It's really not Alec Greven's fault. He's probably a very nice kid. At first, when his first book came out and seemed like a sweet-natured, genuine one-off, we were totally on board! And his mini-empire (three books, a film and counting) of from-the-mouths-of-babes self-helpery exists not because of his ingratiating manner or eerily erect posture - who doesn't want to please adults at 10? - but because a large team of variegated grown-ups has decided to make him a cottage industry. You gotta get a gimmick, after all, and his - or that of his handlers - is the ingenuous affect of a much younger child, a play on some half-remembered nostalgia for Our Gang-style innocence, and the dispensing of "advice" to the community of adults for whom, presumably, the "Gifts for Grads" table at Barnes and Noble is intended.

(In fact, if we have one fault to find with Alec Greven, it is that he makes us think ungenerous, mean thoughts about a child, which in turn makes us hate ourselves and deplore the slow death of our better natures. But in the cold light of day, we pity him his cash-cow existence (which at this point evokes a Dickensian setup in which he cranks out books) and the adults who enable it. And, naturally, wish him a speedy recovery.)

Ben Karlin, on the other hand, has no excuse. Karlin, the Daily Show-creator and lesson-learner whose self-regarding douchebaggery we have chronicled on these virtual pages, has pursued his path to infamy with an arrow's precision (the kind of precision that allows Robin Hood to split that guy's arrow in the tournament.) Not content to have made major, important and quality contributions to the collective consciousness, Karlin has persistently aligned himself with a sort of deceptively self-deprecating style of man-share always dispensed from the safe height of Important Lessons Already Learned.

Well, now these two giants of the modern emotional landscape are coming together! Karlin, in company with one Stu Zicherman - apparently his partner in crime on A.C.O.D. (Adult Children of Divorce) - is to turn Greven's first work, How to Talk to Girls, into a movie. All we know at this juncture is that the script is based on "Greven's extensive experience on the playa-ground" and that the producers envision a "warm-hearted comedy."

While the collaborative process itself seems ripe for a heartwarming Ryan Reynolds flick (and introducing some self-assured scamp of an L.A. scion with sun-streaked hair in the Greven role), we can't imagine the two screenwriters are actually going to be taking advantage of the author's consultant potential. Rather, as has been the case so far with the child's work, it will be quickly re-packaged to fit some adult's idea of how children exist in relationship to themselves. The whole pitiable scheme seems to lend itself almost too easily to conjecture about the nature of modern childhood, sexualization, filthy lucre, and all manner of literature of alienation. Better as usual to cite the immortal words of Stevie Smith, "it is a pity to be so silly."

Two Scribes Tapped For 'Girls' [The Hollywood Reporter]

Earlier: What Can We Learn From Men Who Claim They Have "Learned"? (Hint: "That They Need To Be Schooled" Is Not That Off)

That Ben Karlin "Modern Love": A Critical Reading
Precocious Youngsters: Should Kids Just Be Kids?
The Book Of Love
9-Year-Old Dating Expert Not Exactly A Ladies Man
9-Year-Old Dating Advisor's Book Optioned For The Big Screen
9-Year-Old's Movie Finds A Producer
OK, No Longer Cute

The story is filled with such divine specimens of shameless self-importance as "I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn't hide my amusement," and "life-changing experiences are a tedious conversational topic at best" and "Manhattan dating is a highly competitive, ruthlessly selective sport," and "If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one's education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn't imagine it" — that's in reference to carrying around Samuel Beckett's Proust.

I don't have a lot of books. I tend to leave them places, like my parents' attic, and what books I do have are usually an accident of some story I was writing. But the last time I had sex the guy happened to find Beckett's Three Novels in my room. This is perhaps the only highbrow book currently in my possession. Inspired by the Times story, I began reading The Unnamable at Starbucks. It pretty much immediately reminded me of the woman who sat on the toilet for two years. I started writing a story from her perspective, keeping myself amused by the absurdity, and the novelty — and imagining the slow process by which skin and toilet seat become one amid the whirring of the blenders — when suddenly I realized the man with the laptop next to me was watching porn. A white girl, blowing a black dick the width of my wrist. He watched for hours, motionless, chuckling softly to himself. Who watches porn without jerking off? Was he some sort of critic? Isn't it supposed to be "irredeemable"?

