Your Ass Got Invited to My Pretentious Literary Party
Salutations! I’m throwing a pretentious literary party. Formal attire is required as is a willingness to converse on lofty ideals that stimulate the mind. Don’t show up if you are a complete dolt.
Beginning at four o’clock, we’ll start snacking on canapes and discussing how Faulkner influenced Latin American writers through his provocative exploration of history and culture. We won’t know exactly what we’re talking about, but we can still come across as sophisticated and worldly. It will be fun.
At five o’clock, I’ll break out a bottle of Merlot, begin idolizing Hemingway, and start saying vaguely racist things. We’ll all pretend to be Americans living in Paris in the 1920s and spending our days in cafes. I have berets you can all wear.
At six o’clock, we’ll begin moaning about how the golden era of literature has long since passed and how intertextuality in historiographic metafiction has ripped apart our lives. We’ll gab about the meaninglessness of deconstruction and Foucault’s mirror, wear cravats and fedoras, smoke cigars, and complain about our wives to svelte dames.
This will be shortly followed by dinner. Over a delicious salmon with potatoes and asparagus, disregarded novelists will issue thinly veiled threats through clenched teeth at critics sitting across from them. Someone will come close to punching somebody else and then we’ll all laugh and pretend he was just joking.
After dinner, we’ll read selected passages from For Whom the Bell Tolls out loud, ask stimulating questions, and truly engage with one another on an intellectual level. During this time, I will be sloshed, so you can throw around the words per se, ergo, and quod erat demonstratum and I’ll understand you well enough.
Near the end of the party, I will show off the typewriter I almost never use and look at you long enough to pressure you into giving me a compliment.
We are going to outdo Fitzgerald in every way with booze, a jazz band, scandalous extramarital affairs, and a loud ruckus that will keep my neighbors up. The night will be a complete debauchery that will blow out any sense of fun you’ve ever had.
Please RSVP by this Thursday or I will make you wear a mask the entire time you’re there.
Address: 7833 Winchester Lane
Inebram, MA 45223
Note: Dear present and future employers, this is satire.
