Welcome to Litsy!

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 divorc�es!). 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.