THE MCEGGERS TANG CLAN

Robert Lanham

 

 

 

I love you, David Eggers. I want to run my fingers through your curly locks and draw your lips close to mine. I want to kiss your soft, silky mouth (oh I know it is) and consum- mate my love for you on a mattress filled with luxurious pages torn from The Believer, McSweeney’s, A Heart- breaking Work of Staggering Genius, The Future Dic- tionary of America, You Shall Know Our Velocity, and Might. If you feel timid, we can take things slowly. We could just spoon.¹

—ROBERT LANHAM

Part 1: Backlash is the Sound of Mimicry

Where the author addresses the reader and gets something pressing and emotionally charged off his chest:

 

 

Backlash against the backlash. Turn a deaf ear to the kids. Run to the closest independent bookstore in your neighborhood and consume. Bring some friends and encourage them to do the same.

Embrace our literary prince. You know you want to. Love him. Read him. Buy things from him. Buy more things from the people he knows. Shout his name from kingdom high. David! You complete me.

I appreciate you, David Eggers. I do. Indie rock is so twentieth-century. Indie publishing is the future. Criticizing you, I predict, will become passé. That issue you did on comics ruled.

Your critics are jealous. After all, you are the only person from our generation to create a bona fide literary movement. McSweeneyism.

Your entrepreneurship is groundbreaking. You give spreadsheets the finger. You rip bad art design a new asshole. You tear cheap paper stock to shreds. You are literature’s MTV. Publishing’s IFC. You are the RZA. McSweeney’s is your Wu-Tang. Pay the McSweeney-phobes no heed, Mr. Eggers. Mofos can’t keep a good nigga down.

You should be an inspiration. You defy the boomers’ pillaging of our time in the spotlight. They called us slackers. They only allotted us a few measly years before changing our label to Generation Y. Before they clock us out completely and introduce Generation Z, let us reclaim, together, what has been taken. You have never been shy. This is Generation Eggers.

Part 2: The End of the Age of Fair Vanity

Where the author defines backlash, discusses Graydon Carter, David Eggers, and Felicity reruns, while defying his urge to comment on how tomatoes should never be stir-fried.

 

 

backlash -n- To have an antagonistic reaction to an event or trend

McSweeney’s backlash -n- To have an antagonistic reaction toward McSweeney’s, generally associated with people who subscribe religiously to McSweeney’s publications, have an ironic sensibility, and realize when something has become passé well before you ever could.

 

No one felt the blow of Graydon Carter’s statement “It’s the end of the age of irony” harder than David Eggers.² After all, McSweeney’s irony has always been his bread and butter. In the fallout, legions of Eggers’s fans turned their backs on him. He became the whipping boy of contemporary lit, not to mention the scapegoated poster boy of the ironic aesthetic. People have written Eggers off for years, meanwhile mimicking his style, buying books published under the McSweeney’s moniker, and renewing their subscriptions to his publications.

In an apparent attempt to repackage himself, Eggers began publishing The Believer, a monthly literary magazine with a slightly less ironic sensibility.³ Just as Fox News is “fair and balanced,” The Believer is snark-free and insightful. It even has a section on its Web site called “The Snarkwatch,” which keeps literary cynicism in check by exposing and printing unfair critical jabs taken at authors. “Snarkwatch” is like problem solvers on the network news, only for elite, insular, well-connected Ivy League English majors who have been wrongly misrepresented by The Man. Want to publish an essay that consists solely of acknowledgments and an ink drawing of a praying mantis? Worry not about mindless critics attacking your artistry. Snarkwatch has arrived.

Though experimental at times, Eggers thankfully has the wisdom to know when a tried-and-true formula should not be tampered with. He will keep his trademark curly locks fashionably longish.

“I learned a lot from watching reruns of Felicity,” Eggers claims. “I still can’t believe she cut it [her hair] so short.”

But what is McSweeneyism, anyway? Is it a writing style? Is it an elite social club? Is there a handshake? Are there colors that should be worn like the Bloods’ and the Crips’? Are there keggers with pizza, drunk sorority chicks, and guys in baseball caps? Will there be trading cards featuring the faces of Aimee Bender, Rick Moody, Colson Whitehead, George Saunders, John Hodgman, and Zadie Smith? Is McSweeneyism a cultural movement on a par with magic realism, modernism, or the industrial revolution?

