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The White Man's Guide to White Male Writers of the Western Canon
Narrated by the voice of a once-in-a-generation Twitter account @GuyInYourMFA: a handbook for the wannabe literary elite and those who laugh at them—all illustrated by a New Yorker cartoonist.
Who better than that unjustifiably overconfident guy in your MFA to mansplain the most important (aka white male) writers of western literature? You can’t miss him: riding the L, writing furiously in his Moleskine notebook, or defying the wind by hand-rolling a cigarette outside a Williamsburg coffeeshop. He’s read Infinite Jest 9 1/2 times—have you?
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) to an appropriately minimalist dissertation on Raymond Carver that segues effortlessly into a devastating critique of a New Yorker rejection letter (”serious believability issues”), this guide is at once profound and practical.
Use a Venn diagram to test your knowledge of which Jonathan—Franzen, Lethem, or Safran Foer—hates Twitter and lives in Brooklyn. (Trick question: all 3!) Practice slyly responding to an invitation to discuss Bartleby the Scrivener with “I would prefer not to.” Sneer at chick-lit and drink Mojitos like Hemingway (not like middle-aged divorcées!). And as did Nabokov (originator of the emoticon), find the Pale Fire within.
So instead of politely nodding next time you encounter said person at a housewarming party in Brooklyn, you can hand them this book and tell them to roll up their sleeves and cigarettes, and get to writing the next great American novel.
Who better than that unjustifiably overconfident guy in your MFA to mansplain the most important (aka white male) writers of western literature? You can’t miss him: riding the L, writing furiously in his Moleskine notebook, or defying the wind by hand-rolling a cigarette outside a Williamsburg coffeeshop. He’s read Infinite Jest 9 1/2 times—have you?
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) to an appropriately minimalist dissertation on Raymond Carver that segues effortlessly into a devastating critique of a New Yorker rejection letter (”serious believability issues”), this guide is at once profound and practical.
Use a Venn diagram to test your knowledge of which Jonathan—Franzen, Lethem, or Safran Foer—hates Twitter and lives in Brooklyn. (Trick question: all 3!) Practice slyly responding to an invitation to discuss Bartleby the Scrivener with “I would prefer not to.” Sneer at chick-lit and drink Mojitos like Hemingway (not like middle-aged divorcées!). And as did Nabokov (originator of the emoticon), find the Pale Fire within.
So instead of politely nodding next time you encounter said person at a housewarming party in Brooklyn, you can hand them this book and tell them to roll up their sleeves and cigarettes, and get to writing the next great American novel.
272 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 5, 2019
56 people are currently reading
1789 people want to read
About the author
Dana Schwartz
19 books3,990 followersDana Schwartz was born and raised in the suburbs of Chicago. She attended Brown University where she studied biology and public policy before realizing that she would only be happy if she tried to be a writer. While in college, she created the viral parody twitter account @GuyInYourMFA. Dana worked as a writer for Mental Floss, The Observer, and Entertainment Weekly, with additional bylines for GQ, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair, and NewYorker.com.
Dana is the host and creator of the hit history podcast Noble Blood. She also writes for television. She lives in Los Angeles.
Dana is the host and creator of the hit history podcast Noble Blood. She also writes for television. She lives in Los Angeles.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews
January 17, 2020
I would explain what this book was about . . . but you wouldn't understand.
I would describe how it made me feel, but ugh, that's just like, not the point.
I will say that it has really inspired me, though. I mean, maybe I'll get a vintage typewriter so that I can really WRITE you know? The craft just isn't the same when you're trying to make art on a computer.
I would describe how it made me feel, but ugh, that's just like, not the point.
I will say that it has really inspired me, though. I mean, maybe I'll get a vintage typewriter so that I can really WRITE you know? The craft just isn't the same when you're trying to make art on a computer.
November 6, 2019
This book is racist and offensive and overpriced toilet paper.
