Today is the day to eat something flavored with maple--but NOT SYRUP.
The film "Flags of Our Fathers" opens today, and in order to leach off its publicity, I point you back to an interview with James Bradley, author of the book it was adapted from, here.
But let us not focus on the past! Today's interviewee is a good example of why I don't think it's necessarily bad to ask somebody what they do when you meet them. Think of how much fun you would have meeting him at a party! He formerly edited the personals section at our Chicago Reader, and has written a new book about his experiences, called I Know You're Out There.
The Michael Beaumier Interview: Somewhat Under Twenty Questions
Has the popularity of newspaper personals changed much during your watch due to the rise of online dating?
Oh yes. Some newspaper don't even feature personal ads anymore--and when they do, they're usually a feature that's been outsourced to some dating service; they aren't part of the newspaper's staff or anything. Online dating is great and wonderful, but it's really crushed the old-timey personal ad thing I used to do.
Do you read the personals in other cities? Do you think there is anything unique to the city that Chicagoans are looking for in mates?
I always look at the personal ads in other cities--I think the ads
tell you everything you need to know about the newspapers you're reading. I'm extremely partial to the personals in The Stranger, which is a weekly newspaper out of Seattle--the ads are always so articulate and smart, but The Stranger is one of the best newspapers in the country, so that's really no surprise.
The thing about Chicago personals is that they are very seasonal things--that is, the kinds of ads you see, and the kinds of things those ads say, vary from season to season. The fun and optimism of the summer was always something you'd see in the personals, but winter was always tough--people can be awfully depressing in January.
Tell us how the cover of your book came about.
Didn't they do a great job? I love the cover, it's just perfect, it totally captures the quirky nonsense of all my stories. They
apparently went through like two hundred different covers until they found just the right one. I always get asked if I'm the guy wearing the bear head--alas, I'm merely the writer.
How did you like working with Three Rivers Press?
TRP was just terrific, I can't imagine a better experience for a
first-time writer than working with Carrie Thornton, who's my editor and the head of the imprint. I was really terrified at points, because I'd only written short little pieces for newspapers and magazines. Carrie talked me down from the ledge many times.
For what reasons would you not run a personals ad?
I'd never run a personal ad for the sake of efficiency. It seems like a really strange thing to say, but there were people--many people, actually--who seemed like they'd woken up one morning, realized they'd never been married and were now determined to correct that "problem" as soon as possible. It was like something they'd written on their to-do list, after picking up the dry cleaning. Bad idea.
What's the hardest or least pleasant part of working the personals section?
The hardest part was keeping up with whatever the hell people were talking about. I actually had to read Bridget Jones Diary because women kept talking about it in their personal ads. Really, the worst part about working in the personals was the drudgery of correcting the same misspellings over and over and over--it's "desperate", not "desparate", and you are too, no matter what you say.
How did you get that gig in the first place?
Easy--I answered an ad in the paper. I'd actually seen the ad for about a month, and I thought, "Wow, this is a job that nobody wants"--which was kind of true. Also, the turnover was amazing; people would walk out after a week, swearing they'd never been around so many freaks and weirdos.
Have you found that people who have met via the personals are proud of their 'how we met' story or don't tell the story?
People would sooner claim to have met on death row than through a personal ad.
What did you make of this?
They oughta kick this fucker until he's dead, frankly. How dare he. Putting aside the obvious and unforgivable disregard for people's privacy, I cannot stomach the smug superiority he showed for fetishists and openly sexual people. I tend to be a little quiet and a little repressed--I'm a Midwesterner, after all--and I'm hugely grateful for people who aren't afraid to put themselves out there in terms of their sexuality.
Have you found that the personals sections vary widely paper to paper or are they all the same deep down?
Deep down, they're all the same--but how people express themselves varies from paper to paper based on what the paper's standards are. Personal ads pose a problem for a lot of newspapers, because they're advertising and content at the same time--people actually read the personals for entertainment, and sometimes they fall under the purview
of a newspaper's Editorial Department. Which is never a good thing.
Do you think your experience working with personals ads has affected your sense of romance?
Romance is so often a completely selfish thing--a romantic gesture is supposed to be selfless and pure, yes? Yet most romantic acts tend to be self-referential--"look how romantic I am, I bought you a ring" and so on. I really loathe that, which is why my sense of romance is so odd. Romance to me is really screwball and messy and inexplicable, and romantic movies just don't do romance justice. I'd sooner swallow my tongue than watch another Meg Ryan movie.
Did the succcess stories ever contact you to thank you?Rarely. Usually they contacted me to destroy the evidence.
I have a theory that writers have an edge over other people when it comes to writing personal ads or crafting profiles on Match.com or what have you because they have the skills to at least be more interesting than "I like movies, hanging out with friends, and going out." Do you think this has any merit?
Absolutely. Also, writers are generally misanthropic--you spend most of your day shut in a room by yourself, which is preferable to anything else. Nothing's more tender than a writer in the company of someone he or she can actually stand being around.
Completely not on purpose, I've never dated anyone, only pretty much went straight to serious relationships. From your point of view what have I luckily avoided and sadly missed out on?
You've luckily avoided bad dates. You've missed out on the stories that bad dates invariably spawn.
Working in the 'adult services' section of the paper, you had to talk to a lot of pimps. How are they and aren't they like the popular representations we seem to see so often from pimps (other than the fact that they probably don't wear capes and have canes etc)?
Oh, they wear the caps and have the canes--plus the fur-lined hats. No joke. I think there's a handbook the pimps get that explains the entire Pimp Ensemble. The younger pimps tend towards sportswear and too much jewelry, though they share common traits with their old-school counterparts: horrible teeth, terrible body odor, and a complete lack of shame.
What are you working on these days?
I'm writing the proposal for my second book, which is about things people are good at, and I'm putting together a collection of my old porn reviews--reviewing pornography was my first writing job, though I rarely wrote about the sex.
As a contributor to "This American Life," what advice do you have for struggling writers trying to get something accepted by the show?
Write in your own voice. And have something to write about.
How does it feel to be the 158th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
It feels fresh! funky! and fabulous!
Yeah! More interviews here.