Many of these questions remain cloaked in mystery. Like the Masons and Skull & Bones, the members of the McSweeney’s clan have all taken an oath of silence. Even the McSweeney’s logo rings cryptic: “Made with only you in mind by people you do not know.”

The only way to unlock their secrets is to become a McSweeney’s writer yourself. And I’m about to tell you how.⁴

Part 3: A Brief Interlude

Where the author diverges for a moment to list general rules that all writers should follow, McSweeney’s writers and otherwise.⁵

 

 

Rule number one: Embrace poverty. After all, author is a glorified way of saying “works two jobs.” (Note: Author sometimes means “inherited money” or “lives in sister-in-law’s tool shed on a permanent diet of rice and soy sauce.”)

Rule number two: Poetry is for college students and people who are too lazy to write prose. If you must write poetry, refrain from using old English spellings and words like candelabra (unless you’re Wiccan).

Rule number three: Do not allow yourself to be distracted by the three sirens of literature:

1. Writing groups. They are simply a way to procrastinate.

2. Graduate school. See Writing groups.

3. McGriddle breakfast sandwiches.

Rule number four: Like chronic masturbation, checking your Amazon rank too frequently can cause blindness and impotence.

Rule number five: Never criticize Barnes and Noble. Their reps are often consulted before publishing houses make their final bids on a book. Plus, they’ve been known to send Paolo and Joey over to rough up unruly authors. Save a bit of your advance to bribe the smarmy dude with psoriasis who works the Staff Recommendations table.

Rule number six: Never refer to Shakespeare as “the Bard.”

Rule number seven: Most writers submit their work through an agent. We suggest choosing one with a strong industry nickname like The Jackal. On the other hand, one should avoid an agent who has a nickname like The Leprechaun, Dough Boy, or Milky.

 

Agent Nicknames Part 1:

Good Nicknames	Bad Nicknames
The Wolf	The Ferret
Poker Face	Dickhead
The Magic	The Wiccan
Sledgehammer	Lug Nut
The Shark	The Tick-Infested Lamb
The General	The Albino
The Axe	The Tool
The Insider	The Leper
Ironside	Felt Tip
The Mayor	Falco
Wonder Woman	Monkey Man
Five Star	Peanut, Butter, and Jelly
Mr. Up-Sell	Mumbles

Part 4: The Nitty-Gritty

Where the author and a team of trained McSweeney’s scholars discuss how to become a McSweeney’s writer and, if there’s time, robots.

Living the Life: Creating a McSweeney’s Persona

Becoming a genuine McSweeney’s writer requires devotion. Being original on the written page is rarely enough. You need to shape an appropriate persona for yourself off the page as well. The following are some key ways to stand out from the crowd:

 

A: Create a Good Myth about Your Educational and Professional Background

(It is OK to take poetic license on your background and cred. You are a writer after all.)

Choose one of the following:

 

Prestigious bio: 1. Stuyvesant High School/MFA in English from University of Iowa/articles published in the New Yorker and Harper’s

Well-rounded bio: 2. Catholic high school/B.A. from Stanford /articles published in the New Yorker and Harper’s

Ironic bio: 3. High school dropout/short stint smuggling Mexicans across the border/articles published in the New Yorker and Harper’s

 

B: Pick a Strong Muse

Since people will always ask who your influences are, choose an original writer to emulate. Thomas Berger or Harry Crews are safe choices. They are literary. They are established. And no one on the planet Earth has ever heard of them. Claiming that one of the aforementioned is an influence can immediately make you sound smart. Dickens is another good example, since he has long been out of favor due to overexposure in junior high school. Plus, plot-heavy writers from previous generations are en vogue at McSweeney’s these days. Sarcastic choices like Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts can be equally rewarding.

 

C: Walk the Walk, Talk the Talk

1. Attend readings by other McSweeney’s authors in your area.

2. Add some flair by accessorizing with an ironic “I hate literature” button, or better yet, get a tattoo that says “working-class hero.”

3. When people ask you what you do for a living, say you are writing a memoir.

4. Openly criticize Barnes and Noble within earshot of others (unless you are doing a reading there).

5. Coopt a portion of a popular McSweeney’s writer’s name to confuse others into noticing you. For example, Robert Lanham could become Robert Safran Lanham or Robert Foster Lanham.

