Tom Scocca: Can we talk about the Coney Island Freakshow of Defective Timespersons?

Tom Scocca: See! The Ghastly Addict & His Frostbitten Tots!

Tom Scocca: Smell! The Uncontrollable Vomiting of the Food Expert!

Choire Sicha: And let's not forget: Marvel! At the Guy Who Can't Stop Doing Other Dudes!

Tom Scocca: You mean: The Guy Who Can't Stop Doing Other Dudes Because, Gosh, They Just Keep Telling Him How Smokin' Irresistibly Hot He Is!

Choire Sicha: Or: I Blew Off A Wedding To Get Laid (Um Just Like Every Other Gay Dude.)

Tom Scocca: Uhrkf, all these terrible details flooding back.

Choire Sicha: They are not necessarily a homogeneous lot, apart from the memoirness. Some are good! Some are not!

Tom Scocca: Ponder! The Former Executive Editor's Mother's Suicide Attempt of Long Ago!

Choire Sicha: Oh, I done forgot that one! I wonder how this "first serial" stuff works out. For instance: how did WaPo win out on getting the Francine du Plessix Gray excerpt? Was it too high-brow, or just too non-staff-written, for the NYT mag?

Tom Scocca: I do not have a clue.

Choire Sicha: I do not either! Oh also let us not forget: Oh Holy Shit, This Dexter Filkins Excerpt is Really Good.

Tom Scocca: When was that?

Choire Sicha: August 24, 2008!

Choire Sicha: Now, everyone referred to "I Am Feeling Kind Of Down: The Daphne Merkin Story" as a book proposal. But I am not sure it is. It might have just been... a magazine piece? A magazine piece that read like a memoir excerpt.

Tom Scocca: Right. Except–or especially!–it made it sort of impossible to imagine slogging through a book's worth of more of the same.

Choire Sicha: Well, it's... depressing! Plus Andrew Solomon has already Done That.

Choire Sicha: The whole David Carr, Frank Bruni, Benoit Denizet-Denizet-Benizet, Dexter Filkins memoir thing is like an unruly game of Fuck, Marry, Kill and Something Else.

Choire Sicha: Hey wow, on second thought, let's not go there.

Tom Scocca: Ha!

Choire Sicha: Mmph. But here's my other question: Don't you think this all makes Jenny 8. Lee feel bad?

Tom Scocca: Why?

Choire Sicha: WHY NO EXCERPT OF HER BOOK? Was it not depraved enough?

Tom Scocca: Well, Jenny made the mistake of writing about other people and other things.

Choire Sicha: Or something. I wonder what Times-people memoirs we have to look forward to. Too bad they fired Judy Miller.

Tom Scocca: Did they let Howell Raines write about fly-fishing in the magazine?

Choire Sicha: Oh, hello, 1993.

Tom Scocca: Howell Raines was such a terrible writer about fishing.

Choire Sicha: Yes but he is more interesting on the Hoover Cabinet! Also this is impressive: "Sounds like you bent a shaft when you went aground," the President said. A president, who knows about boats! Too bad that was all he knew about.

Tom Scocca: Wait, I'm losing count of how many different trivial cultural practices Howell Raines declares were responsible for the defeat of Jimmy Carter.

Choire Sicha: Oh those were the days!

Tom Scocca: He is quite the expert on the fatal follies of powerful men, Howell Raines is.

Choire Sicha: Also, 11 years ago? Now that is an opening sentence for a memoir excerpt! Although it does not deliver. But you know: interesting!

Tom Scocca: Yeah, I got all confused by the non-delivery.

Choire Sicha: That wouldn't be allowed nowadays! He'd have to have children and confess his hatred toward them for being Jew children.

Choire Sicha: I am merely interested, of course, of GETTING IN ON THIS.

Tom Scocca: What about, as an excerpt, a chapter from my new memoir, ME THE PEOPLE, by Daffy Benzene-Merkur?

Tom Scocca:

CHAPTER ONE: I have always aspired to be an angry Negro. All down through the years of my lives, the labels of my many feuding selves-dutiful daughter, opera critic, television addict (even now my palms twitch at the sight of a multi-function remote), second-string fullback, copy-store clerk (the smell of the toner!)-have all seemed to be crude and awkward attempts to achieve the simple sort of clarity that would be mine if only I were, on top of everything else, an angry Negro. I tell this to Dr. W, on the couch in his office, leaning my aching head against the smooth leather, and Dr. W. says to me, But I am an allergist, and I have never laid eyes on you before this afternoon.

It occurs to me that my lack of anger, of good Negro anger, should itself make me angry, that it represents in itself the sort of cosmic injustice that affirms one's rightful place in opposition to this glib universe and its indifferent offerings, IN ITSELF, but my attempt to harness my anger-about-anger only ever succeeds in making me sad. Or in simpler words, it fails. I am sad. The universe does not care about me, not at all, not even to beat me up. I cannot even beat myself up, but can only sort of shove myself up against the lockers, jostling myself contemptuously. These reflections bumping around inside my head, I square my shoulders-my narrow and unchangeably pale shoulders-and trudge through the door of the New York Times, where I earn $80,000 a year.