[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg.

[00:19] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City, where we still live and where we

[00:29] Meg: podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do ripped from the headlines.

[00:33] Jessica: And I do pop culture.

[00:35] Meg: You know, I have a garden on my roof.

[00:39] Jessica: I. Not only do I know you have a garden, but I've never gotten over the fact that you named your first tomato tomato Chalamet.

[00:47] Meg: Oh, that's true.

[00:48] Jessica: Yes, that was. That was. Yes. So, yes, I do know those years ago. Indeed. Your very first tomato is now dating one of the Jenners. Well done.

[00:58] Meg: Yeah. These. The tomatoes I'm growing right now, I grew from seed, which is the first time I've ever grown tomatoes from seed. So basically, I had a little package of little bitty seeds, and now they are huge plants.

[01:13] Jessica: Did you do the thing that we did in grammar school with you? You put them in a wet paper towel and you let them sprout and then you.

[01:20] Meg: I will do that. These tomatoes. If these tomatoes are really, really yummy, I will do that. Anyway, I wasn't even gonna tell a tomato story. I was going to tell an onion story. I also grow onions on my roof, and one of my onions did something really weird. That definitely looks like it should be from.

[01:43] Jessica: Is it a Harry Potter? Like, it's grown legs and is walking around the roof?

[01:47] Meg: Yeah. A cross between that and Little Shop of Horrors. Definitely. Intimidating. Huge, thick, angry looking. I'm nervous about it. And I'm like, and why is my.

[02:00] Jessica: I am gonna make you cry.

[02:03] Meg: Why is my onion doing this? This doesn't look onion like, at all. And I put it on my story. I tried to take a really cool

[02:09] Jessica: photograph of it and was someone like, that's a leak, Dum dum.

[02:13] Meg: No, it is an onion. Apparently, sometimes onions blossom into flowers. So I feel kind of lucky.

[02:23] Jessica: You went from being terrified of your onion to being really excited about it.

[02:27] Meg: It's going to be in my stories for the rest of the summer. The progress of my alien onion flower.

[02:33] Jessica: One of your great qualities. And I mean this sincerely. I'm not. This is not a backhanded anything. No, no. Is. You have this sense of wonder that permeates everything you do. It's very pervasive, but it really, really comes out with all things crafts and gardening, your amazement. You're like, I put a seed in the ground and then it grew. And then it's a thing. And then we're gonna eat it. I love that. To someone else might be like, well, that was the goal, you know, mundane, that you're like, it happened. And I don't know if that's just pure childish wonder, which is beautiful. Or is it actually that you're so cynical that you assume nothing's gonna happen, and then when it does, you're like, holy shit. The world has not crumbled a little bit.

[03:25] Meg: It does feel like magic. Like, thank God someone else is in charge of this.

[03:31] Jessica: You mean packaging the seeds?

[03:33] Meg: No, I mean science. I mean just nature. That I'm not in charge of making sure that things grow.

[03:44] Jessica: Oh, my God. You're happy that you're not Mother Nature? Is that what. Oh, my God.

[03:51] Meg: It would be a huge responsibility.

[03:54] Jessica: I Only this second, since 1982, have I come to understand the amount of pressure you put on yourself. Like, I want to be super supportive, and at the same time, I want to get a giant butterfly net and get you to the nearest sanatorium. Oh, my God. Well, I'm glad, too.

[04:15] Meg: You're definitely glad I'm not in charge of nature.

[04:18] Jessica: Well, you know. Well, and. And, you know, we've talked about. I don't know. Have we talked about what happens to my plants every time I go to England?

[04:26] Meg: No.

[04:26] Jessica: Okay, so I have many. No, I have many plants in this apartment, and I have entrusted them to one of our dear, dear friends who shall remain nameless.

[04:37] Meg: Okay, I know who you're talking about.

[04:40] Jessica: She has an obsession with pruning, but she. Over prunes.

[04:45] Meg: Oh, so you come back and they're bald.

[04:49] Jessica: And I'm like, did you have to cut off the living part? And the other thing that.

[04:54] Meg: Listen to this podcast.

[04:55] Jessica: I know she does. I love her. She know I've said this to her. And the other weird thing, and this has nothing to do with her. I think it's something about, like, when you have your own plants, like, your pets, like, only, you know, your pet's weird little things that they do. And so, like, if someone's taking care of it, your, you know, like your dog, and it's like, well, didn't eat for a week, and you're like, oh, you didn't sprinkle the moomoo dust on it. Oh, shit.

[05:22] Meg: Sorry.

[05:23] Jessica: I should have told you that some of my plants, when I am not here, half of them, as though. As though, like a samurai sword has come straight down the middle, half of the plant dies, and the other half lives. And I have a theory that it has something to do with rotating the plants and that it also has something to do with the air conditioning unit or the heating unit.

[05:53] Meg: I'm sure it's that because that's an issue on the roof too.

[05:57] Jessica: Yeah.

[05:58] Meg: Where anything that's near the generator, forget it.

