The White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon

by Dana Schwartz, Jason Adam Katzenstein

Overview

How do you use ‘taraddidle’ in a sentence? Is it possible to make a Gin Ricky that’s also a metaphor for the American Dream?  How can you tell your Faulkner from your Franzen if you haven’t actually read either?

Allow me, the @GuyInYourMFA, to expound on the most important (aka white male) writers of western literature. You’ve probably seen me around, observing the masses, or defying the wind by hand-rolling a cigarette outside a local, fair-trade coffeeshop. I’ve actually read Infinite Jest 9 1/2 times. Care to discuss?

From Shakespeare's greatest mystery (how could a working-class man without access to an MFA program be so prolific?) to the true meaning of Kafkaesque (you know you've made it when you have an adjective named for you), the pages herewith are at once profound and practical. Use my ingenious Venn diagram to test your knowledge of which Jonathan—Franzen, Lethem, or Safran Foer—hates Twitter and lives in Brooklyn. (Trick question: all 3!) Sneer at chick-lit and drink Mojitos like Hemingway (not like middle-aged divorcées!).

So instead of politely nodding along next time you make an acquaintance at a housewarming party in Brooklyn, you can roll up your sleeves and get to work schooling them in character arcs and the experimental form of your next great American novel. Dazzle your friends with how well you understand post-modernism. You’ll be at a literary event asking a question “that’s really more of a comment” in no time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062867872
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	1,139,922
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

DANA SCHWARTZ (@DanaSchwartzzz) is an arts and culture writer whose work has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Marie Claire, GQ, Bustle, Glamour, Vanity Fair, NewYorker.com, the Guardian, Mental_Floss, VICE, Brooklyn Magazine, and more. She’s the creator of popular literary Twitter accounts @GuyInYourMFA and@DystopianYA and the author of memoir CHOOSE YOUR OWN DISASTER and YA novel AND WE’RE OFF. She also hosts the podcast Noble Blood. Dana lives in Los Angeles with her cat, Beetlejuice.

JASON ADAM KATZENSTEIN is a cartoonist and writer for print and television. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times and MAD Magazine, and on Cartoon Network. He is the illustrator of The White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon and the graphic novel Camp Midnight. He is also a visiting professor at Wesleyan University. 

Editorial Reviews

"Schwartz gives her most famous creation, the Twitter parody account @GuyInYourMFA, free reign to speak his opinion in this hilarious book, cathartic for anyone who’s ever taken an English class. With characteristic conceitedness (which, of course, he’d deny he has), @GuyinYourMFA goes over the white male writers who have dominated curricula for all too long." — Refinery 29

From the Publisher

"Schwartz gives her most famous creation, the Twitter parody account @GuyInYourMFA, free reign to speak his opinion in this hilarious book, cathartic for anyone who’s ever taken an English class. With characteristic conceitedness (which, of course, he’d deny he has), @GuyinYourMFA goes over the white male writers who have dominated curricula for all too long."

Refinery 29

2019-08-04
A subversive lampoon of the Western literary canon.

Culture writer and creator of the parody Twitter account @guyinyourmfa, Schwartz (Choose Your Own Disaster, 2018, etc.) distills 500 years of literary history through the eyes of a fictional know-it-all. This entertaining guide starts with Shakespeare and winds through Goethe, Tolstoy, Faulkner, and fiction's heavy hitters, culminating with the Jonathans (Franzen, Safran Foer, and Lethem). Each profile summarizes a particular author's biographical highlights and major works. Amid factual details, the MFA student inserts revealing asides and footnotes. Off-track forays, from how to roll cigarettes to how to pen dirtier love notes à la Joyce, build a road map for emulating the ultimate writer. Pointed descriptions home in on the features that have stained some of the authors' reputations. Failed marriages, self-absorption, Updike's infamous Rabbit character, and uglier histories—such as Mailer's violence—portray a flawed bunch. Comedy writer and cartoonist Katzenstein creates expressive, grayscale headshots with sartorial flair. Ranging from brow-heavy seriousness to closed-mouth smiles, the authors' faces are humorously annotated. (Of Kafka: "Auteur hair." Henry James: "Eye bags—genius never sleeps." Kerouac: "Perfect swoop.") Each is given a yearbook hall-of-fame title, such as Milton, a "Goody Two-Shoes," Fitzgerald, who's crowned "Prom King," and Vonnegut, "Most Dependable." Such offhand remarks are clever rather than blistering. Fittingly, the MFA student is blind to his fawning taste. The role demands a misogynist who pretends to be "woke" and who considers New York as the only literary hub worth mentioning. Schwartz's knowingness and thorough commitment are consistently humorous. She writes the MFA guy with sincere, cringing acuity, and the act stays fresh. An affectionate naiveté offsets his ambition, and the literary overview is useful. A reading list rounds out the compendium, a fun read for the aspiring literati.

For all the skewering, this is a well-researched, passionate tribute to books and authors that have left their marks.

Kirkus Reviews