This appeared in the June 2016 issue of Vape Aficionado, the ONLY men’s magazine that combines bro interests, vaping, and casual sexism, and is republished here with permission.
Are you a good old-fashioned literary man who reveres the literary canon during a time when pesky diversity issues and political correctness make it unbecoming to profess your love for dead white men alone? It’s very hard out there for you. You’re constantly expected to fail (and you often do). But it’s not your fault—the canon is full of dead white men. You’ve been told for years which men are the greatest writers. Where are the lists of women through which to expand your cultural awareness? Which lady author should you take the time to actually read? However can you be expected to pick a diplomatic female author to carry your literary stamp of approval?
We are here to help. Whether you’re filling out your Tinder profile, making a listicle of books that everyone in their twenties should read, or inviting your favorite authors to a hypothetical dinner in The New York Times Book Review, you’re bound to find your token lady writer soulmate on this list.
Flannery O’Connor: Flannery was Faulkner with a pussy, the go-to gal for manly men who like manly prose. There is nothing dainty about her writing. Plus her obsession with the grit and the grime of the South of the early 20th century has inspired working-class heroes of various artistic mediums (hey, Bruce!).
Carson McCullers: Because Flannery O’Connor is so passe.
Toni Morrison: Intersectionality, bro. Google it.
Harper Lee: She’s a respectable choice for the literary poseur who actually hasn’t read a book since high school—not to mention her close proximity to greatness (even if anything Truman Capote wrote other than In Cold Blood is too fruity for you). But rest assured: a white man tried to take credit for her work, so you can always remember that a vote for Harper Lee is a vote for the literary ruling class.
Joan Didion: If your favorite go-to white guys are Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and Hunter S. Thompson, then J Diddy is the logical choice to bring a bit of vagina to New Journalism. Bonus points: blatant objectification, and the chance to say “J Diddy.” Cheeky cultural appropriation only proves how cool you are!
Mary Shelley: She practically invented the horror genre, and even Stephen King is a little too pedestrian to put on a list of great literature—no matter how many times you’ve read the complete Dark Tower series. Plus, you get the chance to correct the greatest and most common literary mistake: “Actually, the real monster was Dr. Frankenstein…”
Donna Tartt: You can’t recommend Bret Easton Ellis to your mom’s book club, so Ellis contemporary Donna Tartt will have to do.
Mary Karr: She fucked David Foster Wallace. She actually touched the life source!
George Eliot: Whoops, you thought George was a dude, didn’t you? Purely accidental, but it still counts!
Ursula K. Le Guin: Because you still love A Wrinkle in Time!
Evelyn Waugh: Another accident, I’m sure. But he did invent Imposter Syndrome! Now you have something to talk to your girlfriend about.
Margaret Atwood: Because she’s good at Twitter and you forgot how to spell “Le Guin.”
Jennifer Egan: Can you make a top-five list of why High Fidelity is your favorite novel of all time? You might like A Visit from the Goon Squad. She also wrote other novels not about the music industry if you’re into that sort of thing.
Iris Murdoch: She really gets men.
Nora Ephron: Even Christopher Hitchens thought she was funny.
Lorrie Moore: So much wry emotion! She’s the reason why you blog.
Zadie Smith: One of the most important writers on the immigrant experience and race and class today. She can even talk to you about hip hop. Plus, she’s hot!
Alison Bechdel: The namesake of that test your favorite books always fail. Bonus points for arguments about whether graphic novels count as literature.
Elena Ferrante: If you feel like Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard is the most important writer whose name you can’t pronounce, here’s an international superstar with an easier name. And you can still hold out hope that the writer whose nom de plume is Elena Ferrante is actually a man.
Jennifer Weiner: Let’s face it: it’s so much fun to troll Jonathan Franzen.
This. This right here is the reason I love The Toast so much.
I know. Where else would this be a perfect post? NOWHERE.
A small part of my digestive system just tied itself into a knot and died
I had to google to see whether Vape Aficionado was actual a magazine yet. It isn’t, but it is a blog. Sounded so plausible!
I did not particularly like A Visit from the Goon Squad, but ooh, wince at the Nick Hornby comparison.
Why can’t I give this a thumbs up for each half of this comment?
‘Margaret Atwood: Because she’s good at Twitter and you forgot how to spell “Le Guin.”’
are you saying someone saw me at the bookstore the day i was trying to replace my copy of the Left Hand of Darkness but forgot her name and ended up buying the Blind Assassin instead
Don’t give me hope that anybody but me has ever read Iris Murdoch. I went to England and asked everybody- I’m the only one.