[06:02] Jessica: Oh, really interesting. Okay, so that was your gardening botany by idiots.

[06:22] Meg: I have the very straightforward forward engagement question. What are your thoughts on David Letterman?

[06:29] Jessica: I'm so glad you asked. I've been waiting to talk about this. My thoughts about David Letterman have changed over the years. Original David Letterman I thought was hilarious. And he was the prototype for the, you know, talk shows, the late night shows where now like, they're games and like people, there are characters in the audience. Oddities, oddities, all of that. Like he. Chris Elliott got his start on Letterman and he's so wonderful and bananas and the stupid pet tricks and all of that was so great. And then I think it was during the time that he was trying to get out of his contract. He was a he. He wasn't funny. He just became. He was snarky and acerbic and rude to the guests and just at all. And I was just so turned off by him. And I think it's really interesting that now he's mellow. He's old, you know, and he's mellowed and he's had a child and all of the stuff that tends to mellow people out, including the growth of his giant beard, which may have convinced him that his Santi Claus, I don't know what. But on his I believe it's Netflix show My Next guest is or something like that, you know, it's long format, single person interview and I think he's great with that. And just as a side note, our dear friend Bronwyn is a producer for that show and she's very fond of him now. So I think he's had an arc and it's interesting that we've all been able to watch that arc.

[08:12] Meg: I remember first being made aware of him by guy friends that I met in a summer program. And they were talking. I mean, I knew who he was, but I didn't watch. It was on so late and they were obsessed. It felt like a very guy thing. Kind of in the same category as Spinal Tap. People who get really into Spinal Tap. You know what I'm talking about?

[08:38] Jessica: Oh, yeah. I mean, the, the like in grade school, the guys who would. Who would quote Monty Python. Yes. Not to you. At you.

[08:45] Meg: Yeah.

[08:45] Jessica: Yes.

[08:46] Meg: Okay. So it same. Maybe not the same group of guys, but definitely that kind of Thing where a bunch of guys go, oh my God, oh my God, David Letterman.

[08:55] Jessica: Now I'm going, I'm gonna say every line that he's ever said.

[08:58] Meg: Top 10.

[08:59] Jessica: Oh, okay. Top 10 list.

[09:01] Meg: All right, so thank you for that. My sources are American Splendor, the movie the Plain Dealer.

[09:09] Jessica: Cleveland, isn't it?

[09:10] Meg: Or yeah, by Joanna Connors. I watched a lot of videos on YouTube of Guess what, David? And the Washington Post. On October 15, 1986, David Letterman introduced Harvey Picar as his last guest on NBC's Late Night. Doubleday had published an anthology of Picar's comic series American Splendor. And the Times had given it a rave review. So his appearance could have been considered promotional. But really David Letterman brought him on because he was so very odd. American Splendor started as a self published comic book about Harvey's daily life in Cleveland. It was a brutally honest portrayal of his job as a file clerk at a Veteran affairs hospital. And his friends and office mates and troubles with his car and his money and his health and his wives, his anxieties. Now, Harvey was not a visual artist. He didn't draw at all. Like stick figures.

[10:25] Jessica: Yes.

[10:26] Meg: He was good friends with Robert Crumb, who he met at a flea market.

[10:31] Jessica: One of the weirdest characters speaking ever of weird.

[10:36] Meg: They both were collectors of jazz records and comics. Now Robert Crumb did both words and pictures. In 1972, Harvey showed his buddy Crumb some story ideas he had for a comic. And Crumb offered to illustrate those ideas. And again, that's like, like when I came in today and you were talking about how annoying conversation that you had with somebody on the phone about something mundane. I mean that's basically what Harvey was doing. And Robert Crumb was like, oh, oh, I'm gonna make really cool pictures about that.

[11:14] Jessica: Got it.

[11:15] Meg: About Harvey. Crumb wrote, quote, he didn't draw at all. He never even tried to learn. But he understood comics very well and the rhythm of comics. He was deeply into comics. So he had a feel for how to tell a story in comic book form. He was a great comic book writer. Crumb also helped Harvey enlist other artists to draw his ideas as well. And about a dozen illustrators contributed to the first 10 issues that made up the anthology American the Life and Times of Harvey P. Car. Which by the way, he's just literally like this schmuck living in Cleveland who works at the Veteran affairs place. But there's something about him that obviously a lot of people find compelling.

[12:05] Jessica: Well, he's the anti superhero. Like if there's ever. If you need. If you're like, I'm not that into Superman, it's like, well, we have Schlubbo for you. This might, this might speak to you. And there's no short P.S. no shortage of weird schlubby guys who are into comic book.

[12:26] Meg: But here he was self publishing this and it actually had a huge impact with just a few additions. They quickly sold out and people were, you know, please give us more, please

[12:40] Jessica: give us more good writing.

[12:42] Meg: Each of the artists who portrayed him and his stories had their own style. But the stories were all quintessentially Harvey Pekar. He considered himself a working class intellectual. And according to Crumb, he his quote subject matter in these stories is so staggeringly mundane, it verges on the exotic. I love that.

