September 24, 2009 | lists
1. In the title, declare ‘the end of something’, democracy, reason, faith, literacy, the draw-string pant. If that doesn’t work, go with The Culture of ___________and insert something you find particularly loathsome that you’d like to see the end of, but doesn’t lend itself to the preceding title. Better still, combine the two: The End of Participatory Democracy: The Culture of Apathy, Disengagement and Eroding Civic Discourse. Use any of the following phrases: ‘The Culture of’, ‘The End of’, and then ‘How to’, and then, ‘A Guide to’ .
2. Quote De Toqueville’s ‘Democracy in America’ at least 5 times in the first two chapters. Then, quote H.L. Mencken quoting De Toqueville’s Democracy in America, before finally,quoting Mencken on the subject of your choosing, preferably, democracy in America.
3. Profess disdain for people’s popular tastes and bemoan a bygone era’s passing. This includes a remark about how television dulls the senses and how the author is above such things, despite including an entire chapter about how television dulls the senses and which particular programs are most likely to do so. Two choices here: blame every prevailing social ill on the internet, TV, or a combination of internet and TV. Add a dash of Neil Postman, Marshall McLuhan.
4. Sprinkle liberally with the terms ‘frisson‘, ‘solipsistic’ and ‘iconography’. Quote Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class.
5. Begin each and every chapter with a quote from a syphilitic philosopher, preferably in a language other than English (translation not required).
6. Use phrases like ‘inform the political discourse’–in the dedication.
7. Find someone pompous enough to make the author look like a Salvation army soup kitchen prep cook by comparison, to write a back cover blurb. Make sure back cover encomia contain impenetrably obscure terms. Have a critic in a city with more than 1.5 million people declare somewhere that the author is worth his/her weight in some precious metal.
8. Include a note about how the font was originally developed by a 17th century club-footed Belgian printer who succumbed to pleurisy.
9. Include 50 pages of footnotes, which, if they were printed in 12 point font would make Atlas Shrugged look like a pamphlet on how to prevent osteoporosis.
10. Declare something ‘vulgar’ in at least every third chapter. Bonus points if the term is used in the title.
For tips on How to be Rock Critic, click here
omg… LMAO!!!!! hilarious
I agree .. nice post ..lol
The title of my next book is going to be “The End of Internet Blogs, or Life as We Knew It in Pre-Columbian Honduras”. As Louis XIV once said, “L Etat, c’est moi!”
having raed atlas shrugged, I have to say
those are a lot of footnotes