Me too! Love her. And if “getting men” means writing male characters who just want their wife and their mistress to get along and not make them deal with the consequences of their choices, then yes, she sure does get them!
I do think the “getting men” thing was meant that, like, men don’t realize how deeply she’s criticizing their bullshit and begging women to RUN. But she does get them. You love her for reals? And it’s a particular kind of loneliness being the only one, right? Do you love her characters names and her strings of 4 adjectives per noun and how there are only noble hounds with humanlike courage?
Isn’t that what we all really want, though?
…just me? Maybe just me.
I read THE SEA, THE SEA last year, and I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such a well-written unreliable narrator–he’s so convinced of his own rightness and goodness, and so incredibly self-centered and awful. It’s remarkable.
Iris Murdoch, because you confuse her with Peter S. Beagle.
Senior Year of High School, she was on a list of “Great Modern British Writers”, and my group happened to pick her.
I loved her writing for a while. Under the Net, A Severed Head, and, oddly enough, The Unicorn were amazing too me. But then I kept reading her, and there’s so many bad dynamics, misogyny that seems to come from her and not the characters, weird variants of racism and some stale sentancing (looking at you, Dark Prince) that I was turned off her work. She’s great, but in small doses, and without any knowledge of her actual abusive “I love fucking my students” personality.
Replying late just to say I love Iris Murdoch too!
(I didn’t know if anyone still read her.)
Margaret Atwood: Because she’s good at Twitter and you forgot how to spell “Le Guin.”
*dying*
J. Diddy genuinely made me laugh. Joan would be… amused? outraged? Either way I love it.
I just finished the 3rd Neapolitan novel and the idea that anyone could ever believe a man wrote them gives me the wild cackles.
Right? Was it the intimate interiority of the pregnancy that screamed “Man wrote this”? The way subtle shifts in allegiances can reverberate throughout the social group? Oh, how about the process of being associated with your ex-husband’s family for years and what that means on a personal and professional level?
Dudes. They’re so insightful!
SERIOUSLY.
Oh, this is wonderful.
The traps have been sooooo cleverly laid.
I should make some popcorn for the deleted comments thread this will inspire, shouldn’t I?
was thinking that might be THE post to end toastie magic with.
Are Ursula K. Le Guin and Madeleine L’Engle commonly mistaken for each other?
I think it’s because she’s fantasish.
There can only be One Female Sci-Fi/Fantasy writer.
Only by people who believe that there can be only one female science fiction writer.
I dated a guy in college who, with all sincerity, told me that until he read Le Guin, he “hadn’t realized that women could write like that.” He couldn’t understand why I didn’t see that as a massive compliment to Ms. Le Guin.
No but it was hilarious! I laughed so hard the sleeping cat fell off me!
O Toast, I love you so.
I think the L split last name is also a factor. Le Guin, L’Engle, they have a similar ring. I got it wrong a lot back when I was, uh, 9, but not since.
I feel like some Virginia Woolf or Sylvia Plath should be here for when you want some 19 year old tail in a college town.
“Intersectionality, bro. Google it.”
Have not read Jennifer Weiner, but fuck Jonathan Franzen.
PLEASE can we have a “Best of Deleted Comments” for this article???
omg “because you still love A Wrinkle In Time” made me choke
I hated ‘White Teeth’ so much that I contemplated writing to Zadie Smith and demanding a refund of my wasted time à la _The Phantom Tollbooth_. Instead I settled for being REALLY ANGRY about it for the last 15 years. Still victorious.
(Jesus. Does this make me That Guy? I’m not even A Guy!)
At the time I thought it was really great, but now, years later, I can only remember that scene with all those mice.
No, you can have literary opinions without being designated “that guy”, but I want to know what sparked such hate. What made you dislike it so?
Well, it was a joke; I know I’m entitled to my literary opinions. But I appreciate the support?
Anyway. I disliked it because… I mean, how much time do you have? I will admit to not enjoying Literary Fiction as a rule; I tend to find it overwrought and tiresome. (I often find myself yelling, ‘JUST TELL ME THE STORY FUCKO, JESUS.’) But this in particular… ugh, it was a slog. The main characters bore almost no resemblance to actual humans, serving instead as The Good Guy Twin and The Bad Guy Twin, plus The Only Girl Who Could Love Them Both For Who They Are. And yes, there’s the theory that this book exists as some kind of modern fairy-tale or commentary thereon, but I didn’t at any point sense that the book was commenting on or sending up these tropes, or trying to use them in some new and interesting way; they just felt shallow and exceptionally poorly thought-out.