November 6, 2019
This book was a great piece of satire, and the negative reviews demonstrate the timeliness of its release. The thing is- some of the books and authors mentioned have produced very enjoyable reads. However, when you seek out information about these authors, whether it's in your English Lit class or else just on Wikipedia, there is often little to no mention of what shitheads most of the authors were to the women around them. Do we separate the author from their work? For proper literary analysis, I honestly think it's impossible to permit the facade of separation. Does this stop me from enjoying some of the books mentioned? Of course not. But now I can reflect on the escapades of Leopold Bloom while bearing in mind far more of James Joyce's bibliography which would be a direct influence on his literary choices.
March 19, 2020
I find it interesting that a jewish woman can openly mock white people in a published book, whereas if anyone made fun of jews I have a strong feeling that Ms. Schwartz would report it as hate speech.
January 13, 2020
I am delighted to know this guy has made his way around. I've known him most of my life, from friends of my aunt's to new grads who worked at the cable studio my dad worked at when I was a kid. Then I got a BA in English so knew plenty of them there and now I'm in libraryland and there are plenty more here.
I know this guy so well.
However, as much as I grinned throughout the book, by the end, I felt it had become as overbearing as the guy it mocks.
I'd recommend reading this in short bursts if you're the type to quickly tire of a schtick.
I know this guy so well.
However, as much as I grinned throughout the book, by the end, I felt it had become as overbearing as the guy it mocks.
I'd recommend reading this in short bursts if you're the type to quickly tire of a schtick.
April 6, 2020
Pretentious, bigoted drivel written by an entitled American girl with a victim complex.
November 8, 2019
The only way Dana Schwartz could have made this book better is by inventing a time machine, then going back 20 years and publishing it then, thereby preventing untold instances of me making an ass out of myself in public. Of course this book is funny, but it’s also wonderfully, painfully, brutally true. Honestly, she’s absolutely correct that the Western canon is, and always was, a mess of hubris and misogyny. This book is savage and beautiful and I hope someday I’ll grow up and write as well as this.
May 3, 2022
Predictable, cynical, pedantic nonsense.
October 25, 2019
Received a copy in a giveaway. This is a tough, small niche to inhabit, making fun of pompous academic white guys. This book does a decent job, but satire is tough, and this didn't have quite enough bite for me.
November 13, 2019
(Disclosures: When I was in the seventh grade, I once carried a hardcover library copy of Infinite Jest around with me for a day or two - I never actually got past the first twenty pages, but a guy in a Vampire Weekend t-shirt asked me how it was, and that made me deeply reconsider reading it; in middle school, you should only be listening to MCR and Kelly Clarkson. After graduating high school, a friend and I did end up doing an Infinite Summer thing and we regretted it - ultimately, the Gately parts are decent, but the rest is just, well, you know the reputation. Thankfully, I've never read any of the Jonathans, although I have given 5-star reviews to two Thomas Wolfe (not Tom) books here, which is where you can start if you want to dunk on me.)
When I was a senior in high school, my friends and I, who were all in a magnet writing program at the time, discovered Dana Schwartz's @GuyInYourMFA and we all thought it was funny - none of us were ever that pretentious, but we approached it at times, and so we were able to look at ourselves through the dark mirror of the Columbia New Yorker-hopeful. It might not come as a surprise that only one of us writes with any regularity or purpose anymore. Fast forward to now, and we have this book, the culmination of the joke, and it's not entirely clear what the purpose is here. If the purpose is, as Schwartz has mentioned on Twitter, to point the way toward a canon less focused on White Men, then that's all well and good (and, if we still view high school English classes as the battleground on which the canon is waged, then I'm all for replacing all the Faulkners and Fitzgeralds and Shakespeares with Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros and Carson McCullers and Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood and the Brontes - not only are these authors just as solid, if not more ripe with the themes and symbols that HS teachers love to tear apart (I mean you have Gatsby in one court, which is all obvious stuff, and then Beloved in another, where the symbolism is far more ingrained into the text and the writing itself and not just the plot events), they're also more engaging. I had to read All The King's Men in high school, and you can't tell me that students wouldn't enjoy and get more out of a book like Kindred), but this book doesn't really do that. Instead, you get the MFA guy character teaching us (mansplaining, more like, which is the point) about some thirty odd important White Male writers, while replaying some of the highlights of the Twitter account. And I wouldn't lie, I learned some new things (none of which made me want to read any of these writers any more than I already have) and Schwartz gets some good dunks in here and there. Where the book really succeeds is in the constant litany of abuses that these men practiced on their wives and partners, and the question by implication of why we should laud them when they were mostly shitty people (and, as Patricia Lockwood made abundantly clear in her recent re-evaluation of Updike, pretty shitty writers too). And yet, the Guy in Your MFA does exist, an old friend of my current roommate looks exactly like the cover drawing and goes through girlfriends every three weeks, attributing it to his rediscovered Catholicism, and quoting the Pynchon wiki page throughout the one class I had with him; these Guys could read this book and take it all seriously. That's not funny, really, it's just sad, annoying, and a bit disturbing. Ultimately, this is a fine book, but I can't help but think the hours spent with it would be better spent reading something by someone who stands in sharp contrast to these writers. Probably that's the thesis here, but you could make that point in a few tweets, and save yourself the trouble of rolling your eyes at the pointless illustrations spread throughout.
