Guy lit summarized

Here, then, is a summary of guy-lit novels: I may be 30, but I act 15. I am adrift in New York. I’m too clever by half for my own good. I live on puns and snide, sarcastic asides. I don’t look too deeply into myself or anyone else ? everyone else is boring or ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Here, then, is a summary of guy-lit novels: I may be 30, but I act 15. I am adrift in New York. I'm too clever by half for my own good. I live on puns and snide, sarcastic asides. I don't look too deeply into myself or anyone else ? everyone else is boring or a phony anyway. I may be a New Yorker, but I am not in therapy. I have a boring job, for which I am overeducated and underqualified, but I lack the ambition to commit to a serious career. (Usually I have family money.) I hang out with my equally disconnected friends in many of the city's bars. I drink a lot, take recreational drugs, don't care about much except being clever. I recently broke up with my girlfriend, and while I am eager to have sex, which I do often given the zillions of available women in New York, the sex is not especially fulfilling, and emotions rarely enter the picture. I am deeply shallow. And I know it. Oh, and then something happens. I go on a journey, get inside the media machinery, sort-of fall for a new girl. Or 9/11 happens, but that doesn't really affect me much either. And though I might now mouth some bland platitudes about change, anyone can see that I'm still the same guy I was before. Only different. But not really. From Michael Kimmel's scathing review of the genre in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Here, then, is a summary of guy-lit novels: I may be 30, but I act 15. I am adrift in New York. I’m too clever by half for my own good. I live on puns and snide, sarcastic asides. I don’t look too deeply into myself or anyone else ? everyone else is boring or a phony anyway. I may be a New Yorker, but I am not in therapy. I have a boring job, for which I am overeducated and underqualified, but I lack the ambition to commit to a serious career. (Usually I have family money.) I hang out with my equally disconnected friends in many of the city’s bars. I drink a lot, take recreational drugs, don’t care about much except being clever. I recently broke up with my girlfriend, and while I am eager to have sex, which I do often given the zillions of available women in New York, the sex is not especially fulfilling, and emotions rarely enter the picture. I am deeply shallow. And I know it. Oh, and then something happens. I go on a journey, get inside the media machinery, sort-of fall for a new girl. Or 9/11 happens, but that doesn’t really affect me much either. And though I might now mouth some bland platitudes about change, anyone can see that I’m still the same guy I was before. Only different. But not really.

From Michael Kimmel’s scathing review of the genre in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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