Saturday, April 18, 1998 | 2:20 a.m.
SCOTT DICKENSHEETS' column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach him at 259-4082 or [email protected]
SO I WAS talking to my pal Lugnut, an entirely fictional character I created 1.) so I can add "Royko-esque" to my resume, and 2.) to spout the sort of lunchbucket wisdom that sounds unconvincing from a suburban prig like me, when he came up with a real corker: "Isn't Saturday National Columnists Day?" he asked. Now that's exactly the sort of impeccably timed, column-starting thing I can never get my nonfictional friends to say.
Yes, Lugnut, there is a National Columnists Day, and Saturday was it -- notice that schools and many government offices were closed. This holiday, celebrated on April 18 to mark the death of legendary columnist Ernie Pyle, was declared by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. For the record, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of that columnist party; invoking Groucho Marxist dogma, I refuse to join any group that would have me -- have me pay 30 bucks to get in, that is!
For some holiday cheer, let's sample the fan letters, mash notes and e-pistles sent in by you, the readers. First, someone calling himself/herself/itself "copy editor dl" dropped a quick line: "You are so @#&*! lame"
Of course, I was taken aback -- what copy editor worth his blue pencil forgets the period?
"He doesn't get it," said Lugnut, who, perhaps alarmingly, seems more real to me all the time. "You are post-lame." By that he means that this column is really an anti-column, a postmodern exercise in deconstructionist inside-out opinionizing, eschewing the traditional strengths of the format (tight storytelling, linear point-making) in favor of a jumped-up presentation of its weaknesses (meandering logic, reckless stylistic excess). Daringly irrelevant, sharper than the cutting edge, it's the column for the 21st century.
"No," Lugnut says, "what I mean is that you make it up as you go."
Somewhere, one P. Smith is saying Aha! This postmodern deconstructionist whatever doesn't wash with him/her/it! "I feel strongly about your column," he/she/it writes (no copy editor, P. includes all the necessary punctuation). "Frankly, it's boring."
The problem: I'm too off-the-cuff, too @#&*! post-lame; P. Smith would prefer a more traditional Pyle-up. His/her/its suggestion: Be like other columnists! Specifically the SUN's own Jeff German or scribes from The Other Paper's bullpen. Sorry, P. Smith; as appealing as life as the other John Ralston sounds, I gotta be me. A newly Royko-esque me, I might add.
P. Smith closes with "Best wishes" but clearly doesn't mean it: He/she/it also demands my ouster. "That space, honestly, would be better left blank."
Happy Columnists Day to you, too, P. Smith.
Ah, but one good apple unspoils the whole bunch. Noting my recent vacation, an e-mailer calling herself a Nevada lady wrote, "First El Nino, now my addiction is taking a vacation. ... The withdrawal may be painful."
It's not every columnist whose readers compare him to a destructive weather phenomenon, and I was thrilled. Then I thought: What if this is one of those Columnist Day pranks? What if the Nevada lady is even more postmodern and deconstructive than me -- more inside out -- and her letter somehow means the opposite of what it says? What if the joke's on me? It gets mighty confusing out here beyond the cutting edge.
At least I have Lugnut to keep me real.
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