It doesn’t have to be a secret that my aim is to “replace” a certain famous humoristic storywriter, as soon as he finally retires.

Eyes squinted, jaw tight, I’ve been sniffing enviously around his fence for almost 10 years… not trying very hard to jump the fence, I must admit. I dipped my tongue in the water a little on the radio show This American Life, as he and so many others in the humorous-storytelling business have done. I published the occasional dry humor essay. But I didn’t have that hunger.

But now… Now, it’s the new year and new me: I’m younger than him by 15 years, making me the same age now as he was when he hit the big time! Jetzt geht’s um die Wurst, as they say in German: “Now, it’s about sausage.” That means, of course, it’s do-or-die time, no more messing around.

Good German that I am, I’ll apply this adage literally: Here I sit, grinding up and carefully spicing my meatiest memories, then encasing the results in well-fitting chitterlings and tying up both ends with string. Boil them for a while. Perhaps pan-fry them. Then slice them into bite-size pieces and present them atop the bland sauerkraut of pixels on a screen. Tip: Drink a lot of beer with my stories.

“So… wait, SM. You’ve already started this project? These are the stories?” Hey, man, I’m trying. It’s harder than it looks. But I think maybe if I keep writing, maybe I can get it. That’s what I think. All I need is a good attitude and a solid work ethic, openness to criticism, purity of heart…

_____

A few years back I took my friend along with me to my weekly psychotherapy session. I wanted him to see how it worked, and that it was very helpful to me. Actually, the idea might have been my therapist’s suggestion. Because after this she invited in people I knew on several occasions, so she could get another perspective on me and some of my more cryptic or unreliable narratives.

She offered my friend the microphone, so to speak, and just asked him an open-ended question about whether he had noticed anything interesting about me. It must have been hard for him to sit there in such a peculiar type of third-wheel capacity. Arms folded guardishly on his chest and his eyes looking at the floor, he thought for a few moments. Then he looked up and offered this observation, his voice quieter than usual.

“Well, I’ve noticed over the years that Scott reserves his harshest comments for people who are doing better than him in his profession, or the professions he’d like to be in. So while he’s critical of most people, he becomes especially venomous and gets really disproportionately angry when he’s talking about other, more successful journalists, writers, authors, and people like that. He basically does not wish them well in their careers. It’s like he wants to destroy them.”

My mouth agape, brows elevated and eyes bugging out, I looked sideways at him while he looked back down at the floor.

My therapist nodded enthusiastically at the friend’s insight and said, “Thank you! I think that is a really valuable comment, all the more so because you two have been friends for so long. SM, do you think what he’s saying is valid?”

“Actually, he is dead on.”

All three of us shook our bodies out and there was some relieved chuckling amid the ripples. Then, returning to my default bearing for when in the therapist’s office, I turned my upper body three-quarters and stared out the window down at the parking lot below.

_____

Around that time a friend gifted me with a book of stories written by my literary lodestar. Bestselling book, I should say. “Thanks for this,” I said without any affect. I put it with my other books, and like them it sat there untouched during all those years when supplanting the master was just an idle desire over to the side in my life.

Then last month I dusted off the story book and decided not just to read it but to mark it up, to see what I could learn about skillful storytelling from this great American talent, who is undeniably the best in the business!

I devised a system of idiosyncratic marks and put them in a legend on the first blank page. Squiggles mean “here’s the denouément,” underlining means “doubtful,” a carrot symbol means this, two hash marks mean that…

And so as I read, I marked up the pages. “Ha ha, very funny” in one margin. “Another weak ending” in another.

And I spilled some red wine on one page. Oops. I carried the book in my gym bag and it got warped from all the contact with wet sweatsocks. I dropped it by accident in the toilet (I had it resting on the sink’s edge while I brushed my teeth; I also accidentally spit some toothpaste all over it before it fell in the toilet bowl). Holding it over me while reading in bed, something made me laugh and the jiggling of my arms caused a few of the pages to rip. I taped them back in, but that did something weird to the spine and now other pages are becoming loose. Silly accident-prone person that I am, just this morning as I was finishing the book and wiping away a tear at the touching last story, I stood up too abruptly and spilled coffee, a huge amount of it, into the book.

It sure looks well-used! It really has that lived-in look now. Would anyone like to borrow it? Actually you can keep it, I’m done with it.

Tags: This American Life