The other day I came across the outline of a book I once tried to write. It was going to be titled New Columbia: A Book on D.C. Statehood. My co- author and I were excited about the idea, and our earnest enthusiasm showed in the pitch we sent to publishers. “The creation of a 51st state,” we wrote, “is a question that could have important national consequences.” Plus, as we pointed out, “no book has yet been written on it.” One of our eye-grabbing chapters would have taken a “closer look at H.R. 4718,” the New Columbia Admission Bill.
New Columbia didn’t get far — the foundation we had hoped would fund it didn’t; our would-be literary agent never even called us back — and rereading the proposal five years later, I understood why: It was a terrible idea. The premise was yawn-inducing. Flipping through the yellowing chapter summaries I felt vaguely sick to my stomach, the way you do looking at dirty plates after a heavy meal. Like dinner, prose can be pretty unappetizing if you have to face it afterwards.
And I’ve had to face it repeatedly. The problem with writing, as every writer discovers, is that it doesn’t go away. It lurks in file folders, sits at the back of desk drawers, floats around in Nexis waiting to be rediscovered and embarrass you. A couple of years ago, just to be mean, my wife dug out a handbill I’d written in tenth grade to protest the expulsion of a classmate from school. I only dimly remember him now, though I’m pretty sure he was your standard slope-shouldered, dope-smoking, arrogant little creep friend of mine who’d probably been booted for doing something horrible. I signed the flyer anonymously, as “A Concerned Student,” and it’s a good thing, since it was filled with the most obvious kinds of spelling mistake, not to mention a lot of exclamation points. The word “outrageous” was used in every one of its grammatical forms. And just in case readers missed the general tone of moral indignation, I tipped them off with the headline: “The Bell of Injustice Tolls.”
Pretty bad, even for a 15-year-old. Not as appalling, though, as some of the things I wrote when I got older. I made it through four years of college, for instance, using a total of only two opening phrases. “In many ways, . . .” began the first one. “In considering [name of book, philosopher, or modern feminist poet here], one must ask oneself the question. . . ,” began the second. Even college professors catch on to this kind of thing after a while, and my papers were routinely returned with “Huh?” and “Explain” jotted in the margins. “The triple-spacing doesn’t work,” wrote one particularly savvy philosophy instructor. “Try writing more.”
Happily, thanks to a series of kindly editors, most of the really embarrassing things I’ve written have never seen print. I have a whole file full of these masterpieces labeled “Spiked.” Sometimes I go through it just to remind myself of what can happen when a writer loses perspective. Like the piece I once wrote arguing that child-proof cigarette lighters were the biggest threat to American liberty since the Com-intern. Or the essay in which I called on the federal government to issue every American woman a concealed-weapons permit. That one came back with only one query: “Is this a joke?” I tried to pretend it was.
In 1994, while working as an editorial writer at a southern newspaper, I read that Rep. John Dingell of Michigan was planning to hold hearings into the famous “Harry and Louise” television ads on the grounds that they mischaracterized the Clinton health-care plan. Seemed like an outrageous assault on the First Amendment to me. So I wrote a jingle to denounce him: ” Dingell bells, Dingell bells/John Dingell wears red tights./Tough luck for him/because we’re protected/by the Bill of Rights.” That was about it, the extent of my editorial, the newspaper’s official position on this great question of the day. Or at least it would have been the newspaper’s official position, had my editor let it run. He returned it with “SEE ME” written in angry red pen across the top of the page.
It was around this time that an old reporter I shared an office with came in and caught me smugly reading a piece I’d written for that day’s paper. ” Yep,” he said, peering over his glasses, “that thing’s probably sitting at the bottom of a lot of bird cages by now. Covered in canary crap.” At the time, it seemed like a mean thing to say. Now I realize it should have made me feel better.
TUCKER CARLSON
