One Gift Guide to Rule Them All

It’s getting late, people. And your literary friends expect brilliant Festivus gifts from you. So let’s get cracking! Here’s something for everyone on your list.

For the English major:

These fake blood page markers and some hipster glasses. (Remember: your goal is not to educate the English major. Your goal is to get the English major laid by other English majors.)

For the poet:

The Penguin Anthology of 20^th Century American Poetry, now out in paperback. And some tea. (Don’t poets like tea?) And, let’s face it, a loan.

For your relative who mostly just watches Jersey Shore and reads US Weekly:

A subscription to Tin House or Ploughshares or American Short Fiction. Because she’ll be like, Whaaa? but she won’t be able to return it and you’ll have spent $20 supporting literature, so ha.

For the debut novelist:

Cute bookends, to hold all future books and translations. Alternatively: a very large bottle of whiskey. Because it’s all downhill from here.

For the aspiring writer:

The Paris Review Interviews, volumes I-IV. And this Write Like a Motherfucker mug. And this bottle of Paxil.

For the delusional aspiring writer:

A lovely blank book and a gorgeous pen and these bottles of dipping ink. Because somebody should have fun writing, damnit.

For your local indie bookstore owner:

A Kindle, smashed to pieces and dissolved in vat of acid. But cover the acid vat with those cool black-and-white postcards of authors’ faces, so she can reuse it later as a garbage can or something. Bonus points if you just grabbed the Kindle from some guy on the street.

For your poetry professor, who you accidentally slept with that one time:

This amazing color signature print of The Great Gatsby. Because he might be creepy, but let’s face it—he has excellent taste.

For your sardonic aunt:

Marion Meade’s classic 1989 biography Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? and these chic Edgar Allan Poe flats.

For your horrible ex-girlfriend, who just sold her third novel for like a million dollars and who the hell does she even think she is?:

A donation, in her name, to the Arbor Day Foundation “for all those trees you’re killing.” Because you’re not above that.

For the writer you’ve been stalking online:

This Christina Rossetti bracelet (if female); this beer named for Oscar Wilde (if thirsty); this Hannah Arendt finger puppet (if strange and nimble-fingered)

For the cute reference librarian with the cool beard and the corduroys:

This Reading Rainbow shirt from Urban Outfitters, and the key to your apartment.

For Alice Munro:

I know what you’re thinking. She has a Nobel! What more could she possibly need? Um, she totally needs this hat. You should send it to her.

For the journal editor who sent you a very encouraging rejection letter:

These very encouraging chocolates.

For yourself:

This “I Want to F. Scott Fitzgerald” shirt and an I Would Prefer Not To tote bag and a copy of Infinite Jest. If you don’t get hit on now, you’re living in the wrong city.

For me:

(What, don’t I deserve a gift? After all this help I’ve given you?)

I would like this poster with the entire text of Moby-Dick printed on it, please. And signed copies of all those secret Salinger stories and a trip to Italy and scandalous photos with which to blackmail the fiction editor of The New Yorker.

Ohhh, you shouldn’t have!