Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast

Deep Thoughts about The Monster at the End of This Book

• Tracie Guy-Decker & Emily Guy Birken • Episode 0

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Hello, everybodeee! There’s no monster at the end of this bonus episode–just a lot of overthinking about a beloved children’s book.

Listen as Emily and Tracie take a deep dive into the charming and oddly subversive 1973 classic The Monster at the End of this Book, starring lovable, furry old Grover. Emily explains how Grover taught her that every reader is an active participant in the story, and why this leads her to abandon books that are too cruel to their characters. Tracie shares how she learned to love dramatic irony and fourth wall breaking while listening to their Dad use a spot-on Grover voice. Both sisters bring up a LOT of other stories, movies, television, and books that relate back to this early favorite.

Join us as we think through the ethical implications of being a consumer of fiction, how reading is powerful rather than passive, and why the phrase “Do you know that you are very strong?” will always delight both Guy girls.

The first 15 minutes of this episode is available wherever you get your pods, but the full bonus episode is only available to patrons. Become a patron for as little as $2 a month.

Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Mentioned in this episode:

How a Book About Grover Revealed to Me the Wide World of Literature
Incarnations of Burned Children by David Foster Wallace
Stranger than Fiction
Nora Roberts
The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith
Fleabag
Carrie by Stephen King
Jessica Jones
Breaking Bad
Roger Ebert on Nicholas Sparks: “To be sure, I resent the sacrilege Nicholas Sparks commits by mentioning himself in the same sentence as Cormac McCarthy. I would not even allow him to say "Hello, bookstore? This is Nicholas Sparks. Could you send over the new Cormac McCarthy novel?" He should show respect by ordering anonymously.”
The Hunger Games
Neil Gaiman and Good Omens
Pirates of the Caribbean
Press Here and Mix it Up by Hervé Tullet
The Neverending Story

Speaker 1:

I'm Emily Guy-Burken and this is Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's bonus episode, we are going to be talking about the 1973 classic. The monster at the end of this book Sorry, loveable Furry Old Grover. Yes, I'll be sharing my deep thoughts about this classic of the literature with my sister, tracy Guy Decker, and with you. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2:

Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit? You know matters. You know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us and, of course, share the show with your people.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So, Tracy, I know you know this book. You know I know this book. Share with me what you know about this book and why it is so important to both of us.

Speaker 2:

So this was the book that we both my recollections that we both would demand to hear it for bedtime every night for. I don't know some unspecified number of years in our childhood and, you know, for a long time. I think the reason that I loved it was because dad did the girl over voice.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, his girl over voice was phenomenal. It was spot on.

Speaker 2:

It was spot on, like he could have worked for them up its he could have His girl over voice was so good. And I think that I thought that's what I loved about it and I did love that about it, but I think it was much, much deeper. Because even now, what is this like, 40 years later, 40 plus years later, since the first time he read it to us or when he was reading it to us on the regular, and like I still am just delighted at the illustrations?

Speaker 2:

and the typography and the story and I know we'll get into the specific story devices, but that direct address of the reader. I still adore it when what I'm consuming breaks the fourth wall. So that's what I mean I remember as a beloved book from our childhood. But I have things that I really am looking forward to talking about with you. Why did you ask that we do this special bonus episode?

Speaker 1:

So there's a there's a couple reasons for it.

Speaker 1:

It's it's a beloved memory for me as well, particularly with the with dad's grover voice, which I have always attempted when reading this with my kids.

Speaker 1:

I actually had a friend over with her kids once and the kid brought over the book and she read it in her normal voice and like you're not supposed to do it that way, it was my immediate thought. So so that that's part of it. But thinking about how subversive in some ways this book is because it breaks the rules of storytelling in a way, that kind of reifies the rules of storytelling, and I think that's part of what I really like about it. I love well constructed stories and I love when stories break the expectations, and then I feel like this kind of invites the reader in to be a kind of author as well, and so I think that has something to do with what I like about it. And finally, this gets to something that I actually find very important and kind of the my ethical framework for fiction, which is very weird, but that all is embodied in this like adorable, like what is it? 15 page book that is 50 years old.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let's catch our listeners up right. So this is a 15 ish page children's book featuring Grover from Sesame Street.

Speaker 1:

Yes, so, and on the cover it's got the title this is the monster at the end of this book starring lovable furry old Grover. I couldn't tell you who wrote this because it's not on the cover. And so Grover, from the very beginning, starts by saying Hello, everybody on the cover, right, right With the speech bubble, yes, with the speech bubble, so he knows that you're there. He is talking directly to you as the reader. And so the first page is the title page, and Grover says this is a very dull page. What's on the next page? I'm not going to do the voice because it ends up hurting. So, and it's apparently written by John Stone and illustrated by Michael Smallen. So I should know that because they're giants of my childhood for real. So because he skipped the title page and his back was to the title on the cover, he only kind of glimpsed to the title and all of a sudden realized Wait, what did that say? Did it say that there's a monster at the end of this book? Oh my God, I'm scared.