[13:05] Jessica: That's an amazing quote.

[13:06] Meg: The everyday life of the Everyman. Harvey's self published comics quote from off the streets of Cleveland. That's how he started. Each one were very popular in the underground scene, but he never made a living from them. He kept his job as a file clerk until he retired many years later when he got the call from Letterman's people, he was wary. He wanted to promote his book, but he knew Letterman could treat him like an oddity, a stupid human trick rather than an accomplished author. When he came on stage that night, he confronted Letterman about calling him curious. This is a quote from Letterman. A little defensive, aren't you? Letterman retorted, yeah, I am, man, Picar said, I'm waiting for those Cleveland jokes, you know. Harvey's wife, Joyce Brabner, had sewn a fabulously ugly doll with the Crumb version of Harvey as its face and wearing an American Splendor T shirt. Joyce was really into merchandising and the doll from top to toe was 2ft ish. And Harvey told the studio audience that it sold for $34. Guess how much one costs now.

[14:32] Jessica: $5,000.

[14:34] Meg: Only 500. Really a bargain.

[14:36] Jessica: A bargain.

[14:38] Meg: But there was something about Harvey that charmed Letterman. His passionate earnestness was. Was a refreshing counterpart for the king of irony. They were a great match for each other. And after sparring for a few minutes, Letterman declared, I like you, Harvey. And he invited him on six more times. Harvey was seven years older than Letterman, but they were very different generations. Harvey was into the Beat, poets and jazz. Things mattered deeply to him. Jack Kerouac described the Beat generation as, quote, the mad ones. The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time. And David Letterman's kind of cool. Didn't seem to give a fuck, but found everything mildly amusing. Just a completely different vibe. In his first Letterman interview, Harvey called him, called Letterman a showbiz phony, and Dave laughed it off. According to Picar, quote, dave was happy to have me come on like a Rust belt deez and dozer. But I tired of it and brought politics into the act by talking about the conflict of interest in General Electric's ownership of NBC, Letterman's employer at the time.

[16:03] Jessica: I love this.

[16:04] Meg: The powerful corporation has been. This is still a quote from Picard. The powerful corporation has been convicted numerous times of violating antitrust laws. It is also a huge arms manufacturer and by owning NBC is in a position to influence public opinion regarding weapons sales. It seems obvious to me it shouldn't be allowed to own a major TV news source. Now, Harvey brought up his feelings about GE a couple of times on air, and the producers of Late Night begged him not to. So he didn't. And they kept asking him back. But then on August 31, 1988, he came on stage, guns a blazing, his T shirt said on strike against NBC. And he launched into a tirade targeted at Letterman. Quote, I wanted to ask you why you defended G.E. i thought that was really dumb because it made you look like a shill for GE And I was really surprised to hear you do that. Letterman not amused at all. First of all, Harvey, what you are saying is not true. Second of all, this is not the place to say it. If you want to continue talking about this, go somewhere else because we're not going to talk about it on the show. But Harvey would not let it go. Then Letterman called him a dork and referred to American Splendor as a little Mickey Mouse magazine. Your little weekly reader, Harvey shot back, you're full of shit. And Letterman wrapped it up with, you're not coming back at all. And later told Harvey off screen, you fucked up a great thing. And Letterman did not ask Harvey on again for many, many years. And some say he was banned. Others say he was invited but couldn't make it because he was battling cancer. But it wouldn't be until 1994, when Letterman was now at CBS, that Harvey and Letterman would meet again. This is from Letterman years later. Quote, we had a fight, a falling out, a misunderstanding. All that's behind us. I'm genuinely happy to see you back, said Letterman really replied Harvey. Harvey died of an accidental overdose of antidepressants in 2010, and he left behind his wife Joyce, and foster daughter Danielle, and a Legacy as the poet laureate of Cleveland. He helped change. This is a quote, helped change the appreciation for and perceptions of the graphic novel, the drawn memoir, the autobiographical comic narrative. According to the Washington Post, when asked about the Letterman kerfuffle, Joyce said, quote, dave was mad because he thought he was giving Harvey his big chance. But what he was really giving him was of no real value to us. Harvey was never mad at Dave. He felt sorry for him. Dave confused Harvey being a comic book writer with Harvey being a comic, which he wasn't. And what was David Letterman's final word on Harvey? Quote, he was anti establishment in a way that you don't see guys like that anymore. And that used to really upset me because I just thought, come on, Harvey, don't do this to us. Just play the game. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, geez, I wish I could have had Harvey on every night.

[19:43] Jessica: That's what cynicism and sarcasm gets you, Dave. Yeah.

[19:46] Meg: And it is interesting. I'd never heard before or thought about sort of the beat generation running up against that irony and wryness and sarcastic tone that we grew up with.