When I was a senior in high school, my friends and I, who were all in a magnet writing program at the time, discovered Dana Schwartz's @GuyInYourMFA and we all thought it was funny - none of us were ever that pretentious, but we approached it at times, and so we were able to look at ourselves through the dark mirror of the Columbia New Yorker-hopeful. It might not come as a surprise that only one of us writes with any regularity or purpose anymore. Fast forward to now, and we have this book, the culmination of the joke, and it's not entirely clear what the purpose is here. If the purpose is, as Schwartz has mentioned on Twitter, to point the way toward a canon less focused on White Men, then that's all well and good (and, if we still view high school English classes as the battleground on which the canon is waged, then I'm all for replacing all the Faulkners and Fitzgeralds and Shakespeares with Toni Morrison and Sandra Cisneros and Carson McCullers and Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood and the Brontes - not only are these authors just as solid, if not more ripe with the themes and symbols that HS teachers love to tear apart (I mean you have Gatsby in one court, which is all obvious stuff, and then Beloved in another, where the symbolism is far more ingrained into the text and the writing itself and not just the plot events), they're also more engaging. I had to read All The King's Men in high school, and you can't tell me that students wouldn't enjoy and get more out of a book like Kindred), but this book doesn't really do that. Instead, you get the MFA guy character teaching us (mansplaining, more like, which is the point) about some thirty odd important White Male writers, while replaying some of the highlights of the Twitter account. And I wouldn't lie, I learned some new things (none of which made me want to read any of these writers any more than I already have) and Schwartz gets some good dunks in here and there. Where the book really succeeds is in the constant litany of abuses that these men practiced on their wives and partners, and the question by implication of why we should laud them when they were mostly shitty people (and, as Patricia Lockwood made abundantly clear in her recent re-evaluation of Updike, pretty shitty writers too). And yet, the Guy in Your MFA does exist, an old friend of my current roommate looks exactly like the cover drawing and goes through girlfriends every three weeks, attributing it to his rediscovered Catholicism, and quoting the Pynchon wiki page throughout the one class I had with him; these Guys could read this book and take it all seriously. That's not funny, really, it's just sad, annoying, and a bit disturbing. Ultimately, this is a fine book, but I can't help but think the hours spent with it would be better spent reading something by someone who stands in sharp contrast to these writers. Probably that's the thesis here, but you could make that point in a few tweets, and save yourself the trouble of rolling your eyes at the pointless illustrations spread throughout.
Read
February 15, 2020Hilarious satire that 100% delivers on the premise of the book. 👌
April 16, 2024
Today's idea of a parody. I will make fun of someone for living exactly as me (private Ivy League uni; rich, white and able to live in NY since early 20s on my own; being a trust fund kid and therefore focus on writing only). Dana Schwartz not only didn't most likely read any of the books or authors she makes fun off. She most likely didn't even understand the Wikipedia pages about the books. It's beyond me why instead of recommending some of the "highbrow" female writers (Lucy Ellmann, Zadie Smith or Marguerite Young), the NYC bourgeoisie newspaper writers have need to belittle great writers. Oh yeah the reason is that would actual required reading these female authors instead of just reading Wikipedia article on post-modernism and western canon.
