Originally published
in Current, Oct. 23, 1995
By Jacqueline Conciatore
"One of the things I do periodically, I tell stories in which my father figures. My father . . . had a heavy Russian-Polish-Jewish accent, very rich, and listeners like him. I love to write about him. I had done this piece in which I imitated his voice. The phone rings, and a woman says, 'Mr. Pinkwater, you have defamed and degraded Jewish people. You are not talented. You are not funny.' And I said, 'Mother?' "
It's Daniel Pinkwater telling another story, this time to a reporter, though usually he has a larger audience as an All Things Considered commentator. The sometimes nostalgic, often cranky humorist is one of a stable of writers who have won devoted fans with their various radio personas — there's the charming eccentric, for example, the philosopher poet, the unrepentant rebel.
Lucky for the commentators, these fans have some money to spend and a penchant for buying books. They recently started a word-of-mouth campaign that has kept Bailey White's Mama Makes Up her Mind on the bestseller list for 55 weeks and counting. Luckier still, some public radio fans work in publishing. In no small part due to their NPR gigs, writers including Marion Winik and David Sedaris (who does commentaries for Morning Edition) recently saw their first books published. Pinkwater, who this year released his novel The Afterlife Diet to favorable reviews, says his first NPR commentary in 1987 helped revive a stalled career. And Andrei Codrescu, who has just attracted a whole new set of fans with his historical novel, The Blood Countess, first gained national exposure via NPR 12 years ago.
Although commentators lend the NPR newsmagazines some of listeners' favorite moments, the network pays them only about $150 per radio piece. But in return, the writers can reach for a unique brand of celebrity as modern-day oral storytellers, a modest fame that can carry them to public success as authors of longer-form writing as well.
There it was, by God, the thought that everything was wrong. It was wrong; it was broken. It was way past being fixed. It could have at one time, but I'd let it go. I'd created it innocently enough, it is true, but I had let it go on and on, and now it was too late. It was too late for it, for me, for everyone in the world. It was just damn plain late.
I looked at the bedside clock, a loud, luminous, gassy assertion of numbers —1:30 a.m. It would get later still.
— Andrei Codrescu
Some of those who do commentaries for public radio are well-established as authors by the time they hit the airwaves. Examples are Joyce Maynard, or Reynolds Price, who recently started doing pieces for ATC. But others, such as Georgia schoolteacher Bailey White and Marion Winik were unknowns before they became radio personalities. Winik did have a following in Austin, where she wrote for an alternative paper when not working at her technical writing job. (There are other popular commentators who were — or still are — working in everyday jobs, though they make good use of them for radio — think of Marketplace's "Nashville waitress" or apartment cleaner Sedaris (author of Barrel Fever).
"Everything that's happened to me in my career has been the result of being on NPR," says Winik, a once-wild Jersey girl who's now a 36-ish suburban Mom with a station wagon and two boys. One of her tell-all radio essays caught the ear of East Coast agent Patricia Van Der Leun — who also handles bestselling epigram-maker Robert Fulghum — while she was driving home one evening. It was Winik's essay about friends, which offers a glossary of pals. There's the Work Friend, for instance, who though you love him never quite crosses the threshold into your social life, or the Friend You Love to Hate — who's good for bitching about to the friends you do like. Van Der Leun phoned Winik to see if she was interested in putting together a book. Soon the two were in a hotel room in Austin looking over a pile of Winik's stories, a collection they eventually sold to Random House.
Other commentators have arrived at publishing success via NPR as well: White mailed her tapes to Pinkwater, who played them over the phone for NPR commentary editor Margaret Low Smith, an instant sell. Later, he would introduce White to his editor at Addison-Wesley Press, John Bell, a fan of her radio pieces. Addison-Wesley has since published Mama Makes Up Her Mind and White's new book, Sleeping at the Starlite Motel. While Pinkwater himself was a noted children's book author by the time he wrote his first piece for NPR in 1987, his career was in a slump: nobody was buying. The NPR credit "helped me get back in the groove," he says. And Codrescu credits the NPR exposure with drawing readers to his poetry and his literary journal, Exquisite Corpse. Even his 1992 road-trip documentary Road Scholar happened because the producer was a fan of his radio work, he says.
Which is not to say that the NPR credential alone paves the way to literary success. There is also the matter of talent. "It's really a stellar bunch," says NPR's Smith, who has been producing the afternoon commentaries for six years. ATC essayists must be skilled at the short-form, which looks easy but is not at all, and they must be smarter than the rest of us, she says. "I want them to think in some way I couldn't possibly, or that the average person couldn't possibly. They [must] have a special edge and a kind of insight into the world that's special."