[20:02] Jessica: Well, and Letterman was. That attitude was one of the architects of the Gen X, whatever. And so I think it took our peers a very long time to recognize, certainly when Letterman really went off the rails, that he was like, it wasn't

[20:19] Meg: fun anymore, and that it's okay to really care about something, to deeply commit to something. Like, I do kind of remember feeling like, ooh, does that seem like I'm sort of trying too hard? Or is that cool? Isn't it easier just to be like, ah, I don't think I like that so much. Or, you know, have some sort of sarcastic quip, then you don't put yourself on the line. Really. That aside, sorry, that's a bit deep.

[20:44] Jessica: No, no, it's not. It's not that it's deep. It's that I think it's. It's a sign of. Again, certainly in our peer group, it's about getting older and growing out of nothing matters.

[20:59] Meg: I remember that even a little bit at the time that it. There were some people I would just never go to a movie with because. Or a play with because they would always say, like, ugh. They would always have something negative to say about it. I'm like, well, that's just easy. It takes more effort and it is more vulnerable to say what you really liked about something. Oh, definitely. To really support something. And it was interesting to find out. I mean, just for myself, like, I don't want to go to the theater with someone who hates every single thing we see together. I'm not interested in doing that.

[21:34] Jessica: That's a fun sucker, right? No.

[21:37] Meg: Good. And I did think of that as being kind of a cool adjacent. That that was. It was like that person was protecting herself from kind of putting herself on the line. To be honest, when you say what you really believe in or what you really care about, if you really say, like, I'm for that, well, you open

[21:58] Jessica: yourself up for rejection.

[22:00] Meg: Yeah. And you. It's. It's. It's.

[22:04] Jessica: Well, I think the other interesting thing about Harvey P. Carr, and I wonder if this affected David Letterman's view of him, was that I don't know if the comic changed the name or if it was a separate book that he did. That was our cancer year. That was.

[22:23] Meg: That's a separate book.

[22:24] Jessica: Yeah. About Joyce's struggle.

[22:27] Meg: Well, he's the one who had cancer, but she was taking care of him.

[22:29] Jessica: Oh, I thought that she had cancer.

[22:31] Meg: She was depressed. He had cancer.

[22:33] Jessica: Oh, well, then that's.

[22:36] Meg: But they wrote this together.

[22:38] Jessica: A memoir that's that raw. Even for someone like Letterman. It's kind of like, wake up, wake up. Something is gonna matter. What he's doing now is more of what he was doing before. It's all the same thing. Everything matters.

[22:54] Meg: Meaning that David Letterman has come around to.

[22:57] Jessica: No, no, I'm saying that maybe that helped David Letterman come around, because when you see someone's work is still consistent with the way that they're writing, but they're now writing about cancer, that it's sort of like, oh, he was serious all the time. He wasn't a joke or he wasn't a schmuck. And dismissing him in any way was really dumb.

[23:21] Meg: So Harvey Pekar also included the interviews that he did with Letterman. He had those in his comic books as well. And David Letterman would have him on the show and just be shocked. He was like, that's exactly word for word what we said to each other. And Harvey's like, yeah, why wouldn't I say exactly word for word what we said to each other? And David Letterman is like, nobody ever quotes me accurately.

[23:46] Jessica: This is so strange.

[23:47] Meg: Like, he seemed genuinely shocked that someone like Harvey existed.

[23:55] Jessica: No, he was. He was an individual.

[23:59] Meg: Have you seen American Splendor?

[24:01] Jessica: I have. I loved it. I love it. And I'm not a huge Paul Giamatti fan. I don't think that he's great in everything that he's cast in, but that was a role he was born to. Play. It was like, I don't think there was another human being who could have played Harvey Picar. He was phenomenal. And Hope Davis, who I think you know.

[24:23] Meg: Do you know Hope Davis personally?

[24:25] Jessica: Oh, I thought you did know her personally. Anyway, playing Joyce was wonderful. And I remember the doll actually from the movie and just being like, don't take it on the air. Don't take it. Tometo. I was inspired to do this segment because we were on 1980s now last week with our friend Will Padilla. Yeah. And he talked about a very famous puzzle book that came out in the unsurprisingly 80s called Masquerade, which I had never heard of.

[25:05] Meg: And you actually owned.

[25:08] Jessica: Indeed. And you know what? Masquerade. Like, I desperately wanted to talk about the Griffin and Sabine books as a follow up, but they were in the 90s.

[25:16] Meg: Yeah.

[25:17] Jessica: So I couldn't. I loved Griffin Sabine. They're on the bookshelf. Direct, directly in back of you.

[25:21] Meg: They're on my bedside bookshelf as well. I love.

[25:24] Jessica: They were very beautiful and very unusual.

[25:27] Meg: Yeah, I totally got lost in those books.

[25:30] Jessica: Indeed. I was reminded of, you know, I suppose you can call them puzzle books that were so popular when we were exactly the target age. They came out when we were roughly 10, 11. I hearkened back to the magic of choose your Own Adventure books. And I thought, how did those even happen? How did they come to pass? What's that about? So I decided to do a little investigation.

