Pompous Ivy League Lit Kids Ruin it for the Rest of Us
Have you ever wondered where all those self-styled intellectuals – pale faced, with their hair swept to the side – end up when they are cast out of their ivory towers? Some of them, undoubtedly the more masochistic ones, come crawling back as graduate students. And they are looked upon – often unfairly – by undergrads with a mix of fear and derision. The others, the meaner and richer ones, end up in New York, where they live off their trust funds and fancy themselves members of the literary aristocracy.
A few weeks ago the Daily Intelligencer picked up on a disenchanted blog post by Jessica Roy, an NYU student who had finally made her way into such circles one night only to find that it was populated by a cadre of pretentious and sycophantic Ivy Leaguers. The Daily Intel solicited a more thorough explanation from Roy:
A part of me longed to be absorbed into that elite circle of Ivy-educated literature nuts who have co-opted what it means to be a writer in New York. Because these days, if you’re not with them, you’re being mocked by them. I have thin skin, so I figured the former would be my best bet.
More unsettling dirt on your former classmates after the jump.
On Saturday night, Leon Neyfakh of the New York Observer picked my friend Alec Niedenthal and me up in downtown Brooklyn… We walked with Leon to another guy’s house. I'll call him Sebastian. Along the way we plucked up a couple of n+1 interns, underage Lolitas in slutty dresses. They were sucking lollipops and carrying six packs of Blue Moon. These girls seemed like they would fuck anyone for a byline, and the men were even worse, charming them with discussions about Gaddis’ The Recognitions or the glory of the em dash. Everything I had begun to suspect — that n+1 was a place where old guys who never got laid in high school finally have their pick of the fine young crop — felt wholly true in those moments leading up to entering Sebastian's house. I felt suddenly hollowed.
Sebastian lives with his parents in a multi-million-dollar brownstone in Brooklyn. There were Persian rugs and chandeliers; the fireplace mantle had pictures of Sebastian wearing a suit as a child. On his parents’ armoire sat a set of old keys and a couple of grams of coke for anyone who might be interested. I felt sad for him, for having all of these assholes in his house who made fun of him for making peach Cosmos. He was an empty trust-fund hipster in his parents’ mansion where all the literary kids came to play.
Everyone there went to Columbia or Harvard or Yale. They argued over grammar and syntax, the difference between a metaphor and a metonymy. Someone sparked a joint and everyone drank and simmered in their own self-congratulatory pseudo-intellectualism. For the first time in my life I felt intellectually inferior. I could not name my favorite passage in The Recognitions. I was tongue-tied.
The party at Sebastian’s house reads like your lit class from hell. Imagine, suddenly, your professor and everyone normal in your course on Joyce or Chaucer morphing and multiplying into dozens of argyle-wearing intellectuals, and I’m pretty sure that would cause you to swear off English classes for the rest of your life. So smart move getting out Jessica, and hope you know that most of us don’t approve of lengthy discussions on metonymy and em dashes.
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August 9th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I just like the “Cruel Intentions” reference
August 10th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Hey James, when I read that on gawker two weeks ago and found myself deciding whether to sympathize with the fed-up NYU student fleeing New York forever or the well-published, sexually active, culturally literate ivy leaguers, I think we came to opposite conclusions. You might have read this story wrong.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:00 am
How about sympathizing with neither? In the end, not one of these kids will be remembered. I’ve got better things to do than follow the fraught and invented self-obsessed hand-wringing of bored rich people over their own utter vacuity. Life is too short to be so little entertained. Jess writes:
Any talent that Alec has could be stripped from him because from now on, he’s no longer writing for himself, he’s writing for Gessen, for Emily Gould, with her tattoos and her book deal, for the fucking New York Times Book Review, where he initially targeted the rage that brought him to this very spot.
Is it really possible to harbor rage towards the New York Times Book Review? Could any such absurd relationship between human being and periodical better capture the futility of mortal existence? The quintessence of meaningless pathos, the apogee of abject inferiority is rage at the New York Times Book Review.
Furthermore, as a student of literature myself, as well as a fan of that vague sphere that effervescently encircles literary “theory,” I can say with complete honesty and without any shame that literary criticism and literary theory represent the apex of human mediocrity and the pinnacle soul-wrenching tedium. The “cultural literacy” that the above poster refers to is but the neurotic logorrheic verbiage of mankind’s most perfect bores. I am quite happily a charlatan who is paid to read books by an obscenely wealthy private university; much of my effort, which is spread out over several hours of nervous business every week, constitutes an attempt to extend this charade as far into the future as possible.
At least I have fun!
April 1st, 2009 at 3:25 pm
amen brosef