Dana Schwartz - The White Mans Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon

Contents

To her, but also to me.

One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. Good is no longer good when ones neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a common good! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

So it goes.

KURT VONNEGUT

Contents

Welcome to The White Mans Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon.

Im happy youre here. Or at least I would be happy if I didnt maintain an air of disaffected ironic detachment at all times. Youve probably seen me sitting on the quad, rolling my own cigarette, loose tobacco spilling into my worn copy of As She Climbed Across the Table, by Jonathan Lethem. Yeah, its pretty beaten up; Ive read it a couple of times. It just inspires me, you know? Like, right now I think I need to take out my journal and jot down a quick poem. Its called Orin Incandenza, and I usually dont like people to read my unfinished work, but maybe Id let you take a look if you wanted to come back to my dorm room later tonight?

If you are not yet a white male novelist who has established himself as an essential part of the Western Canon, fear not: this guide is here to help. I will teach you everything you need to know to become the chain-smoking, coffee-drinking, Proust-quoting, award-winning writer youve always known you should be. And if you dont win awards, its because those awards are for mainstream sellouts who wouldnt know honest literature if it sidled up next to them with an old-fashioned at the Algonquin.

Not a white man? Not to worry. The White Male Writer isnt a hard-and-fast demographic; its a state of mind (although you could consider changing your namethe Georges Eliot and Sand did pretty well for themselves).

TIP

If anyone asks if you want to discuss Bartleby, the Scrivener, by Herman Melville, just smile slyly and say, I would prefer not to.

I have been afforded the privilege of both an elite liberal arts education and an intellect that has allowed me to comprehend, and therefore unpack for you, the Western Canon in its entirety, and thus, I feel it is my duty to share my wisdom with the less fortunate.

And so, whether youre an established novelist or grad student, English lit major or literary hobbyist, or if youve ever considered writing a 15,000-word short story about a man riding a train thats really about the decline of the American middle class: this book is for you. Keep it on your person at all times just in case: you never know when your local barista wont know the difference between a drip coffee and an Americano and will need a helpful visual guide.

DRESSING LIKE A WRITER

First things first. If youre going to be a writer, you need to look like one.

Start with the head and work your way down. Youre going to need a capthe slouchier, the betterin order to cover the hair that youre too busy to cut or wash as instead you are thinking great thoughts. The slouchy hat is an essential element of a writers wardrobe. A hat itself harkens back to an era of typewriters and smoking indoors, but unfortunately any attempt to pull off a fedora in the twenty-first century will leave you looking like either:

1. An amateur magician/pickup artist
2. A seventeen-year-old white boy who owns a katana and is waaaay too into Japan
3. Justin Timberlake

All of the above are equally terrible. Avoid baseball hats unless you are a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal slowly evolving a beer belly. Flattop caps are acceptable only if you are over seventy years old, or a cast member in a production of Newsies.

Spend as much money on your glasses as you can in order to make it look like you spent no money at all. The same should be true of your T-shirts, blazers, jackets, footwear, and jeans. The goal aesthetic is graduate school T.A. who needs the money even though your parents have already given it to you. Remember, you now represent the workingman.

FAMILIARIZING YOURSELF WITH THE CANON

What is the Western Canon? Its the foundation for anyone who hopes to ever call himself well-read. Familiarization with the Western Canon does not guarantee that you will navigate every dinner party you attend (and there will be many) with grace and aplomb, but without it, you have doomed yourself to failure.

Although the Western Canon in broad terms refers to all of the art, philosophy, and culture of Europe and North America, in this book we will focus only on literature. Again, if you plan on attending any social gatherings at all in the near future, I very much recommend you brush up on your Wittgenstein and fine-tune your opinions on Raphaels early work.

But still, this book is a helpful primer for those of you who slept through your sophomore-year English classes and sleepwalked through your essays on Shakespeare. I am here to teach you as only I, a straight white man, can.

Why only white men in this book? Simple: theyre the most important ones. They are the most widely read, the most celebrated, the most influential, and, if Im going to be blunt, the most talented. I mean, sure, there are some ladies who have had a pretty good go at the whole writing thing, but how could a woman ever capture my experience? And by my experience, I mean my experience as a white man.

GETTING A WRITERS EDUCATION

If you want to be a writer, you should attend an Ivy League university, where your roommate happens to be the nephew of a senior editor at Knopf, and you should go on to get a summer internship in New York City. This internship will not be paid, and unfortunately you will have to suffer the indignity of living in an apartment that your parents pay for. But soon, your struggles will pay off, and you will be accepted at one of the nations most prestigious MFA programs.

If you cant do all of that, I hate to say it, but it sounds like you wont have the commitment and discipline necessary to make it as a writer. I cant do anything about that, but I can attempt to teach you.

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MOST DRAMATIC

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

You know who William Shakespeare was. If you dont, finish eighth grade and come back.

The Bard was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and is credited with writing thirty-nine plays, 154 sonnets, and two narrative poems during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and James I. Pretty impressive for the son of a glove-maker, huh? Well get to that.

At eighteen years old, Shakespeare married a twenty-six-year-old named Anne Hathaway who never starred in any Academy Awardwinning films. By 1592, ten years later, Shakespeares plays were being performed on the London stage, and heres where the important stuff begins.

So did Shakespeare really write all of his own plays? Like I said, it seems surprising that a working-class man without access to an MFA program would be so prolific in so many different genres. Remember, Shakespeares father was a glove-maker, and so its not as though he received the type of education that would have been afforded to a child of nobility like, say, Sir Francis Bacon. How could a nobody get so good at writing dramas