McEggers: Hehehe...

Um, guys? Cool it. It was satire. Lanham didn't really mean any of that stuff, he was criticizing the styles present in McSweeney's by parodying them. It was a joke. I severely doubt that he really hates Wiccans, and he was definitely -making fun- of the fact that some people think plot is unnecessary. He wasn't seriously suggesting that you should forget about plot and just have quirky characters. He was saying that people who choose to do that are idiots. Essentially, he pulled a Jonathan Swift (although I'm very glad that he didn't go so far as to suggest that we should feed our babies to the rich. People would REALLY have gotten pissed off about that one...)

And, frankly, I thought the whole essay was funny as hell.

I would probably have enjoyed this more if I was more knowledgeable about McSweeney's, but it made me giggle anyway. The bit about how the perfect title should have just the right amount of inaccessibility? Classic. I'm so freaking tired of writers giving their stories huge, nonsensical, self-indulgent titles that sound pretty. Like, really tired of that. Like, the next person in one of my classes who does that will probably get punched in the face. And I loved the comment about how it's easy to impress people if you appear to be neurotic.

Now, like I said, I don't know much about McSweeney's. Maybe it is as stupid as Lanham suggests, or maybe he's being terribly hard on it. But, whether they are in McSweeney's or not, there really are stupid-as-hell writers who really do believe that it's good to only have quirky characters and to write like you're snarky and clever and to trade talent for put-on originality. And I hate those people. And I'm really glad that someone else hates them too, and that, unlike me, they went and wrote an essay about it. You go Robert Lanham.