Litcrawl is SF’s annual literary night of readings, where instead of crawling to bars and getting progressively drunker, you crawl to coffee shops and get progressively pretentious-er. By night’s end, you are convinced that the only people worth knowing are this one guy you saw reading about how his potato salad is a microcosm of capitalist disenfranchisement.

Usually, I go to “up and coming” literary readings because I support my fellow writers. Some of the writers I’ve encountered in college have been absolutely amazing. But outside campus, my luck hasn’t been as good. There, the only thing up and coming about literary readings is usually my lunch.

Like I’ve said before, I’m from Jersey, so I don’t shock easily. At Litcrawl, the readings that contained graphic depictions of sex or violence didn’t bother me. I didn’t think it was a clever twist to depict an orgy with Jesus, nor did I start crying of poor taste when one reader’s time was primarily a laundry list of the dirty sexual positions you learned as a school boy on the playground. There’s a reason question and answer sessions are not offered at readings. The most common question I have is: “How screwed up is you?”

I could fit right in if I grabbed the mike and explained how I knew a talent agent who saw this family act come into his office... and, well, you know the rest. This reminds me to plug my own forthcoming, ground-breaking book entitled “Holt’s Harangue: Dirty Words and Your Most Sacred Religious Figure.”

This one writer stuck out in my mind because he represented a caricature of all that is wrong with the writing world. No, not J.M. Coetzee. This reader had the disillusioned faux swagger that only the finest in creative writing programs could produce. Last year, he was hanging out in grad school with a sign that said “will be esoteric for food,” and today he’s got a book deal — and if you know how much literary authors get paid nowadays, that means he’s not exactly holding out for the food. His images were full of nonsensical phrases like “Embryonic robot.” “Stealth Porkchop.” I think I heard a “bicycle squid” in there someplace. T.S. Eliot, eat your heart out.

After many years of writing and ennui, or ennui writing, this “budding” writer will return to school to teach. There, his inner psyche will still come out: “That was a great analysis of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ Timmy, and to celebrate, I’m going to throw motor oil and old shoes at you.”

People play characters to differentiate themselves, which of course is what everyone is doing these days. Wearing the beret and the black turtleneck? Cliche. Now the profound author wears the mustard stained wife-beater. And nothing else. I’m glad we as a literary community have emerged from years of therapy and are now ok with ourselves. Our next challenge, it seems, is the laundry.

I know I’m not alone in my feelings for these authors because I’ve heard more clapping at Al Gore’s one-man comedy spectacular. There was no uproarious “YES! Man, I totally dug his reference to a pig’s testicles to describe loneliness. Wow!” There was no stunned silence. There was the sound of checking the time and looking sheepishly at your date.

Some of these writers kept making references to the merchandise table, kind of like a struggling punk band would do if they were out of songs. Somebody actually said, “Well if you enjoyed my depiction of doing a Lord Jesus in the poop-shoot, I call your attention to the merch table.” And I call your attention to going back to that shrink of yours.

The references to the merchandise and the constant reminder of who is sponsoring the writers make these readings seem, well, commercial. Here at Esoteric Magazine we are proud to support these writers, whose books are right next to the coffee bar. Tonight we have a special offer of three books for the price of a cappuccino.

I keep envisioning what would happen if I ever pulled this shit in the CoHo. “Thank you. I call that piece ‘Emotional Cutlery.’ If you’d like to read more dribble cleverly disguised as profundity, buy my latest book titled ‘Holt’s Harangue and the Acid Rain Birthday Cake,’ available for purchase over there by my roommate. We accept check or cash.”

But despite all of my criticisms, I want a Litcrawl at Stanford. I want to have a night where people journey from readings in the co-ops to the CoHo, the English department to MemAud, the frat houses to the birdcage. I want us to have a myriad of readings — we can get Black Ink out there and the Chappie and find out why the folks at Spoken Word are so angry. Make a night of it. Now, may I direct your attention to the merch table where you can pick up a copy of my latest book, “Holt’s Guide to Selling Out Your Own Column.”

Chris thanks the writers he heard for giving him the crassest material he’s ever written on. Send complaints to cholt@stanford.edu.