December 5, 2019
A run down on some of the big name white male writers since Shakespeare, with an American focus in the latter part. I think the satire is less about hunting for the jokes in individual lines, more about how the same issues with the authors and their works keep popping up. From many short biographies the author synthesizes one problematic character.
I think. I worry I am missing the point.
I think. I worry I am missing the point.
Read
February 16, 2021I came to this book in search of more of the illustrator's (Jason Adam Katzenstein) work, so I'm probably not the target audience for this book. As others have mentioned, I'd recommend reading it in small doses.
November 10, 2019
Aaaactuallyyyy, this is a delightful, humorous survey of many of the most celebrated white, male authors in the voice of Dana Schwartz's @guyinyourmfa Twitter account. If you like cringe humor and literature, you will really enjoy this fun send-up.
January 18, 2020
Too little about the white male writers or their books, too little funny.
April 13, 2020
It’s a fun very short read that I picked up at my local bookstore before going into isolation. It made me laugh at the caricature any college student knows and, at times, may have resembled. ::cough::
Also, it affirms my general understanding that writers are some of the worst people on the planet.
My rating is among the genre, which is collected and edited humor. Many accomplished stand ups have published books of their material; these are taken from /inspired by her satirical Twitter account.
It’s great for what it is, but you need to enjoy the skewering of pretentious people and the writers they adore. (I do!)
Also, it affirms my general understanding that writers are some of the worst people on the planet.
My rating is among the genre, which is collected and edited humor. Many accomplished stand ups have published books of their material; these are taken from /inspired by her satirical Twitter account.
It’s great for what it is, but you need to enjoy the skewering of pretentious people and the writers they adore. (I do!)
May 17, 2020
Fun, lighthearted and well-written satire. Also, a great list of summaries of books I barely remember slogging through for my high school and university English classes! I laughed a lot, cringed a little (we've all met "that guy," even if that guy is not a guy at all), and had a really good time. I heartily recommend this gem to anyone who has spent some time in writing communities. You'll laugh, or at least wince in recognition, I promise.
February 11, 2020
I may not be a white man, but my unisex name gave me the opportunity to read this book! Seriously, it's a fantastic parody, equal parts informative and hilarious. As someone with an English degree, I adored this.
July 20, 2019
Book 1 down for July 2019 24in48 Readathon!
Much parody, very satire. (Y’all, if you don’t understand what the @guyinmyMFA twitter account is about you wont understand this book.)
Much parody, very satire. (Y’all, if you don’t understand what the @guyinmyMFA twitter account is about you wont understand this book.)
February 16, 2020
Incredibly smart and funny. Dana's writing style is so sharp and clever, and she captures the spirit of every insufferable asshole you ever shared an English class with. This is truly brilliant satire and very fun to read.
April 19, 2020
Funny and satirical! Also I learned what assholes some of these authors were. So bonus.
March 17, 2024
Delightful. Delightful, but also depressingly spot-on.
December 28, 2024
3.5! Fun and pithy in just the right way and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
January 4, 2020
Amusing. I genuinely laughed out loud at some parts.
Want to read
February 13, 2024You ever buy a book just because most of the negative reviews were written by such flaming dipshits? That's what I just did.
March 22, 2024
Solidly three stars. It definitely made me chuckle several times. Educational, as well. Sadly, I read this on a vintage kindle (from 2011) and the pictures were definitely cut off. Trying times, for sure. But such is the tradeoff for reading on a device that's several years old. I want to save my trust fund for something like a vintage Mac or the like, so I'll just have to accept that the pictures and their captions are on the nose, or perhaps beyond my plebeian understanding. Sigh.
July 21, 2021
If you have an English degree or MFA, you need to read this book.
September 8, 2020
From a one-star review: “In this book the author encourages white men to despise themselves and accept their dispossession in a country their ancestors built for them.”
I’m sure the reviewer meant to give it five stars, so I’m just helping out! #fuckthatguy
I’m sure the reviewer meant to give it five stars, so I’m just helping out! #fuckthatguy
August 7, 2020
3.5 stars. A lot of fun. Dana Schwartz is SO good at nailing the voice of a pretentious MFA student man-splaining literature to you. The premise is delightful and does not get old.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 106 reviews