At first I kept reading because I thought that I had to be missing something or that I hadn’t got to the good bit yet or whatever, because all I heard was how magnificent this book was. And then I kept reading because I had invested so much time in it, against my will and better judgment, that I had to finish it just so that I would have finished it.
…and then, the ending. Mother of effing *god*, that ending. ‘The story is whatever you want it to be! You can believe whatever you want! Tra-la!’ [author skips off into the sunset] I rage-stroked and threw the book across the room so hard it left a dent in my wall.
The one good thing that came out of reading it was the bonding moment months later when my friend’s mum, whom I both adore and deeply respect, mentioned that she had just finished it and loathed it from her core. We then spent a solid 15 minutes what-the-fuck?!?!!?-ing and laughing about how infuriated we had both been by it.
Thanks for indulging my curiosity !
Me too but it was ‘On Beauty’. Sorry Zadie, I still irrationally love you for being so hot.
(OK now I am That Guy)
I just read it this year, and I am also REALLY ANGRY. I thought I was alone!
It didn’t make me angry, but I didn’t see what all the fuss was about and haven’t read anything else
Before I remembered that you were quoting, I thought you were saying you had hated Phantom Tollbooth so much that you had written Norton Juster for a refund. I was both horrified, and concerned that Phantom Tollbooth was terribly problematic and I had never noticed
HEE! God no. I love that book, and I hope to god it doesn’t turn out to have horrors I haven’t yet noticed.
I do quite like the idea of writing to Norton Juster to demand a refund for the time I spent on ‘White Teeth’, if only because that would be one of the more baffling letters I could imagine: ‘Dear Sir, I realise you had exactly zero to do with ‘White Teeth’, but it I’ve decided to send arbitrary demands to every author I can think of because this book has made me mad at *words*. Please advise. Yours etc., TTG’
Y’all might remember that article about Men’s Book Clubs from a month or so ago, and how my ex-BIL was quoted in it re: finding a divorce lawyer via his book club, and also picking up a woman at a bar during book club.
Guess whether or not he was the first person I ever saw vape?
That *has* to be a rhetorical question.
Everything in this comment is perfect.
OK but is it Ellen-uh or Uh-lay-nah because I’ve heard both (I love this piece so much)
She’s Italian, so definitely Eh-lay-nah.
I’d say the best way of rendering the Italian pronunciation is Ellen-a, with the accent on the first syllable. However, the way the first E sounds depends on regional variation; Ellen-a is about right for Tuscan and Roman varieties, not so sure about Neapolitan.
/more info than you ever wanted to know on the pronunciation of “Elena”
(Cred: real-life Italian, living in Italy up until a few months ago.)
Kind of off-topic but at first I thought “vaping” was just “being vapid” and now that I know what the technical definition is I don’t see any reason to change my initial impression.
Vaping is basically being vapid, but with a cloud of pretension floating above it all.
omg where do you live that you didn’t know what vaping is, and can I please move there.
Oh man this is shameful but for a minute I mixed up Margaret Atwood with Joyce Carol Oates and was deeply confused because Oates is the opposite of good at Twitter.
Mildly shameful but points entirely recovered by recognizing how bad Oates is at Twitter.
She’s the worst.
Once, I was standing in front of a hotel in San Francisco with Mr. Ada, smoking regular cigarettes, and there was a couple standing in front of the opposite hotel. That couple was also composed of a bearded tall man and a round lady in nerd glasses. Only they were vaping and he was wearing a dumb hat. I judged that dude harshly, and then winced at myself–like, I was two details away from spotting my couples doppleganger and still, I judged them (by which I mean, him).
Only, now I’m just going to assume that the dude has thought of Mary Karr, “She fucked David Foster Wallace. She actually touched the life source!,” and never think twice about my irrational snap judgments again.
Lesson. Not. Learned.
I love David Foster Wallace, but I’d punch anyone who called him the life source. I do not think he would be down for what we’ve made of him as a cultural symbol.
I also love Mary Karr for many, many reasons that have nothing to do with him, but her description of meeting him in AA in Lit just kills me: “Some kind of genius, David’s meant to be, though his red bandana is the flag of gangster or biker, ditto the unlaced Timberland work boots.” Ahhhh two geniuses as little 20-something babies, hurting and trying to get sober and recognizing kindred spirits. I want to hug them both.
Okay, guys, listen to this.
My late high school/early college boyfriend grew up to be the Ultimate Hipster tech-industry dude.
When Maya Angelou died, he tweeted: “RIP Maya Angelou. Beloved was one of the most harrowing books I’ve ever read.”
I waited a few hours, trying to figure out if this was some post-racism joke I just wasn’t understanding, then finally, realizing that I was definitely not missing anything, went back to gently correct him.
