To Get The Guy By Mark Edmundson: Chapter Summary

Mark Edmundson, the author of Why Write, begins his chapter "To Get the Girl/To Get the Guy", stating everyone wants to be loved and admired by someone in their professional and personal lives. Sigmund Freud declared, "writers want to be loved in general: they want crowds to admire them and cast envious glances their way, but they also want to be loved specifically up close and personal by this or that alluring individual" (Edmundson 39). Edmundson gives Lord Byron, the British Romantic poet and author of Don Juan, as an example because he was both a professional and a personal favorite of both sexes because of his natural beauty and romantic, poetic writing. Edmundson claims Lord Byron was successful in the romance genre because he possessed

Atta explained the reasoning behind the focus on friendship and family by saying, “Romantic love isn’t the only love that matters, this book for example is a romance, there are many important friendships and family relationships within it; I hope this story illustrates that these relationships should not be taken for granted or abandoned in the pursuit of romantic love” (Thomas Sammut). Atta demonstrates how one can feel like they have lost a friend to a romantic partner through Mack’s friend Femi. Femi expresses his fear of losing Mack's best friend to K, and how we often worry about expressing these feelings to our friends in fear of losing them. I had a similar experience with an ex-best friend who chose her boyfriend over me. After reading Atta's novel, I can see events happen for a reason and my friend and I were meant to part ways. I do not hold grudges against her decision and am glad she is happy whether she has a partner or not. Atta investigates how we compare love and romance in our lives to other aspects of life, much like K does with basketball. He shows K explaining his feelings about romance and relationships in comparison to basketball to Mack. K believes "romance isn't a game I can win as it feels like winning is losing because if I do one romantic thing you expect it more often, and it becomes unending and exhausting for me, some people just don't have that kind of romance in them, but I do not want you to feel like you have to give that up for me" (Atta 633). Romance and love are a game in which we lose and win parts of ourselves and others to find someone who encourages us to find, be, and love ourselves and others for who we are and want to be. The act of romance, whether it is giving someone flowers, a love letter, a video, or simply saying I love you, can be exhausting for people not