Some of these thoughts started as a conversation between a friend of mine and I. Later, just for fun, I wrote some satirical tweets on Twitter about college and the humanities, especially literature. As a someone who’s gone through the system as an English major and an MFA in creating writing, I couldn’t resist expanding that list here:
Adjunct instructor/professor: See Lecturer.
Classics major: effete elitist who needs an excuse to see naked men and/or think about male homosexual relationships in the ancient world.
Creative writing workshop: students air their literary talent (or lack of) to an audience of their peers and a professor without the benefit of cameras or Simon or the other American Idol judges.
Dickens, Charles: a highly popular 19th century English novelist who would not be read and studied by English students and professors if he were a living author in the 20th and 21st centuries due to his sentimentality, melodrama, and predictability.
English Teacher (Japan): Useful employment for English major with no marketable job skills. They often fall in love with Japan and start to think they are Japanese, often to the amusement of the natives, who call them henna gaijin (funny foreigners).
English Literature major: see English major, wishes they were British, preferably English.
English major: snobby college student with lack of discernible talent and/or knowledge, and reads boring novels.
English professor: someone who pontificates about things they know nothing about, going way beyond their expertise (or lack of).
French major: Rightfully snobby college student, especially if they have mastered the language, especially with reading the literature. They may think they are French, especially if they have spent time in France.
Genre Fiction: Serious English majors and creative writing students are to avoid mainstream fiction (such as mystery, thrillers, romance, westerns, and science fiction) at all cost, and face serious social sanctions from their peers and professors if they even admit to reading and/or enjoying these works.
Grammar snobs: people who think they know everything about grammar, but know absolutely nothing at all. Do not engage in discussion. If one tries to bait you, walk away.
Joyce, James: Early 2oth century Irish writer whose stream of nonsense style is still emulated by creative writing students who think they are reinventing the wheel.
Kerouac, Jack: A Beat Generation writer students try to imitate more for his self-destructive lifestyle than for his actual writing style (which they consider hip). They try to copy that too, often with disastrous results.
Lecturer: Highly intelligent and passionate academic who often lack the star power of a professor (and thus tenure) and must often work several jobs to make a living.
Literary critic: Intellectual parasite, the Perez Hilton of literature and academia.
Literary fiction: Artfully boring short story, novella, or novel with stylish language and no imagination. Often focuses on extremely banal subjects (in the United States, anyway).
Literary journal/magazine: Publication no one reads, responsible for maintaining the existence of poetry, short works of fiction, and the publishing history of professors who need to justify their presence at universities.
Male poet: defensively straight, feels compelled to portray himself as a macho, but hip womanizer.
Mathematics: Something most humanities students and scholars fear because it requires actual intellectual rigor and skill.
MFA (Master of Fine Arts), Creative Writing: Niche market in academia, exploiting aspiring writers and providing employment for authors who would otherwise gain little or no income from their published writing.
Metafiction: An author’s narcissistic need to insert himself/herself as a character into his/her fictional story or the need to draw attention to the writing process in the writing style. This is the literary equivalent of talking about oneself in the third person or sewing a garment with the seams showing inside-out. Not pretty.
Open mic: Amateur hour for poetry, often done at a dirty coffee house. A free-for-all, this may include bad singers with acoustic guitars.
Philosophy major: see English major, going a step further with texts no one understands, especially them.
Plath, Syliva: the original emo poet, wallowing in self-pity and taking out her issues with her father and husband in her writing. Like Joyce and Kerouac, she too has hordes of imitators who ape her style badly.
Poems/Poetry: Type of writing consisting of arbitrary line breaks and rhymes. Nobody reads poems, but everyone writes them, evident by the small shelves dedicated to the genre at Borders or Barnes & Noble and an abundance of emo poems on the Internet. Given that, students are subject to poetry as a form of torture by Norton anthologies and other text books approved by English departments at major universities.
Poetry slam: See open mic, often more competitive, but without cameras or Simon or the other American Idol judges.
Queer theory: Utter nonsense written about gay, lesbian, transgendered, and everything under the rainbow topics by grad students and professors who don’t know what they’re talking about. See theory.
Shakespeare, William: Alleged playwright and poet. No one knows if he really wrote all the great works attributed to him. Essentially, the Milli Vanilli of the Renaissance, though “How shall I compare thee to a summer’s day” certainly trumps “Girl you know it’s true.”
Short story: Literary genre fallen out of circulation despite it being ideally suited for the social conditions of the 21st century vs. the novel (which publishers like because they are sellable). Also an excuse to buy Playboy, which strangely is one of the few remaining mainstream publishers of the short story.
Theory: talking about nothing in a jargon designed to confuse and confound. Originally something intelligent from the French, it has since been hijacked in the United States by English and Philosophy professors and their graduate students.
