25th
“You condescending people should read my book”
Oh, youth. “Inscrutable youth,” as Elif says, “with your enormous sweatshirts and tiny telephones…” And your three published lines of poetry, your day jobs, your bright fresh faces, your future masterpieces—how haughty you are! How condescending.
Well let me tell you something, youth. You should read the speech Morris Binkel makes at the bottom of p. 73 of my book. Attend to it! This doesn’t mean that I turned into Morris Binkel or that you’ll turn into me. I learned from his mistakes; you can learn from mine. (Yeah, yeah, I know.) But the premise of your rebukes, the presupposition, here I’ll spell it out for you—that you will not waste your twenties—well, well … I thought so too.
You have confounded us, sir. How does one parody parody? Perhaps when we are as old as you (that would be in five weeks), we’ll have some idea. In the meantime, we will stick to not wasting our thirties, too, and writing things that make sense and don’t refute themselves—as part of our ongoing effort to TAKE BACK THE INTERNET.
