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Several years ago, I made a bad mistake.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t bore you with the details, because my first rule as a columnist is not to blather on about myself. It takes a hell of a writer to overcome the temptation toward self-indulgence and to translate mundane occurrences – arguing with the significant other, potty training the brats, finding somebody to loan you bail money – into something of interest to anybody else. Dave Barry could do it (but he’s on sabbatical), as could Lewis Grizzard (but he’s dead) and Fran Lebowitz (but she acts like she’s dead). Russell Baker was a master of the form, as are Roy Blount Jr., P.J. O’Rourke and Calvin Trillin. Maine’s own John Preston and Davis Rawson had the knack, but their premature departures from this mortal coil left the state’s supply of talented personal columnists seriously depleted.
In fact, we’re down to just one. Her name is Elizabeth Peavey, and before I tell you about her new book, “Outta My Way: An Odd Life, Lived Loudly,” I’m ethically obligated to reveal the truth about the aforementioned horrible mistake:
I was once an (ugh) editor.
Editors suck life out of writers’ copy the way bedbugs suck blood. Except bedbugs have better personal hygiene. Editors impose meaningless rules, enforce unreasonable deadlines and crush any semblance of creativity. Editors do this not to improve the end product for readers, but because it’s the only enjoyment they can squeeze out of their miserable existences.
(By the way, the esteemed editor of this publication is an exception to everything I said in the preceding paragraph and should be an immediate candidate for a Pulitzer Prize and sainthood.)
I didn’t like being an editor, but rather than rebel against the evil conventions of the job, I took out my frustration on those unfortunate souls who were forced to submit copy for my approval. I changed their stuff, sometimes because it needed changing, but mostly just to crush their spirits. Often, when I was finished, the work bore no resemblance to the original, a news story on a city council meeting having been transformed into a restaurant review.
In 1996, in the midst of another miserable day of rampaging through writers’ self-respect, I was informed by my boss that I had to edit a new column by Elizabeth Peavey, which was scheduled to run every other week in the now-defunct Casco Bay Weekly. I knew Peavey. She and I had collaborated on a feature story for CBW that required us to visit every bar bathroom in Portland to find the scummiest. We’d barely avoided drowning one another in a filthy urinal.
Peavey was opinionated. She was stubborn. She used way too many commas. (“Where did you learn punctuation? Artillery school?”) And, worst of all, she was writing a column about her personal experiences, which consisted mostly of whining.
But Peavey was also smart, funny and had more natural writing ability than the combined total of all the editors I’ve ever encountered. When her first column arrived, I ranted, raved and brandished my blue pencil in a threatening manner. But in the end, all I did was remove a few commas.
For six years, I tried without success to screw up her work. She, on the other hand, made my editing look brilliant by submitting hilarious copy filled with deep insights about the human condition. For example:
“A quick cootie-issue test: If, while at a restaurant, a potato chip falls off your plate and onto your table, do you: a. Eat it anyway. b. Put it back on your plate, but not eat it. c. Run screaming from the room? The answer is none of the above, because if you had true cootie issues, you’d know those chips were touched by someone’s bare hands, and you would have already brushed them onto your dining companions plate.”
There’s not much an editor can do with that, except put it in print.
Peavey’s new book is a collection of her best columns, including most of the commas I thought I had eliminated. It was actually fun to re-read this stuff without feeling the need to disembowel it and hang it from a tree in the front yard. I had forgotten how well she could handle situations that in the hands of a less gifted columnist would have caused me to barf. Here’s Peavey coming down with a cold and attempting to ward off her “inner Yankee”:
“‘I tick,’ I murmur. (I always talk baby talk when I don’t feel well, and I know you do too, so get that look off your face.) That’s when old Saltpeter Breath plants his pruny puss in front of my mind’s eye.
‘Get ye out of bed,’ he commands. ‘Ye have crops to sow, wheat to separate from chaff, and fowl to gut.’ I wrap a pillow around my head, hoping he’ll realize he’s barking up the wrong century.
‘Weave me awone,’ I say. ‘I tick.’ The cranky Yankee is unmoved.
‘Ye have no snots. Where be thy fever? Thou are rife with sloth. Now up with ye.’ The buckle on his pilgrim hat glints with righteous indignation into my eye. Eventually, I give in. It’s easier than keeping up the exhausting dialogue, which has
already drained the guilty pleasure from the swooning hour.”
No editing needed. Except to point out that Pilgrim should be capitalized.
Peavey can be romantic (“Ah, spring in Maine. The little birdies chirping at dawn (shaddup), the crocus and daffodil muscling their way through the stubborn earth, the gently wafting aroma of defrosting dog doo”), insightful (“People in love are about the most boring people on earth – in the same way nice people, parents (particularly new parents), the affluent, churchgoers, dog owners, contra dancers, people who never miss airplanes, who garden, who love their jobs, who take spinning classes, and/or who always have fresh basil on hand are boring – but, of course, not as boring as love-coma victims”) and intoxicating (“I, myself, have a simple tenet about drinking: I won’t drink anything the color of a bridesmaid’s dress. When I think of the kind of sweet cocktails characteristically associated with women – blender drinks, cream drinks, drinks with Grenadine or Midori or apricot brandy – they scream taffeta to me”).
Over the years, Peavey and I have become friends – during one particularly joyful happy hour, I seem to recall making her my dogs’ godmother – so I won’t pretend to be objective about her book. I admit she’s only got one subject: herself. But she never allows her navel gazing to get in the way of communicating something important – or, at least, funny – to her readers.
If only all those sorry scribblers pouring out their innermost feelings in personal columns and blogs could grasp that concept and recognize the error of their ways.
The world would be a better place.
Mostly because it would need fewer editors.
[[tagline]] Elizabeth Peavey’s “Outta My Way” is available in area bookstores or at www.warrenmachine.com. To read Peavey’s current work, visit www.thebollard.com. To contact her former editor, whose column of odds and ends appears monthly, e-mail ishmaelia@gwi.net.
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