I can haz author LOLs?: Meet the blogger behind LOLerature

A couple of weeks ago, the literary blog The Millions published a post that simply said, “LOLerature is the LOLCats for the literary set.  Some of the references are pretty obscure, too.  The internet is now complete.” With a claim like that, how could I not click on the corresponding link?

That was my introduction to LOLerature, a blog that mocks (often lovingly) authors by drawing inspiration from ICanHasCheezburger’s LOLcats and applying LOLspeak to images of authors. As it happened, the blog had just been created on Tumblr that very day.

Since then, LOLerature has begun to attract a following, with about 170 subscribers at the moment. Faith, the literature graduate student who created LOLerature, says that’s “about 167 more” followers than she ever anticipated.

As part of an ongoing series about intriguing literary-related projects, I emailed Faith, who prefers not to disclose her last name, to ask about her LOL-worthy literary creations. Here’s what she had to say:

What inspired LOLerature?

A few weeks ago I was telling friends on Tumblr about “Preved” (Russian Internet LOL-speak): The first post was in response to this [image of a cat refusing tea] , and then I wrote a longer post [and a quick follow-up post] about it to indulge my nerdery and continue procrastinating. After that, I captioned a few Russian authors’ images to “Americanize” the humor. …

Creating LOLerature as a separate blog was really a way of amusing myself and, I hoped, those Tumblrs who followed me and who found literary jokes amusing. The original captioned images on my Tumblr weren’t “liked” that much, so I assumed that LOLerature would mostly be for myself. (The tagline of my Tumblr is “Narcissismism”; I tagged the post announcing LOLerature’s creation “Procrastinationism.” You see what I mean.)

… I’m a graduate student and have been preparing for my preliminary exams for the past few months, so LOLspeak is basically the only mode of communication my addled brain can manage these days. I figured I’d need a place where I could mock [Russian novelist Leo] Tolstoy’s moral stridency, [French novelist and playwright Honoré de] Balzac’s caffeine addiction (which has played no small part in my own [life]), [Charles] Dickens‘ character names—all the things that I find amusing but treat with more, shall we say, reverence in my studies and my teaching.

What are your favorite LOLeratures thus far?

My own reading tastes are fairly conservative, if not antiquated. (I study 18th and 19th century English, Russian, and French literature.) So the jokes I’ve most enjoyed are frequently not the ones others seem to respond to the most. I like the posts in which I’ve been able to integrate the basic humor and phrases of the LOL memes with the content and nature of the subjects themselves. [Alexander] Pushkin’s adaptation of the Byronic Hero may not be the most well-known cultural reference, but I enjoyed making the “i upgraded ur byRAMizm” post for the simplicity of the pun and the basic truth of the allusion. The “fatwa”/”bigbonedwa” joke about [Salman] Rushdie was fun because of the pure silliness of it as well as the levity with which it references something serious. I enjoy setting up myself as the butt of the joke with that kind of willful idiocy, even if there’s some mockery of the author as well. …

… I am acutely aware of how it must look to those who lament the dumbing down of culture or deterioration of literacy—believe me, I never want to see a student of mine using LOLspeak in an essay—but the posts I’ve really liked have been made with a sense of true appreciation for their subjects. I also really enjoyed making posts for Halloween and having a “theme” for the day, other than the usual I-NEED-MORE-COFFEE-AND-CAN’T-READ-ANY-MORE-FOUCAULT-MAKING-A-DUMB-PUN-IS-MY-ONLY-HOPE, which motivates most of my posts. …

Some posts appear to be dedicated to other Tumblr users. Do you create the LOLs with them in mind?

Most of the posts with dedications have been made with the dedicatee’s tastes in mind. [Tumblr blogger] BingoParaphrenalia, for example, is a Tumblr acquaintance who is Irish. We’ve discussed Irish literature before, so I made the Yeats and [James] Joyce posts in the hopes that she’d enjoy them. [Yesterday's] Chekhov post is based on the literary device of Chekhov’s Gun, but [Tumblr blogger] InOtherNews is a big Star Trek fan, so I included a Chekov quote in the tags along with the dedication to him.

There is a submit page, and I asked, via my own Tumblr, for both submissions and requests, and several people asked for specific authors. [Fellow Tumblr user] Gunstreetgirl, for example, requested a [John] Keats post, which I was all too happy, in a macabre sort of way, to make. … Due to the limitations of my own reading tastes and knowledge, I’m truly grateful for submissions and requests. I never would have thought of [Cuban novelist Antonio] Benitez-Rojo without [Tumblr user] igather’s suggestion, for example, and would very much like to see a greater variety of authors on the site. Dead white men can get tedious enough in the classroom.

I’m sure it’s pretty random, but do you have any sort of process for creating your LOLeratures? How do you choose the authors who become the butt of your LOLs, so to speak?

The majority of the posts have been inspired by specific authors who I like or loathe, or whose personal histories or writings have elements that have always struck me as ripe for mockery: [Charles] Bukowski being a ladyboner-killer, [Ayn] Rand’s ideas and her acolytes being crazypants, [Ernest] Hemingway boring me, [Jane] Austen being misread as chick lit, use of the term “Orwellian” by paranoiac commentators, especially on (and about) the Internet, etc.

Some posts were inspired by a natural convergence, so to speak, of the subject and a standard internet or LOLspeak phrase: [Oscar] Wilde being a “GQMF” [someone attractive enough to grace GQ's cover], Mickiewics and “They be takin mai buckit/Poland,” Tolstaya’s Slynx being a “basement cat” nonpareil. Others have come from jokes friends and I have made over the years. … I made the William Blake “I LUV LAM[p]” post simply because that part of “Anchorman,” in which one of the characters shouts “I LOVE LAMP,” always makes me giggle. I may love Blake’s “The Lamb,” but some days I love absurdity and cheap puns just a little bit more. …

By some totally strange coincidence, two other bloggers named Chris Somerville and Christopher Currie had been talking about creating their own literary LOLs on Tumblr, albeit spelled “LOLrature,” no e. When you found out of this, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, you invited them to partake in LOLerature with you. Have they taken you up on this offer?

That was indeed a bizarre coincidence! A few days after I started LOLerature, being rather surprised by the number of followers it had already gained, I googled “LOLerature” to see what the site looked like to others. Being a simpleton, I misspelled my own damn site name, leaving out the “e,” and stumbled upon Chris’s post about it on his blog, Furious Horses. I left a comment immediately, hoping that neither of them thought they’d been plagiarized, and Chris was gracious enough to email me back. Thankfully, he understood the mix-up and said that they would both be glad to submit posts to LOLerature. They have submitted two thus far-one has gone up already and the other is in the queue. …

Have there been any other submissions so far?

There have been two other submissions from readers, but I’d definitely like to have more. … Submissions and requests from those better read than I are much appreciated.

It’s only been a couple of weeks since you launched LOLerature. Any surprises?

It was only from Chris’s post that I saw the mention on The Millions, and between that, the fledgling popularity of the site outside my own circle of Tumblr friends, and now this Q&A with you, the whole thing has been a surprise. I had assumed that I would run out of ideas after a day or two, or that my studies would finally bring on a long overdue systemic breakdown and the site would be abandoned to the ether while my dog snacked on my decaying remains in the weeks before anyone noticed my absence.

Is there anything you want to do differently with LOLerature in the future?

The range of authors and jokes on the site are limited to my own personal and professional interests and what I remember from high school and college literature classes, so having LULZ from a wide variety of national, ethnic, historical, and stylistic traditions would be great. Plus, I’m always looking for good book recommendations—it’s really quite selfish!