You Were Saying
“It’s not for everybody.”
“What’s that?”
“I said it’s not for everybody. My voice.”
“I see.”
“What I’m saying is, there are some people—not a lot, but more than you’d guess. I mean, that’s what I’ve learned over the years, there are more people than you’d guess who like it. There’s something about it that appeals to them. I don’t personally understand it, but then that’s always the way. We’re mysteries to ourselves, don’t you think?”
“I suppose.”
“Anyway, there are some people—well, most people—who have a hard time with it. The digressions. The endless sentences spiraling in every direction. The way things seem to collapse in on themselves and require you to pay an inordinate amount of attention if you want to follow the thread all the way through. For most people, especially now, it’s too much work.”
“Especially now?”
“Well, in… The Internet Age. Now that we don’t read complete sentences. If we ever did. Now that we’re simply scanning as we scroll down, hoping to get the gist without giving careful attention to everything.”
“Mm hmm.”
“If you’re someone who reads like that—and, to be honest, pretty much all of us are these days—it’s difficult to come to the end of my endless paragraphs and feel fully informed about what just happened. So some people, as I said, find it appealing. Maybe as a challenge? I don’t know. Again, I don’t get it either. But for most of them, it’s uncomfortable, or not worth the work.”
“And you’re telling me this because?”
“Because if you’re about to start reading it I want to warn you in advance that you might not be one of the people who finds it to be—”
“Wait, wait wait. When you say ‘you,’ you mean me? Me the reader?”
“Yes.”
“Me, the person who is reading this right now.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve written my dialogue? The dialogue I’m reading right now is actually meant to be me speaking, or thinking, or whatever?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that a little… I don’t know. Presumptuous isn’t the word I want, although it certainly is that. But isn’t it kind of… like, doesn’t it do the kind of post-moderny nonsense thing you’re always complaining about? Isn’t it the kind of thing that, if you saw it somewhere else, you would strain yourself thinking of some new way to describe the jerking-off motion you were making while reading it?”
“Well, here’s the thing. It’s okay when I do it, because we know I’m being ironic about it. We know it’s coming from a place where I recognize that it’s the kind of thing that, in other hands, would be the result of bad intentions.”
“But how do we know that? Really it sounds like you’re just giving yourself permission to do something that you can’t stand elsewhere. Also, have you ever noticed how women give you a hard time when you say, ‘Here’s the thing’? What’s the deal with that? I am saying ‘Here’s the thing’ because I am just about to tell you the thing! Jesus Christ! Chill out, women!”
“I guess it’s one of those deals where they don’t want to feel addressed, they want to feel like they are part of a dialogue, like we’re having right now.”
“I guess? I just think that they—Hey, wait a second.”
“Mm hmm?”
“Don’t change the subject on me! I mean, don’t make me change the subject. I was talking about how post-modern jerk-offy the idea of you making me the reader in this dialogue was and suddenly you had me start talking about how women hate it when you say ‘Here’s the thing.’”
“Well, I can see how you’d think I did that that, but it’s not true at all. Especially because I would never make a blanket statement of any sort about women. In fact, I was a little shocked when you opened up on the topic yourself. It’s just crazy and wrong. As someone who has nothing but respect for women I find that kind of generalization very disappointing. As an ally, I’m frankly insulted.”
“Now knock that off.”
“I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree about it. Anyway, what was your question?”
“Well now I’ve forgotten. Help me out here.”
“I think you were going to ask how I planned to turn this into—”
“Wait, I remember! It was about how hacky this whole contrivance was and how do you think you can get away with it given your constant vocal criticisms of other people who do the same thing?
“Right, you were asking about how I was going to integrate this into the whole newsletter structure.”
“No, I really wanted to know how you justify—”
“So the whole point of the weekly newsletter was to get back into strong writing form to get a book together, right? And the only way to do that, apart from actually sitting down and writing, is to work through a variety of styles and formats. To experiment and test myself. To see what I can do with the skills I developed over the years but that have since gone fallow while I wallowed in suffering over the state of the world. It’s all been about the writing, you know?”
“Yes, but—”
“And also, if there is a book that comes out of this, my dream—something I’ve ardently wished since I was a small boy and hoped to one day be a published author in a society where barely 1 in 10 people decided a bound-and-printed collection of words was worth more of their time than watching someone smash his dick with a hammer on YouTube or listening to two friends in their 20s with one microphone between them do an hour-long podcast with terrible sound effects and dollar-store NPR voices debating whether or not the dick in question was actually smashed by its owner or whether or not there was a conspiracy to keep us from catching the actual dick smasher while intruding on the shattered lives of the smashed dick survivors—is to be able to turn something in to a publisher that is at least 75% dependent on CTRL-C and CTRL-V.”
“And this would help you how?”
“Well, if you look back, you have to admit this would make the perfect introduction, right? It starts by warning people that my voice isn’t for everyone.”
“Self-deprecation is very hot right now, you’re right. Makes you seem humble. Relatable, even. I’d keep reading.”
“Exactly.”
“But how does it work for a newsletter? What’s in it for those people?”
“Well, like I said before, while it is not for everybody, there are indeed some people who find something appealing about my voice. They are the people who are less interested in what I have to say than how I go about saying it.”
“And those are the people who subscribe to your newsletter?”
“Indeed.”
“About how many of them are there?”
“It looks like 32.”
“Up until this one—”
“Up until this one comes out, yes.”
“Okay, well, I guess we’re going out on that joke. If you’re done putting words in my mouth I just have one criticism.”
“Yes?”
“It’s the same criticism you always have about dialogue in books. MAYBE BECAUSE WE’RE THE SAME PERSON. Anyway, can you guess what it is?”
“No, tell me.”
“We sound exactly alike! It’s going to be impossible for people to keep track of who’s who, here.”
“Good point. Let me fix that and send it off. Although I don’t need to. My readers are so loyal they will stick with me no matter what they do.”
“As your reader, and this is me, the person reading this now, not some imagined voice you came up with, but me the person reading this newsletter [NOTE: REMEMBER TO CHANGE THAT TO ‘BOOK’ FOR THE INTRODUCTION] saying it, you are totally correct, we love you and everything you do. Thank you so much for doing it for us. Please start charging us money so we can properly recompense you for all your efforts.”
“What a great idea, I think I will. Thanks so much.”
“You’re welcome. You pretentious dickbag.”
Okay, that’s all I’ve got. When this newsletter starts for real—this is not the real newsletter yet—I promise there will be no further experiments with dialogue and tone. This week’s discussion was actually meant to be about music and nostalgia (I know, who could have ever imagined) but I got sidetracked by some bizarre mystery involving the cover of a Time Out New York from the year 2000 and I had to put that (my brilliant disquisition on music and nostalgia) aside so that I could play celebrity forensics to figure out whether a guy was Hugh Jackman or Rupert Everett 20 years ago. It’s all rather glamorous over here, yes. Anyway, maybe I’ll get back to that (music and nostalgia, please try to keep up) next week. In the meantime I need to run through this one again and put lots of “motherfuckers” and “LOLs” in the reader’s dialogue to make it sound distinct. Thank you for your attention.