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1. Write that the subject of your choice, “as he [or she] recedes into history, seems more a product of his [or her] time than an agent of transformation.” This can be said of everyone except Napoleon, Jesus, and possibly Freud.
3. In high-minded discourse on philosophers and their quarrels, see if you can’t summarize the argument in 10 words or less, and conclude with an echo of The Godfather. Thus, “Plato had Socrates, Kojève had Hegel, Pop had Genco—look what I got: Saul Bellow.”
6. State the opposite of the prevailing consensus view, e.g., “Derrida was not really a deconstructionist.” Quote an unintelligible sentence from Judith Butler to buttress your argument.
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For the other seventeen pointers, see the current issue of The American Scholar
The picture above is a detail from The Letter by Klavdy Stepanov (1893).