Because the radio essays often contain themes that resonate with listeners, many people think, "I could do this!," says Smith. And she has worked her way through boxes and boxes of mailed-in tapes to prove it. "There is certain stuff you listen to and say, 'This could be on NPR, but — it shouldn't. There's stuff that has the right feel. [But] I've told people who come in to [screen] submissions, don't let yourself get confused by something that you think could be on. It really should be on. It should startle you, it should excite you. You should remember it . . . on your drive home. OK isn't good enough."
It was a blustery, damp fall evening when I came home to find my mother in the middle of one of her ongoing experiments with lethal and nonlethal foods. Last time it had been the big floppy leaves of the deadly poison pokeberry bush."If you boil them up five times and pour off the water each time, you get rid of the poison. Then you boil them up a sixth time and they're safe to eat. Have a taste." She held out a forkful of green slime.
—Bailey White
The success of Mama Makes Up Her Mind is only partly explained by the fact that White had a ready-made group of devotees — her radio fans, says her editor Bell. "The NPR recognition, first among booksellers, and then among the general public, was very helpful." But, he adds, the first-time author attracted a wide audience in large part because of a mix of appeals in her work: "delightful characters," depictions of small-town Southern life, and "the feeling [her stories lend] of mild adventure and eccentricity without real danger."
Although publicists regard public radio as one of the best venues for promoting new works, other compilations of essays by NPR commentators have not been big sellers. Mama Makes Up Her Mind is an exception to the rule. NPR collections such as those put out by Pinkwater and Codrescu "fall into the category of any collection of essays, which as a rule don't do well unless they come from extraordinarily well-known people," says Bell, who edited both men's books. "Even then, often publishers will want to sign a two-book contract, one of essays and one 'real' book that will be original and unified."
With Mama, "we were prepared for a small book that we loved," Bell says. Prospects for the collection finding a wide audience were made dimmer by White's reluctance to be interviewed for radio or television, or do a book tour. "Bailey White has a persona a little different from her real personality, but not a great deal different," Bell says. "She presents herself as a shy spinster, when in real life, she likes meeting people — but not necessarily hundreds at once." (White could not be reached for this article.) But the author's fans found the book anyway, and she "found her sea legs, meeting people and signing books," says Bell. The New York Times printed a favorable review, and USA Today ran a feature. The result for Mama was 17 weeks on the bestseller list in hardcover and more than a year in paper. And Bell got promoted, too.
The woman at Macy's asked, "Would you be interested in full-time elf or evening and weekend elf?"
I said, "Full-time elf."
I have an appointment next Wednesday at noon.
I am a 33-year-old man applying for a job as an elf.
I often see people on the streets dressed as objects and handing out leaflets. I tend to avoid leaflets but it breaks my heart to see a grown man dressed as a taco. So, if there is a costume involved, I tend not only to accept the leaflet, but to accept it graciously, saying, "Thank you so much," and thinking, "You poor, pathetic son of a bitch. I don't know what you have but I hope I never catch it."
— David Sedaris
Despite the mixed sales performance of commentary collections, publishers have great faith in public radio as a marketing tool, believing, as Russell Perrault of Vintage Books puts it, "pretty much everyone who listens to that station is a book reader." In fact, a 1994 listener profile from NPR, based on data from Simmons Market Research, showed that reading is public radio listeners' favorite leisure time activity (42 percent like to do it).
Publishers and publicists particularly have faith in author appearances on Fresh Air and the NPR newsmagazines. It is an industry truism, says Bell, that Fresh Air is "one of the few outlets that truly sells books," along with Oprah Winfrey and one or two other TV talk shows. Says Addison-Wesley publicity director Jennifer Prost: "My goal . . . . is to get authors on ATC, Morning Edition, Fresh Air. I'm sure far more NPR listeners buy books than Today show viewers."
The most recent cumulative weekly audience for Morning Edition numbered 6.86 million; ATC, 6.2 million; and Fresh Air, 2.2 million. Generally, books have to sell at least 100,000 copies to make the bestseller list.
"It is incredible," the effect a public radio review can have on sales, says Margaret Maupin, buyer for the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. "The one that comes to mind is A Very Long Engagement [by Sebastian Japrisot]. It was reviewed just before the holiday season on [Weekend Edition] Saturday. We had people coming into the bookstore, calling the bookstores for that book and we ran out immediately."