D: Create an Ironic Phrase for the Last Sentence of Your Author’s Bio Sample: “Insert Name lives and works in Wicker Park, Chicago, and is saving up for a nice table saw.”

Know Your Audience

(AKA they weren’t popular in grade school and resent all things considered popular now)

 

McSweeney’s writers should never attempt to be popular or appeal to a wide audience. Instead, write to impress English majors and other authors. After all, only they are smart enough to appreciate that special thing you do. Impressing other writers helps ensure that they will whisper sweet nothings about you to their agents and their editors.

Is Plot a Four-Letter Word?

Plot is not necessarily a bad word to the typical McSweeney’s writer; there are just easier and more creative ways to spin a yarn. Relying on plot to tell a story is a crutch.⁶ Who needs exhaustive plot as long as your characters are quirky? In general, plot-driven writing is respectable only if it comes from another era. Exceptions are sometimes made for eccentric comedy writers who appear on NPR and authors who have the first name Jonathan.

Occasionally, McSweeney’s will make a concession and devote an issue to plot, provided the narrative references a kitschy genre like forties detective novels or Victorian romance serials. In this context, authors can have fun, without sacrificing academic shrewdness, since they are referencing another literary era. And since kitsch is the heartbeat of McSweeneyism, lots of cool retro art can be featured when authors affectionately allude to other eras. Finding an opportunity to include dime-novel-style art, reportedly, leaves David “all tingly” with excitement.

Choosing a Tone

Whether writing a book review, a short story, or a comedic list about the people who made fun of you in high school, the McSweeney’s writer should pick a tone that he/she feels most comfortable with. Here are the most popular choices:

Circle one:

academically clever
snarky clever
playfully adorably clever
self-indulgent
NPR-ready
self-effacing
refreshingly sincere

The Perfect Title

Your title does not necessarily need to reflect the content of your piece, but a strong McSweeney’s title should catch its readers off guard with the right amount of absurdity and/or inaccessibility. Here are a few examples of strong titles:

1. Brahman by Birth, Literary Messiah by the Grace of an Ivy League

2. A Review of George Saunders by Someone Who Knows George Saunders

3. Pirates, Pirates, Parrots, Ferrets

4. Ten Phrases Uttered by My Mother Every Thanksgiving

5. A Meta Exegesis of Meta-Writer’s-Block Literature with Footnotes by Me

6. The Contents of an Everyday Household Glass Cleaner

7. Another Rick Moody Review

8. Important Dispatch: I Can Never Get Enough Nougat

9. Things I Found in My Pocket after Passing Out at a Blue Oyster Cult Reunion Concert That I Didn’t Attend Ironically

10. An Essay by a Woman. You Know, to Fill That 15 Percent Quota

11. People Don’t Understand the True Me When They Say I’m Self-Indulgent

12. One More Rick Moody Review

The Body of Your Piece

When writing for an Eggers publication, the main rule of thumb is to be original at all costs. McSweeney’s was founded on the principle that literature should take chances and not follow a doctrine. The invented mascot, Timothy McSweeney, after all is described as being “a troubled fellow, an outsider, a probable genius of indeterminate age [who] wanted attention, some consideration, an attentive ear.”

On a more concrete level, anyone familiar with McSweeney’s knows that a good short story contains rich character development, a vivid sense of time and place, and a retro diagram, or medical drawing. When writing a nonfiction essay or review, be sure to include a pie chart or a graph. If you feel stuck and simply cannot come up with an idea, dig that rejection letter out of the waste basket and type it up verbatim. Don’t have a rejection letter? The electric bill will work just as well!

Another surefire way to impress the McSweeney’s masthead is to appear neurotic. We recommend coming up with a concept that requires obsessive research but promises no meaningful reward. For instance, fleshing out a piece that catalogs the number of sports metaphors used in non-sports sections of the Boston Herald in 2004 is an excellent concept for a McSweeney’s essay. If you author a quirky piece such as this, people will automatically assume you are neurotic, a trait that is on a par with talent and/or an Ivy League education. After all, that “troubled fellow” Timothy McSweeney is always on the hunt for more troubled fellows.

And do not be afraid to experiment. If your piece sucks, you can always tinker with the design or insert an ink drawing of a lawnmower to distract people from noticing.

