Male characters in a number of modern novels face the need to prove their maleness in a world in which what maleness means is not always clear. In two novels by Vladimir Nabokov--Invitation to a Beheading and Despair--and one by Mikhail Bulgakov--The Master and Margarita--the male characters are artists in some degree, separate from the mass of men by their artistic sensibilities, and seeking to prove their worth through their art. In all three novels, reality is suspended as these characters interact with the world more directly in their own minds than in reality.
In Nabokov's Invitation to a Beheading, the main character is a man sentenced to die. Cincinnatus C. is the perpetrator of some hideous crime. In truth, he lives in an imaginary land largely of his own making, and all the people in this land are reflections of himself in some manner. Indeed, Cincinnatus thus represents the artist who creates his own world, though he is not a good enough artist given that the world he creates is peopled with two-dimensional characters. He is the only truly three-dimensional human being in this world, and he is about to be destroyed by his own failure as an artist. In the story, his execution is pending from the first, and as the novel progresses, we draw closer and closer to his beheading. His mental state deteriorates as he nears that end, and so the world he has created for himself also degenerates, making things more and more absurd. All the characters created for his life return for their final bow, though how they return is often absurd and even preposterous. Cincinnatus remains in power even as he nears the end, though, and he is finally able to end the entire scene, willing it away as an author would who destroyed his manuscript.
The male as artist is clearly the central figure in this novel and in the life Cincinnatus creates for himself, and indeed, the hint is given that the male always sees himself at the center of l...