". . . I will attempt to describe a Chicago hot dog. Words aren't adequate to the task, but I will try. First, it's on a poppy seed bun, which is doughy and substantial but not heavy. The bun is lightly steamed at the point of serving. The hot dog is all-beef, spicier than the New York variety. It is steamed and has a natural casing. It snaps when you bite into it and squirts hot deliciousness. A variant is the Polish sausage, which the gods ate on Olympus. This is what goes on it: yellow mustard, bright green pickle relish, chopped onion, a kosher pickle spear, two slices of tomato, two tiny but devastating peppers, and, all-important, celery salt. All of this is fitted together with fiendish cleverness, enabling the eater to get most of it in his mouth and only a little on his shirt. If there are fries, they are hand-cut, skinny and glorious.
— Daniel Pinkwater
Some days, as many as four ATC commentaries may air, other days, none — though that is less likely with the new two-hour format, which has a "voracious appetite" for the essays, Smith says. Morning Edition tends to make less use of literary commentaries.
The length of the pieces vary, though time allowed seems to be a point of minor contention. At one time, Pinkwater says, commentators could go on and on, back when NPR "couldn't afford to send [reporters] places, so they would call up the guy who owned the dry cleaners and have him look out the window." Then there was a clamp-down and "for a while, we needed a papal dispensation to go over four minutes." Now, things aren't so tight, but he has learned through repeated edits or delayed air dates to stay near the four-minute mark.
Producer Smith disagrees that longer pieces rarely run. Although NPR writers' guidelines limit length to three minutes, commentaries more often run to four-and-a-half, she says. Some may be seven minutes; White did a Thanksgiving piece that ran 15. "I always feel guilty when we don't have short ones, because radio needs that too," Smith says.
ATC relies on the commentaries not just to fill holes, however. "In a hard news format where lots of information is coming at you, [commentaries] offer levity or whimsy or sort of a profound moment," says Smith. They add to the show's texture, she says.
Pinkwater agrees, but emphasizes the comic relief. "The news, it's subjects like Bosnia, Rwanda, and it's intense mostly. [Commentaries] are like a sudden hyperjump into something else, and it's a person talking, who doesn't have to be measured or balanced or accurate and reportorial, but just somebody to talk to you for five minutes. You can rest your brain and get ready for another 30 minutes of hard news. I think of the commentators as rodeo clowns."
The pieces generally shouldn't be too "hard," Pinkwater says. "In my view, they're not supposed to cause you to question the underpinnings of society. It's a moment of relief and moment of humanizing."
A social moment too, he adds. Pinkwater gets phone calls every time one of his essays airs. "It's someone continuing a conversation. You know, I ride with them — I'm in the car going home from work. They'll say, 'So Pinkwater! You don't know me but . . . ' and tell me a story. It's usually better than my story."
The piece that attracted the largest response? An essay about his visit to an animal psychic sparked 70 calls.
Winik received scores of responses to the moving piece she did about the death of her husband, Tony. He was sick from AIDS, and at a certain point took a fatal dose of sleeping pills, with Winik's emotional support and help. "I got hundreds and hundreds of letters," she says. "Because the listeners feel close to me. I've been talking about my life on the radio for the last five years. I basically got condolence letters."
Winik's brand of outrageous honesty about her life — from past abortions to her needle-drug period to a full-blooming mid-life crush on a guy she met at a garage sale — creates an intimacy with listeners that many of them embrace like loving aunts. "One lady stands up in a bookstore in Miami, and says, 'When your husband died? That was so sad! But we know you're dating now — that's great! But you're never on anymore! Nobody knows what's going on with you!"
Codrescu's more detached but sharp take on the world probably evokes more unhappy responses than other commentators do. One listener sinisterly invited him for a rowboat ride: "He said, 'I want to talk to you about your government,' " Codrescu says. "I do get a lot of angry responses, but that's one of the pleasures of public life." At the same time, he has been on the air for so long, that he sometimes meets young people who say they grew up listening to him.
The commentators all seem to savor the challenge of short-form writing. "What's enjoyable about this form, and I consider it a literary form, is that it is possible to tell a story in a very short time," says Codrescu. "And the more intricate and complex the better."
Pinkwater says he tries to incorporate two or three elements into his pieces. "The trick is to learn to expand time, to make it stand still. If you do it right, you can't hear it. Sometimes, you hear a three-minute piece, and when it's over you're hard put to say how long it was. It has silences, pauses, and digressions in it. It gracefully traverses the three minutes."
Despite the agility with words they share, the commentators by and large have such different styles that Winik suspects they have overlapping but discrete sets of fans. "I don't think 100 percent of the people who listen to NPR are 100 percent fans of all of us. Often people say to me, I like you, but all the others sure are jerks.
"I think if there's something we have in common, it's that we're strong and distinct but different.
"There's no way you could mistake any one of us for someone else."
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