[26:01] Meg: Awesome.

[26:02] Jessica: And what I love about choose youe Own Adventure is that even though it became an international phenomenon and indeed sparked video games and all kinds of stuff, in fact, it was so popular, I don't know if you're a black mirror.

[26:21] Meg: Black mirror.

[26:21] Jessica: Bandersnatch. Was it borrowed too much from choose youe Own Adventure? The choose youe Own Adventure originators sued Netflix. No. And Netflix knew that they had messed up and they settled.

[26:36] Meg: I had no idea. I very much enjoyed it. I didn't find it entirely satisfying, but I loved the idea.

[26:46] Jessica: Well, there's a reason why. Because you loved it in 1981. So what I love about this is that I always think that the books that are most memorable are the ones that are really not connected to marketing as their origin story. They're just pure. And that's how these books started out. In 1969, Ed Packer, a Manhattan attorney who was on the verge of being divorced. He lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, and he had two young daughters. And his most favorite time of the day was tucking them in and telling them Bedtime stories. And they're very smart little girls. And he would come up with ideas for stories on the train going back to Connecticut from New York City. Then he would tell them the stories and give them the opportunity to choose what. What should happen next. Love that. And they loved it. So he thought, wouldn't it be fun to write this up and see if anyone wants to publish it? And true to their nature, publishers were like, we don't get it. It's strange. I don't give a. How do you do this? Why? No one's ever done it before. It's not a book, it's a game. No one took it. So he put his manuscript in a desk drawer for six years. Okay. In 1976, he meets the publisher of Vermont Crossroads Press, Ray Montgomery. Ray Montgomery gets it instantly. And now this is a teeny, tiny publisher. Now why did he get it? Well, Ray had a very interesting background. Ray used to work for the Peace Corps and for Con Edison. And he would write scenarios that were used for training. But in these scenarios, which were basically roleplay, each of the role playing trainees would have the opportunity to choose something that they would do within.

[28:52] Meg: Like give you an example.

[28:54] Jessica: You're working in Botswana and the latrines that you're digging have filled with water. And now, you know, the health and safety of everyone in this village is compromised. What do you do? Okay, so it was problem solving, but it was all about, you have to choose the next thing. So he saw this manuscript that came to him and was like, oh, I instantly get it.

[29:22] Meg: And it's like a flowchart, because then once you do the thing, then you're gonna be met with another option.

[29:30] Jessica: Well, not in his world. In his world, it was. There was, you know, there were a limited. Yeah, there were. But the idea of confronting someone with a story and them having to tell you what they're gonna do, he was familiar with.

[29:46] Meg: Got it.

[29:47] Jessica: What you are bringing up is very interesting because it's how the original author of these, Ed Packer, wrote these books. Ed Packer came up with huge charts where he would draw out every single option of what could happen. And Ed Packer, just so we have a quick under. Actually a quick understanding for those who don't know what. Choose your own adventure. Books are wildly popular. In fact, so wildly popular that they were, next to Jordache Jeans on the east coast, the number one requested thing for kids to have in their camp trunks when they went away for the summer.

[30:27] Meg: Love that.

[30:28] Jessica: And so. And Jordache Jeans, I Mean, help me. So he. And he was a genius. He was able to come up in his first books with enough options for a kid to have 36 to 42 endings.

[30:44] Meg: Wow. In one book?

[30:45] Jessica: In one book. And what was even more fantastic was that he was really playing with the idea not only of a child's agency with coming up with a story, but he was also playing around with the idea of time. Because in his books, you could get to the end, make a choice, and have to go back to the beginning.

[31:07] Meg: Oh, wow. So you go. You go back in time.

[31:10] Jessica: Yes. Well, you would go back to an earlier choice. You're now in a similar situation. You're in the situation that you didn't choose before.

[31:19] Meg: And the book takes you there, the

[31:20] Jessica: book takes you there. So the book, you would read something and you'd read it. Oh, I make Daddy. I make this choice. Okay, go to page 42. And then you do whatever you do on page 42, and it's like, okay, that means that you now have to go Back to page 10. And so you could live within the book for a very long time.

[31:39] Meg: Very cool.

[31:40] Jessica: So what looks like a small children's book is.

[31:43] Meg: Is not hours of entertainment.

[31:46] Jessica: Exactly. Ray knew what he was doing. Publishers did not get it, so thank heavens, because Ray, with Vermont Crossroads, he published it. And he did a little bit of a focus group before he published it. He made 50 Xerox copies of the original manuscript and gave it to an educator in whatever town he was in in Vermont and said, tell me what the kids think. It was a smash. So he publishes, and he winds up selling 8,000 units, which, for a tiny publisher in Nowheresville, Vermont, is massive. And he even goes to Frankfurt Book Fair and sells the foreign rights to two different countries. So this is something big. He knows that he can't promote this book to make it what it should be. He just doesn't have the juice. He winds up going to Bantam, which was part of Bertelsmann Books is no longer. But he went to Bantam, just like nowadays with people who self publish. I mean, it happens less and less. But like, 50 shades of gray was the perfect example. Oh, you're gonna self publish and sell eight jillion copies? Sure, we'll publish you. So that's what happened.