 

Agent Nicknames Part 2:

Good Nicknames	Bad Nicknames
The Negotiator	Dial Tone
The Chairman	The Goblin
Slim Shady	Nickels
Queen Liz	Cherry
Big Stick	Whiskers
Speedy	Captain Pancake
The Bear	The Gummy Bear
M-16	Skeeter
Uptown-Downtown
Murphy Brown	Gidget
Vader	The Wookiee
The Enforcer	Swamp Dawg
Mr. Deal	Cheese Puff Carol
Mr. Charisma	Ipecac

Bells and Whistles

Those desiring to adhere to true McSweeney’s style should include plenty of bells, whistles, and typographical gimmicks. Often these little extras can be more important than the content itself. In fact, an experienced McSweeney’s writer can even create an entire piece just from the bells and whistles. To be authentic, we recommend doing at least one of the following:

a. Discuss at length your fondness for the Arial Adelphi font in point size 10.

b. Write in the form of an instant message correspondence.

c. Put a majority of your content in footnotes.

d. Have your mom add margin notes critiquing your writing, and incorporate them into your piece.

e. Include a fake blurb by Oprah.

f. Provide a “rules and suggestions for reading” sidebar.

g. Add a Victorian-style summary as a prelude.

h. Using a mirror, stare at yourself seductively with puckered lips for thirty minutes daily.

Note: If you cannot find a place for any of the above, have an artistic friend sketch out a bell and a whistle and insert them at will throughout your piece with the respective captions “Bell” and “Whistle.”

Sending Your Submission to a McSweeney’s Publication

Even an unorthodox institution like McSweeney’s expects a certain degree of professionalism when it comes to submissions. We recommend including a cover letter (preferably on an agent’s letterhead) that compares your writing style to other McSweeney’s authors’. Saying your writing style is Zadie Smith meets Colson Whitehead with a touch of Aimee Bender is a good solid choice.

Before sending a submission, write a short synopsis of your piece using the McSweeney’s format. After all, even the altruistic staff at McSweeney’s are pressed for time in this busy day and age. Here’s a sample of correct and incorrect ways to write a McSweeney’s synopsis.

The incorrect way: The attached story is a comedic account of my life growing up next door to an elusive neighbor who may or may not be J. D. Salinger.

The correct way: The attached story is a comedic account of my life growing up next door to an elusive neighbor who may or may not be J. D. Salinger, where the truth about several of the following is discovered: baking-soda-enriched toothpaste, power tools, cuneiform tablet forgeries, chicken, and the value of good old-fashioned platonic friendship.

The Classic McSweeney’s Ending

Since most writers find that coming up with a strong ending is the hardest part of the process, we’ve saved this lesson for last.

To ensure success, we recommend ending your piece in a classic McSweeney’s style. Whether you’re writing a short story or an essay, ending on a gimmick is always preferable to a concise finish where all the variables fall neatly into place. If you’re at a loss, here are two sample styles to choose from:

Sample Ending 1: The Discussion Kitsch Style

Reader discussion questions:

1. True or False: Graydon Carter actually said, “Irony is gay.”

2. Is the word McSweeney’s the onomatopoeic sound of hipster self-loathing?

3. Are Vin Diesel and the Rock the same person?

4. Is it human nature to be the hardest on those who are also the most talented?

Sample Ending 2: The Facetious Cliffhanger Style

Check back next week when we’ll be discussing:

1. The nonexistence and absurdity in concept of so-called lad lit.

2. How making your protagonist an executive and changing the setting to the Condé Nast building can transform your mundane chick lit novel into a hip chick lit novel.

3. The proper ingredients needed to make quail stew refreshing yet hearty.

4. That nice girl at Walgreens with the oily skin.

And Most Important . . .

If you get published by a McSweeney’s publication, do not boast about it. Formally affiliating yourself with the McEggers Tang Clan would not be original! Deny it. Change the subject. Dismiss the McSweeney’s phenomenon by saying, “That shit is so 2001.” You needed the money. A résumé builder. Claim that McSweeney’s is a trend, just like rap music.

After all, no one really writes quirky, self-reflexive pieces anymore. No one is ever snarky. No one has strayed from standard writing conventions in years. Literary movements don’t happen anymore. Equal^® and Splenda^® taste better than sugar. And we can thank our lucky stars (and some say Eggers) that irony is truly, completely, categorically, unequivocally, and definitively dead.