It had been deleted.
But it still happened. I will remember it always. And I hope he’s not a Toast reader, because that would be weird.
I have one of those too. Probably more than one if I look into it (there’s a lot of dudes posting about circus arts on my facebook feed which is why I don’t go there much).
They weren’t romantic mistakes, exactly. I am still lighting up cocktail parties with some of those stories, 20 years after the fact.
I feel cheated that the Toast is closing down and I will not have the opportunity to pitch a series of listicles from Vape Aficionado.
I mean, he wasn’t mixing up Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison WHILE we were dating, at least as far as I know. This confusion seems to be something he’s grown into. Which is not to say he was not Very Confused while we were dating, too– but we were 19. So.
I have a thing where I turn to fantasy books during hard times. I read LOTR the summer my dad died. I’m mid-divorce right now and just read Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy for the first time (after loving Left Hand of Darkness & Very Far Away from Anywhere Else years ago) and I gotta say…
Le Guin > Tolkien > GRR Martin
Why doesn’t everyone know the Earthsea Trilogy as much as they know LOTR or the Narnia chronicles or His Dark Materials or or or? [rhetorical]
It’s shorter. It’s beautiful. It’s a complete world explored over decades. It has a really wonderful moral compass to it. It has maps and its own linguistics. I’m not a re-reader, but I know I’ll be going back to these books again (after I read the next 3 Earthsea books).
I couldn’t get into Earthsea (I know I should try again at some point!) but I adore her sci-fi, especially in the Ekumen “universe,” and I plowed through every single one I could find one year.
Which reminds me, I lost The Dispossessed in a move, and I want to reread it.
*adds The Dispossessed to wish list on paperbackswap.com*
And I hear you – the first (Wizard of Earthsea) was the one I enjoyed the least.
I read Earthsea when I was 11. Perhaps I should revisit.
I took an entire course in my undergrad about the Earthsea cycle, and let me tell you, it was one of the most rewarding English classes I’ve ever taken. My god, those books.
(At the end of the term, Le Guin herself came in to speak with the class, and she was, as ever, a delight and an inspiration.)
(Also, for a time the Sci-Fi Museum in Seattle had one of her letters to her editor from when she was writing A Wizard of Earthsea—in it, she completely shuts him down over his suggestion that Ged be white. It was a thing of beauty.)
So jealous! I think if I ever met UKL I’d faint. She’s one of my absolute heroes. I loved her speech at the National Book Awards. She takes no prisoners, ever.
Also I may have just this week gotten an Earthsea-themed tattoo.
I looooove the first 3 Earthsea books and generally stop there (which is both the saddest and most narratively satisfying end point). The next one (was there 2 more?) addresses some issues in the first trilgy but also weakens it I think. Anyway always happy to natter about Earthsea if we can find a space post-June.
One of my favorite versions of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching is by Ms. Le Guin. Never read anything else by her though.
Earthsea was read to my sister and I as children by my dad, and I’ve re-read it since as well, though that was a while ago. I love those books.
I love the Earthsea books. All of them. I read the orginal trilogy in my 20s and have reread it a few times in the last 2 decades and it’s one of those classics that really ages well and that you can grow into.
Tombs of Atuan is my favorite. As a survivor of CSA/incest it really resonated – girl realizes everything she believed as a child was a dangerous lie and has to make a choice. That’s me.
**hugs if wanted**
Tombs of Atuan is my favorite so far – she’s such a great character and her journey speaks to many survivors, I think. That’s part of what surprised me about the presentation of these as children’s books — there’s some really dark and difficult topics, along with Big Life Question types of topics (the theme of immortality in Farthest Shore). Not that kids can’t read stuff like that and get something out of it – I certainly did – but there’s so much worth revisiting as an adult and over different times of your life.
Moment of panic while satire glands recalibrated. We’re fine now.
A little part of me fears that this could inspire a real vape/lit magazine. We live in troubling times Toasties.
Am I think only one who thinks Erica Jong has so much bro-potential (brotential)? Sure, there’s all that expression of sexuality from a female perspective, but it’s also promiscuous sexuality, so you can say it really speaks to you, casually conveying that you are not only a Modern and Sensitive Man, but also totally DTF.
You've just described me reading Iris Murdoch.
I love the Earthsea books. All of them. I read the orginal trilogy in my 20s and have reread it a few times in the last 2 decades and it's one of those classics that really ages well and that you can grow into.
Tombs of Atuan is my favorite. As a survivor of CSA/incest it really resonated – girl realizes everything she believed as a child was a dangerous lie and has to make a choice. That's me.