[33:08] Meg: You've done all the work.

[33:09] Jessica: Exactly. We. Now that you've told us that it will really sell, sure, we're in. Interestingly, because it was kids books and they still had no marketing money, which is part of the terrible, terrible reality of children's Books. Although the great thing about children's books is that they decided to publish them or Bantam. They published them to sell for A$50. So they were completely within the reach of kids pocket money. Great. They also wanted to have the books available to kids from 8 to 15. They knew that if they published them in the traditional for younger kids, it would be a slightly oversized book which is an instant telltale sign and no self respecting teenager would ever buy it. So they.

[33:58] Meg: That's so sixth grade.

[33:59] Jessica: Exactly. So they published it in the same trim size as mass market books for adults.

[34:06] Meg: Like my aunt reads when she's hanging out by the pool.

[34:10] Jessica: Yes. Size book. The ones that used to be on racks in grocery stores. Remember that you could buy a book in a grocery store.

[34:19] Meg: I do indeed. Very clever. Also $1.50. You can get quite a few of those over the summer.

[34:27] Jessica: Yes, you can. Exactly. Even so, as long as it will take you to get through 42 endings, you can still buy more. The marketing at Bantam, which one would think would be fantastic, was measly. Here's what Barbara Marcus, director of marketing at Bantam, said about this. She said a children's paperback doesn't have dollars, display space or reviews. We did absolutely nothing except give the books away. We gave thousands of the books to our salesman and told them to give five to each bookseller and tell him to give them to the first five kids into his shop. It was a runaway success.

[35:09] Meg: I have to say. Kids actually do talk to each other and they do tell each other what they're reading. And there are trends and you know, like corner bookstore, which we love so much. And did you ever go to Eeyore's?

[35:21] Jessica: Oh sure, absolutely.

[35:23] Meg: Both of those bookstores were children's book or corner bookstore isn't just for children, but Eeyore's was. And both of them had a newsletter that published kids reviews of kids books.

[35:34] Jessica: Oh, you're joking. That's fantastic.

[35:36] Meg: That's so smart.

[35:38] Jessica: That's amazing.

[35:38] Meg: And especially like getting up to, you know when your kids are getting books for summer vacation and they've gotta do a reading list and all the schools had different reading lists. It's just like brilliant.

[35:52] Jessica: It's brilliant because the kids who might not be drawn to a book will be drawn to it because a peer says something.

[35:58] Meg: Absolutely.

[35:58] Jessica: And the kids who are big readers are being encouraged to be big readers. Bigger readers because they're being given a voice in a newsletter. Like how amazing is that?

[36:07] Meg: Their opinion is important.

[36:09] Jessica: Indeed. So some of the most popular Titles for choose your own adventure were the very original one, the Cave of Time, which was actually a title that Ed Packer's daughter came up with. Your codename is Jonah. Who killed Harlow Thrombey? The Mystery of Chimney Rock, Journey under the Sea, the Lost Jewels of Nebuti. It always makes me laugh because I'm a child. Mystery of the Maya and Prisoner of the Ant People. The interesting thing was when Bantam picked this up, picked up the opportunity to publish the books, Montgomery tried to make the deal on his own because he was the publisher who was making the deals.

[36:54] Meg: He tried basically do it without Packer,

[36:57] Jessica: and Bantam said, no way. We're only doing this deal if Packer is involved.

[37:03] Meg: Montgomery seemed like such a upstanding human being. No.

[37:08] Jessica: Everyone takes a shot, I guess. I don't know.

[37:10] Meg: I don't know. I don't know if I like that shot.

[37:15] Jessica: Nonetheless, Bantam did the right thing, and they said, we need to have both of you. So both. The deal was that both men had to write the books, and they split the number of books that had to come out each year, which was 12 right down the middle. Ed Packer's books were like the original. They're action driven and it's all about doing. And Montgomery's books were a little more metaphysical. They were a little more out there. They were more about like. They were a little more Twilight Zone. Ish. So there was, in the end, something for every kind of reader.

[37:50] Meg: All right.

[37:52] Jessica: And again, just a quick note about how ridiculous New York City publishers are. One of them said, it's hard enough to get children to read. You're just making it harder with all these choices.

[38:02] Meg: Hard to get children to read. That's not true.

[38:05] Jessica: No. Exactly how. Oh. And the reason that Montgomery did this with Packer was that he was annoyed that Packer wanted to leave Montgomery Publishing. He wanted to start looking for a deal elsewhere. He was the one who came up with the idea. But it was Montgomery who secured the deal because he was a publisher already. They ironed it out, and they worked together well afterwards. Dungeons and Dragons was becoming extraordinarily popular.

