Critic At Large: The Road

Okay, so you want to write a post-apocalyptic story but you want to make sure that it doesn’t end up on the SF/Fantasy shelves between to the novelization of the Transformers movie and the latest doorstop in that tiresome epic fantasy series that the author should have put out of its misery back in Volume Six. If you incorporate the following creative suggestions, you’ll earn yourself a one-way ticket to literary cred and a choice back-cover quote from Michael Chabon:

• Identify your characters in only the most generic terms possible (e.g. “man” and “boy”). This will keep the reader’s mind focused on the universality of human suffering. And critics just eat that shit up.
• Be purposefully vague about the exact nature of your fictional apocalypse. Remember, you’re trying to say something profound about the human condition and plot details just get in the way.
• Limit yourself to one stock female character. After all, the end of the world is no place for girls. And have her say something like, “Because I am done with my whorish heart and have been for a long time.” Everyone knows that all the great writers are self-important misogynists.
• Throw in a scene where a newborn infant is roasted on a spit. Because there’s no rule against dotting the road to profundity with a couple gross-outs.
• End your book with a cryptic paragraph about trout. Yes, trout.

If you follow the five easy steps I’ve outlined above, your dreary and tepid post-apocalyptic fable will be the toast of the literati. You might even get on Oprah.