Brown’s novels and short stories. True, Brown’s protagonists do misbehave in a way similar to Exley’s, Gates’s, and, to a lesser degree, Gillis’s narrators: they all drink too much; they all have family problems (see drinking); they all have buddies (see drinking) who get them into trouble, and vice versa; they all are obsessed with their fathers, who inevitably have something to do with their bad behavior; they are obsessed with their penises, especially when they’re not functioning properly (see drinking); they are all institutionalized, to no positive effect; and they are all dedicated to wrecking their lives and the lives of those around them. In fact, this is the only thing at which they succeed, their only fully realized talent.

But the important difference between A Fan’s Notes, Jernigan, and Walter Falls and, say, Brown’s most recent novel, The Rabbit Factory, is that the formers’ narrators are both smart and self-destructive; or better yet, their intelligence is a fundamental part of their self-destruction. In contrast, Brown’s men can be entertaining in their badness, they can be offensive, but there isn’t...