From the Author
Canadian Bookseller, July/August 2001

I chose Arsenal Pulp Press for a number of reasons. Being an independent publisher, they viewed my zine pedigree as an asset (I published six issues of something called Single Guy Zine between 1994 - 1997) instead of a liability. I also knew they were more likely to take risks (beyond their rash decision to actually publish my writing), and consult with me about marketing, advertising and cover art decisions.

The final reason I went with Arsenal Pulp Press is that nobody else would touch A Very Lonely Planet with a five meter pole. When you say "humour book" to most publishers, they act as though you've just offered them a glowing plutonium rod. Certainly, people like to laugh, and publishers often enjoy making people laugh -- they're just not sure how to best accomplish this noble goal.

The biggest problem is that publishers feel compelled to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that their humour books are actually funny. To my knowledge, this is not the case with other kinds of literature. Knopf might offer "pure fiction," but they've never had to convince Chapters that their latest titles are sufficiently "fiction-y."

When McSweeney's Books announced that their debut offering would be the Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature (a smart, mean, insider spoof of machismo/celebrity journalism) publisher Dave Eggers made a rather pointed observation about how Pollack's book might have faired elsewhere: "To alleviate the publisher's fears about the public's understanding of the book, the book's cover would be wacky, perhaps with a picture of Mr. Pollack in his underwear while making a funny face, to indicate to potential readers that inside the book there would be funny laffs."

Thankfully APP did not pursue the "wacky underwear" route, which allowed me to relax appreciably and focus instead on writing the best book I was capable of. Despite appearances to the contrary, I did two solid months worth of research for A Very Lonely Planet. Every film, website or book I reference (or mock) had to be thoroughly analyzed. The triple-W, often maligned as a global pornography network, was an invaluable resource, with its abundant Seinfeld transcripts, Kevin Smith film scripts, and access to unique articles like Steve Bodow's "Single White Product," written for feedmag.com in March 20, 1997, in which Bodow has a personal focus group assess his dating potential.

I tore through Stiffed by Susan Faludi, Man Overboard by Ian Brown, the graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk,Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace, and Hi-fi's and Hi-balls by Bob Sloan and Steven Guarnaccia, among many, many others. The fact that my most vigorous bouts of research occurred during the height of the Toronto winter is a complete coincidence.

APP edited very sparingly, a welcome change from the world of magazine freelancing. They were happy to give me more than enough rope to hang myself (i.e., "The Pleasantville decade was an idyllic time when you didn't have to lock your doors at night, cigarettes didn't yet cause cancer, and black people were held in such high esteem that they had their very own water fountains.") In fact, we argued about only one joke: "Most historians agree that the eighties sucked, despite Reagan getting shot." Eventually, a compromise was reached: "the eighties really sucked, despite Jazzercise and Hinkley's attempt to impress Jodie Foster." This made me very happy, since carping about something as subjective as humour is a nightmare I'd prefer to avoid.

I've been told by a number of people that AVLP is a fast, fun read. I'm glad to hear this, because writing the book was a slow, painful process. The numerous drafts I produced remind me of Chuck Amuck, an autobiography by famed Warner Brothers animator Chuck Jones. In Amuck, Jones recalls that his first instructor at Chouinard Art Institute greeted his class with a grim edict: "All of you here have one hundred thousand bad drawings in you. The sooner you get rid of them, the better it will be for everyone."

I'm very confident I've typed and backspaced at least 100,000 bad sentences, with the potential for many thousands more. Thankfully, every once in awhile I redeem myself with a line like: "Should God have smitten Commander Zoltan with immutable rod of Denglatron?" Not to sound trite, but it really does make all that effort worthwhile.

That and the throngs of humour book author groupies.