Long Live The Literary A-hole
The insecure men who act pretentious and the women who try to love them
Right after having sex with her boyfriend for the first time, Elle*, a writer who was 20 at the time, asked him if he wanted to read something she had written. “Honestly, I’m terrified of reading your work and learning if you’re a terrible writer because I won’t want to sleep with you anymore,” she recalled him telling her. Her boyfriend, who she nicknamed “scarf guy” because he possessed an inordinate amount of scarves, also loved explaining Sylvia Plath to her and correcting the grammar of her texts.
Years later, when she got a major byline, he eventually read her work and found her whole portfolio. “He said I was talented and tried to sleep with me again,” she told me.
Elle made the mistake of dating what polite folks call the “litbro.” I prefer referring to them as “literary assholes.” You may be familiar with this type of man: the pretentious aspiring intellectual who puts a lot of care into flaunting his knowledge/education, his style (think glasses, jackets, scarves and pricey notebooks), and his opinion on food and beverage.
I find the literary asshole thoroughly fascinating — which does not necessarily mean charming.
