More Relationship Advice for the Quirky Jerky

As we promised last week, our theme today is on the Quirky Jerky guy and literary taste. It has struck me in recent months that one reason men should fear today's woman is that it is impossible to meet a member of the opposite sex who has not read Harry Potter... Think about it. How can you compare to a boy wizard? (And I'm not talking about Andray Blatche!)

Further, how can you hold forth on the important issues of our day with the ladies who are going to take their cues from the politics of Dumbledore? No, these are indeed hard times for misunderstood males.

So next time a woman talks Harry to you, try driving her away with some of these savant allusions:
"That reminds me of this time when Holden Caufield..." After bar mitzvah, it should be illegal for a guy to find merit in Catcher in the Rye. You are a man, my son, not a weepy loser...

"I wouldn't know, I've been to busy reading Norman Rush's Mortals." Think Hemmingway attitude, with Proustian long-windedness. Ouch... Highbrow macho is guaranteed to put a damper on budding romance.

"Did you know that Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected by like hundreds of publishers before it finally got published?" (Yeah, just like my goal is to be rejected by hundreds of women who won't understand how awesome I am -- ASM, does this ring any bells? Like cowbells? Like Austrian milkmaid bells?)

"I was reading The Elementary Particles the other day, and I totally see Houellbecq's point about the dehumanizing decadence bred from the generation of '68..." While anything in French literature -- even blissful misogyny -- holds a certain cachet, insistence that one has only read Houellbecq in translation is sure to repulse any sensible woman. (At least one hopes.)

"Chuck Palahniuk" Just GROSS and boorish!


















Some also-rans that just didn't make the cut:
Anything by Don Dellilo or Thomas Pynchon... Some Girls just dig pretentious jerks too much.

Proust: Either too gay or too French professorish! (And everybody knows that French professors get all the chicks!)

Charles Bukowski: Mickey Rourke; nuff said!

Knut Hamsun's Hunger: Too exotic.

Portnoy's Complaint: Some Jewish women will take a Jewish husband -- NO MATTER WHAT!