Angry men

So several weeks ago I whined a wee bit about reading guy lit (AKA dick lit)--specifically Chuck Paluhniuk and Bret Easton Ellis.

I'm sort of baffled by why these guys are so angry. I assume I have a little to do with it, being a feminist and all. I mean, I guess I'm pretty scary when it comes down to it. But why can't I turn my power into something that would bring in big money???? I don't see CEO's of big corporations exactly quaking in their boots at the thought of my awesome power.

So, yeah, Fight Club seems to be about men angry about being removed from an existence that would require them to exert their physical superiority and know how to take a punch then get up and go on about their business. And, yes, I'm sympathetic with the theme that our possessions come to own us and make us put up with great huge amounts of crap to keep them and get even more. (I didn't read Marx for nothing.) But I'm also aware that I depend on civilization to keep me alive. Women used to have shorter life spans than men because they literally worked themselves to death--and looked like hell to boot.

And my next question is where are the angry women's novels? I can't think of any--and I've read a LOT of novels. Years ago, we read Marilyn French's Women's Room and that was angry, but I wouldn't say it's on many people's reading lists these days--even other angry women. Maybe Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" counts, but jeez, it's really old. I can easily think of some angry essays, but that's not what I'm looking for here.

Are angry women too scary to publish? Is there no market? I can sort of imagine guys imagining what they'd do if they were on Cormac McCarthy's The Road, but that just doesn't seem to me like something too many women would be contemplating. Most who've read it agree with me that we'd be like the main guy's wife who killed herself rather than deal with dodging cannibals or being kept in a pen to be eaten later or pushing a grocery cart through the rest of her bleak existence.

A colleague suggested that perhaps women channel their anger into satire. Maybe so. This is a question I'm going to keep gnawing.