Okay, so the point is, there is no point. The rest of the stories in Sunday's Times are worth noting: the image on the front page was of a Zimbabwean man slipping underneath barbed wire in an attempt to escape the Mugabe regime for an incrementally-less miserable life in neighboring South Africa, story A6. To the right are two stories discussing the ramifications of colonialists inadvertently favoring elite ethnic minorities for positions of power over large and angry ethnic majorities. (War!) To the left, a story about the new regulations being proposed to prevent the greed and hubris of market arbitrageurs from again sending the economy hurtling toward destruction. To the bottom, a story filed from one of those lower-middle class towns (Florida) where said greed and hubris has resulted in everyone losing their houses; bottom right, Venezuela aiding FARC. Inside, Julia Allison moved into a small apartment.

But "It's Not You, It's Your Books" was, inexplicably, the Most Emailed. I blame the credit crunch. Soon, New Yorkers are going to need things, things that are not art or fashion or restaurant reservations or real estate, with which to differentiate ourselves from and inspire insecurity within others. So: books. Sadly, I had not read many of the books referenced — positively or negatively — mentioned in the piece. But in the spirit of self-improvement and mockery I am going to start. Over the next few days I'll try to sprinkle this blog with analysis of some of the great works of literature referenced within the piece. Should we start with Ada?

It's Not Me, It's Your Books [NY Times]

This frame of mind is simply a societal cancer, the lottery addiction of the creative class, a malady that condemns generations of New York men to empty lifetimes of nihilistic self-absorption and worse, the omnipresent if never-articulated pity of their male friends who know they are making poor decisions, squandering for extra beer money precious commodities that someone wiser might surely see fit to make the centerpiece of their existence one day, like an heirloom you should have gotten appraised before that idiot took it to Antiques Roadshow.

After some stops and starts and wacky misunderstandings involving language, food and culture, we were in something like love and living together in a loft in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. A few years into the relationship, I jotted down these thoughts: "I need a better quality pen to write about Paola. What kind of person is she? Besides the obvious. The strength. The beauty. The individuality. The fierceness of her intellect. The confidence that may or may not be real.

Men look at her with something bordering on adoration. She has the ability to show unrestrained joy and still look cool. When she wears a certain hat, she looks like a woman out of time, which suits her well. I need a better pen still.

But things fell apart, thanks mainly to the burden of expectation. Mine, naturally. By the end of that year I was on the outs with Paola and in the middle of a start with a clever redhead with the most spectacularly smooth and pale skin I had ever encountered.

A flash of color did trigger a revelation: What I was looking for in a relationship could be attained only if I was willing to travel great distances for it. Be willing to battle the sun, sleep on twigs, and suffer through irrational fears of nonexistent thieves. Even be willing to consume a raspberry powdered drink mix that under no circumstances other than complete glucose deprivation would I ever consider putting to my lips.

In Paola, I had found a worthy travel companion.

Later that morning I paddled back to the main campsite and ate the most delicious breakfast burrito in my life.

A Signal In The Sky Said: Marry Her [NY Times]

Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me

You'd think, based on the title of the anthology Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me, that the men who've contributed essays to it have learned something from women who've dumped them. Well, some of them have! Actually, as I flip through the book again now, I can only find one essay that has a thoughtful take-away that might help someone who finds him or herself in a similar situation. It's by Ok Go singer Damian Kulash, Jr. and it's called "A Dog Is No Reason To Stay Together," but an apter title might be, "Don't fool yourself into thinking you can make a long-distance relationship work, especially if you are in a band that has just recently become successful." Damian examines his relationship with former live-in love Amanda with sober maturity. "It was love - love like you see in movies. Except in movies, relationships don't change, or grow, or slowly fall apart. They either last forever or end mercifully fast with a thrown plate and a jump cut." That sentence is exactly as good as this anthology gets.

