Catcher in the Rye ll, This Time It's Impersonal!

Yes, there's really only one chick lit storyline (also in use for chick flicks), and I've always insisted there's only one reggae song. But there's room in the one-note boat for guy-lit too.

Here, then, is the summary of all guy-lit* novels:

I have a boring job, for which I am overeducated and underqualified, but I lack the ambition to commit to a serious career. (Usually I have family money.) I don't look too deeply into myself or anyone else — everyone else is boring or a phony anyway. I may be 30, but I act like I'm 15. I'm too clever for my own good. I live on puns and snide, sarcastic asides. I hang out with my equally disconnected friends in many of the city's bars. I drink a lot, take recreational drugs, don't care about much except being clever. I recently broke up with my girlfriend, and while I am eager to have sex, which I do often given the zillions of available women in New York, the sex is not especially fulfilling, and emotions rarely enter the picture. I am deeply shallow. And I know it.

Oh, and then something happens. I go on a journey, get inside the media machinery, sort-of fall for a new girl. Or 9/11 happens, but that doesn't really affect me much either. And though I might now mouth some bland platitudes about change, anyone can see that I'm still the same guy I was before. Only different. But not really.

(*High Fidelity, About a Boy, Bright Lights Big City, Douglas Coupland, ad nauseum)