[38:34] Meg: At the same time, when you started talking about this, it does remind me not only of Dungeons and Dragons, but also there are, you know, they're very sophisticated board games now that follow the kind of Dungeons and Dragons. Choose your path. And, yeah, it sounds like this all started happening at around the same time. Choose your adventure. Dungeons and Dragons. It also kind of reminds me of video games.

[39:01] Jessica: And this became a video game eventually. But what's really interesting is that choose

[39:06] Meg: your own adventure, dude.

[39:07] Jessica: Yeah, I'll tell you about that. So the thing about D and D is that you have a. Again, I can't help myself. You have a dungeon master who is in charge of the game. And you rolled, you know, you rolled the dice, and that's part of what's gonna determine your outcome. It's not completely giving the reader agency. So it's a little bit different. It's certainly interactive with other kids, you know, but it's also not giving the reader complete leeway to make a mistake. I mean, that was the other wonderful thing about these books. Cause everyone's like, oh, I'm supposed to just choose my own adventure and get to the end and then start all over again. But everyone cheated. That was. And it was designed. They knew the kids were gonna do that. So you get somewhere like, oh, I didn't like what that happened. So you go back to where you were reading and then you choose again from there. So any way in which the kid interacted with the book was planned and it was considered to be correct. There was no wrong way to play with and use these books.

[40:12] Meg: Alice and Billi had this amazing. Still have this amazing graphic novel. And when I get home, I'll look it up and I'll put it the Instagram. Brilliant. If you choose the wrong path, you blow up. So it's like how to not just

[40:29] Jessica: like life blow up. I love this. So also interesting is that it's very clear that Ed Packer was a big reader, because there were many books that came before choose youe Own Adventure that influenced the creation of these books. And here's a quick little sampling. Robert Coover's 1969 short story The Babysitter. Imagining a single ordinary night following a series of increasingly disturbing paths. Which doesn't that sound familiar?

[40:59] Meg: What? Adventures in.

[41:01] Jessica: Yeah, it sounds exactly like Adventures in Babysitting.

[41:04] Meg: So is an actual kid.

[41:05] Jessica: Or even don't tell mom the babysitter's Dead. Like, either way, I'm also.

[41:10] Meg: It also sounds like a horror movie where, well, if you open the wrong door, there's like, well, don't tell mom

[41:16] Jessica: the babysitter's dead is actually not a good thing. There was also John Fowles novel the French Lieutenant's Woman, which was published the same year as the first choose your own Adventure and had three possible endings.

[41:27] Meg: I never knew that.

[41:29] Jessica: Jorge Luis Borges's short story the Garden of forking paths from 1941 imagines the unfinished novel of a Chinese Civil Servant, in which all the possible outcomes of an event occur, rather than just one. But it was a largely forgotten novel called Consider the consequences, published in 1930, that most closely aligned with choose youe Own Adventure. It was written by, wait for it. Two women, Doris Webster and Mary Alden Hopkins. And it invited the reader to make choices about the romantic life of a young woman and her two suitors, leading to 43 alternative endings.

[42:13] Meg: Whoa.

[42:14] Jessica: The opening page offers a disclaimer quote. Life is not a continuous line from the cradle to the grave. Rather, it is many short lines, each ending in a choice and branching right and left to other choices. Like a bunch of seaweed. It was very seaweed. Yes. It was very lyrical. And then it sort of falls off at the end, it going to seaweed.

[42:39] Meg: But I get it. I get the visual.

[42:41] Jessica: Yeah. So you're talking about video games. Bantam actually underwrote the development of an Atari video game based on choose youe Own Adventure. And there were more to come. Interestingly, there were some disagreements for Montgomery and Parker with Bantam, which basically was sexism based. What they originally devised the stories Packer did for his daughters. And he wanted to make the protagonists gender neutral. But the publisher said no one will believe that it's a girl. And so boy.

[43:15] Meg: And my imagination can.

[43:17] Jessica: Girls will. Girls will do things that boys do, but boys will not do things that girls do. So that's why these need to be. When they are gendered, it needs to be a boy. That didn't go over too well.

[43:30] Meg: Good. So they kept them gender neutral.

[43:35] Jessica: Not really. They did the best they could. 80s.

[43:38] Meg: Why now?

[43:39] Jessica: Now I said that Ray Montgomery was sort of more, you know, metaphysical kooky. But there's one book and now I actually want to find this book. And I'm sure this is going to be a great ebay moment for me where Ed Parker goes off the deep end with his writing inside UFO5440 after your Concorde flight gets intercepted by aliens called the UTY and I'm like, is that ut y? Like what did someone have urinary tract infection against?

[44:13] Meg: Remember, he's divorced.