Things with Amanda didn't last forever, but Damian's bio notes that he's now married with two dogs. Actually, almost all of the men in this anthology are married, and Damian is one of the few who don't make a big deal about it in their stories. You know that thing Neal Pollack (oh, he's in here!) does where he's like "I'm married, did I mention that I'm married, I can't be that bad of a guy because someone married me, okay?" That's a recurring theme here.

Most of these guys are comedians or comedy writers or memoirists of the "I'm a lovable loser, haha" variety - Andy Richter, Nick Hornby, A.J. Jacobs, Will Forte, and a slew of former Onion and SNL writers are represented (Chuck Klosterman, where are you?) They often begin their essays, especially when writing about high-school or college-era rejections, by marveling that any woman has ever found them attractive. "God bless arty girls and booze!" Andy Richter writes of the factors that finally enabled his college-fatty self to get laid. "During the course of the evening - aided no doubt by generous portions of cheap beer - I tricked her into liking me," is how Will Forte describes meeting his first serious girlfriend. Whenever men write about getting laid despite being outwardly undesirable, I immediately get suspicious. It's so The Game, you know? It just seems like a weird kind of inverse bragging, especially when they talk about how attractive the girls they somehow managed to bone were, especially when said girls' attractiveness is the only thing about said girls that seems to merit mentioning. Okay, boys, we get it. Even before you were semifamous for being smart and funny, you could still get some. Probably you were smart and funny even then! Um, good job!

The only thing less appealing than false modesty is outright bragging, and there's some of that here too. In 'Things More Majestic And Terrible Than You Could Ever Imagine,' Onion writer Todd Hanson catalogues a litany of women who've dumped him that reads more like a sexual highlights reel. On a list entitled 'Things positive," he writes, "Sex with two heavily tattooed punk-rock drummer chicks whose breasts bounce hypnotically as they hammer away onstage is pretty much as amazing as you'd imagined. I cannot emphasize this point enough." Wow, Todd. Two.

But bragging is still more appealing than vengeful muckraking, and there are a couple of essays in this anthology that have to be filed under that heading. These are essays that seem designed with a single reader in mind - the girl who will glimpse this book on the 'new nonfiction' or maybe even the 'Valentine's Day' table, see her exboyfriend's name on the cover, and open it up to the essay about what a terrible person she is. Damian Kulash's admission that he misses his ex-dog far more than he misses his ex-girlfriend pales in comparison to Andy Selsberg's essay 'A Grudge Can Be Art." Andy details his affair with a nineteen year old aspiring actress eleven years his junior. To be fair, he doesn't seem to be taking any pains to portray himself as anything like a decent or mature person - he acknowledges that continuing to hate a woman with whom he spent less than forty-eight hours ("and that includes being asleep together") for fucking his roommates is pretty ridiculous.

But his parting shot is still kind of stunning in its naked vindictiveness: "I do know where I'll see her eventually: on a reality show. She is genetically and socially engineered to tear through one of those setups like an erotic tornado." There's no way the intervening years could've changed this girl, of course. After all, they haven't changed Andy! Some boys will never learn.

*Full disclosure: the "guy" is the fiance of my best friend and former Jezebel contributor "Heather" and he is not a jerk at all; in fact he is much better and nicer than I ever imagined he would be when he brutally ass-raped the first piece of mine he edited back in the day (;-) Ben!) so that fits right in with my thesis. Also, sorry Emily, for writing this. It needed to be done. That was some fucked Up ish. And readers, sorry for all the "meta." It's Friday. That is my only excuse.