This Just In: Men Don’t Just Write Books, They Read Them Too

Ladies, please — gather ‘round. Come closer, that you may smell the soured nonfat milk and two Equal packets I dumped into each of the seven cups of coffee I have had since five thirty this morning. The newspaper of record named after Holly Hunter’s character in “Top of the Lake” has just published an article, written by a woman (or someone impersonating a woman using a womanly name), who claims to have visited with men who gather on a regular basis behind closed doors to discuss words on a page, and their collective meaning, with each other!! I don’t know about you, but I find this completely insane and let me tell you why. This is in complete contravention of everything we’ve come to understand about the literary economy. The men have always been the ones who write the books, because they are so sad and so sleep-deprived that they must emboss their stupid feelings and fictions on bound pieces of flattened pulp and then sell them for thirty dollars apiece so that they can finally make their mothers proud. Historically, only women have ever read books (technically, the word “bookworm” is Middle English for book wench). Did you know that for every single sentence of writing a man reads, a woman reads seventy-seven? We women have been reading the men’s books for years now, suffering through their misery, and why? Because who else has the patience to put up with hours upon hours of one man’s self-indulgent thoughts? Certainly not other men!! This what we were trained to do — they changed the rules and let us into colleges so we could learn how to read hundreds of books at a time a and prop up the male book economy! This freed more men to write more books and trained more women how to buy books. Think about it! And now these fuckers want to go back and read exclusively what other men wrote? And upset the natural order of things? Honestly, be my guest. None of it is very good anyway. Next thing you know they’ll be telling us a woman wants be president.

Photo: Alan Cleaver