[44:14] Jessica: Oh my God, that's true. Maybe. Yeah. It's not good. So they are collecting specimens for their interplanetary zoo. You find yourself imprisoned in the chamber of Earth people. Do you speak to the dark haired young woman or the wise looking old man? Children already spent much of their lives puzzling out what to tell various authority figures, parents, teachers and babysitters in order to get what they want. In return, knowledge Attention, affection and agency. In one plot line, the UTY masters challenge the reader to say something that will surprise them. It's a moment that winks at you, reminding you that the books, even as they seem to offer you choices, already know all the choices that you can make. And how fabulous is this? In the next book, Hyperspace, Packer goes even further. It reads like a book that has grown tired of following the rules. Published in 1983, it begins when your mad scientist neighbor invites you to help him explore hyperspace. Hello, back to the future. A realm that makes it possible to visit alternate universes and which eventually delivers you to the fifth dimension. A barren landscape of red clay hills where you meet an ordinary seeming guy in jeans who, quote, looks a bit older than your father. He turns out to be the author of the book, Packer himself. Ooh, Packer. He is sick of staying on the sidelines. Since you're the author, you tell him as the reader, you ought to be able to tell me how to get out of hyperspace and back to my own universe. He doesn't tell you. The ground beneath your feet starts to open up. Giant cracks under his as well. You have to make a choice. But before you make the choice, he goes down through a crack.

[46:11] Meg: So do you save him or save yourself?

[46:13] Jessica: Nope, it's not a choice. You save yourself, but there's no option to save him. Either he's dead or he's back in another dimension. You don't know. When you finally make it to the sixth dimension, you find nothing. Except this disclaimer. Unfortunately, the author of this book, Edward Packard, never made it to the sixth dimension. For that reason he is unable to describe it. And the point of it was grown ups don't know everything. And grownups aren't always going to be able to even save themselves. So Packard was saying, you have to

[46:50] Meg: describe it to yourself because you're the only one left left.

[46:53] Jessica: Exactly. All you can do is rely on yourself.

[46:57] Meg: Well, I can understand how both these guys got a little heady with all this stuff.

[47:01] Jessica: I. I think that once you're, once you're coming up with 46 endings, you're so far up your own ass that you don't know what's going. That's. The sixth dimension is right up your own ass. My ass. My ass. Is my ass a place? Is it a concept? I don't know. But interestingly, the people who of course started buying these again because they were reissued were Gen X and they wanted to expose their kids to the same thing. Reissued? Yes. One Gen Xer with a three year old wrote to Packer that he's tired from life but thinks frequently of the wonder he felt at these books and how following multiple versions of the story felt like skating over the ice that separates us from another world. There are computer games. Game Boy got in on it. They never had the same names. There was King's Quest. All of the Quest stories were entirely lifted from this. Myst was one of them. And hilariously, in 2015, Gen X actor Neil Patrick Harris published a memoir with choices titled choose your own autobiography. The dead patriarch in the 2019 hit film Knives out is named Harlan Thrombey after one of the characters in one of the books, the incredibly popular production Sleep no More, also based on choose youe Own Adventure. The influence far and wide is wild. Completely original.

[48:38] Meg: To think about how nonlinear storytelling having an impact not only on what we're consuming, but then also possibly on how we think about our life and how we think about our world.

[48:53] Jessica: It's just.

[48:54] Meg: It's very heady. Very heady.

[48:57] Jessica: Well, and I. Yeah, and I think it's such a wonderful explanation of why they were so popular. Because you're a kid who can do anything. I mean, when you're a kid. I mean, when we were kids. Now kids have very different relationships with their. Not your kids necessarily, but there's a very different parent child relationship than Gen Xers had where it was. Because I said so. There's a lot more, I think, of that. But that these kids had a place where they could explore and had, as I keep saying, complete agency and the opportunity to mess up and do it again. Tie in.

[49:50] Meg: Doubleday. Doubleday published American Splendor and Bantam ended

[49:56] Jessica: up being purchased by Doubleday.

[49:58] Meg: I know that's a kind of dry tie in. It's not as juicy as we sometimes

[50:03] Jessica: get, but no, I think that's a completely, completely good tie in.

[50:08] Meg: Self publishing.

[50:10] Jessica: Self publishing for sure. I think also, you know, Harvey P. Carr was coming up with an entirely new genre, as were these guys.

[50:18] Meg: Absolutely.

[50:19] Jessica: You know, so there's. There's so much.

[50:22] Meg: And it changed the way people thought about themselves and the world and storytelling. And storytelling. There we go. Well, that's a damn good tie in. Almost like we planned it, which we didn't.

[50:34] Jessica: Nope. It's just one of those things in the.

[50:36] Meg: Zach Guest.

[50:37] Jessica: So do you have. Do you have a call to action for our lovely listeners?

[50:41] Meg: I would love so many people go on the Instagram and it's really fun to hear what you have to say. Especially when you message and you comment. I would like to hear from more people because I feel like there's some lurkers out there and maybe you don't jump out and say hi, but like, do that. Come onto the Instagram desperately 80s desperately 80s comment.

[51:06] Jessica: Hit the like, let us know that you're out there. If you're not someone who wants to write a comment, just hitting the heart lets us know that you are out there. And we love that.

[51:15] Meg: And we get some of our best ideas for stuff from people who are interacting on the Instagram.

[51:33] Jessica: It.