Speaker 1:

And meanwhile, on the pages there are drawn pages. So it's not just that you're turning pages, there's drawn pages that are getting closer and closer to the end. And so Grover trying to convince the reader like hey, don't turn any pages and then we won't get to the end of this book and then we won't have to face the monster. And then you turn the page and you get this overdramatic Grover going. You turn the page which Tracy has a t-shirt of. I do. So Grover starts trying different strategies to keep from turning pages. So he ties the pages together and of course we're able to turn them and he's very upset about it. Then he tries to nail the pages together with wood and you turn it and he says that you're making a terrible mess. In addition, to getting closer to the monster.

Speaker 2:

I loved that when I was a kid and he said do you know? You make a terrible mess.

Speaker 1:

I loved it. And then comes Tracy's, my favorite part. He builds a heavy, thick, solid, strong brick wall to keep you from turning pages, and I cannot remember if dad did this, but when I was reading it to my kids I would pretend it was hard to open this page. And on the next page there is a pile of bricks and just Grover's little hand sticking out of it and like a huge speech bubble with a tiny little word Do you know that you are very strong? Which?

Speaker 1:

was my favorite thing, I loved it so much, so much. And then at that point you're almost at the end of the book. It's only one more page and Grover is pleading please don't turn the page. You get to the end and, like, grover is the monster at the end of this book and he, trying to deflect some of his embarrassments, says you were so scared. I told you and told you there was nothing to be afraid of. And then the coda. My next favorite part is at the very, very last page. There's Grover with his hands over his head going. I am so embarrassed, what a delight.

Speaker 2:

You know. So you recently sent me that essay from the writer who, like, had this big confession to make this book was one of their big influences, like they usually point people to James Joyce, and Franz. Kafka, but I love the point that this writer made, and you'll tell me who it is.

Speaker 1:

It's David Burr Gerard writing for lithubcom. How a book about Grover revealed to me the wide world of literature.

Speaker 2:

His point is that, yes, james Joyce and Franz Kafka were the direct influences for his work, but he wouldn't have appreciated Joyce and Kafka and their sort of absurdism and the you know some of the literary devices if he hadn't read the monster of the at the end of this book as a child, which is exactly the kind of deep thoughts about stupid shit that we are aiming for. I'm not gonna say we achieve it, but we're aiming for it.

Speaker 1:

That essay is why I wanted to make this bonus episode. Got it, Because I was like this is worth taking a deep dive into.

Speaker 2:

Well, you know, it got me thinking when you sent that essay along and I'm like reading it on my phone and I'm like my eyes are getting bigger and I'm thinking about some of the literary devices that always make me happy, that all I always find satisfying, and those include dramatic irony, where I know something and the characters don't Breaking the fourth wall, where the character is talking directly to me as the consumer, like these are things that I always enjoy every single time, even when it's a piece of crap Pop culture TV show I'm like, yeah, but it wasn't that bad, it was kind of fun. So I think it's because of this, I think it's because of this and dad's grover voice and like having that like, like that delight.

Speaker 2:

When he said do you know that you are very strong? When grover said that to me because I had just knocked out this brick wall by turning the page.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes. So for me I feel like this book you know, I was a three year old, or like the first time I encountered it, or even younger helped me kind of recognize that the act of reading is also an act of creation. So you're a partner. You're a partner with us. The book doesn't, the story doesn't progress if the reader doesn't turn pages. And actually, if we were to do what grover asked us and stop turning pages, he would be in a horrible situation. It's terrified.

Speaker 2:

Just terrified, and nowhere to go.

Speaker 1:

You know, terrified purgatory. And so the essay that we mentioned, the David Burger art essay, he talks about how part of what is delightful to him is that the author and the reader are delighting in grover's like concern, and I don't think he's wrong. But that brings to mind the way that I read, because I have abandoned many books when something too terrible happens to the characters, and you know I don't like abandoning them in that territory. But at the same time it's more of a I refuse to be a party to this, to be the partner with the author and, yes, and using you.

Speaker 1:

Yes, which I know is putting so much anthropomorphists.

Speaker 2:

It's more like. It's more like lending agency, I think, because they are in fact. I mean, anthropomorphizing implies like you're making something human that isn't, and the characters are in fact human.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

Monsters, monsters in grover's case, yeah, yeah, but there's a level of like, agency and independent existence that you are giving them. That is questionable.

Speaker 1:

Well, we talked about this in our last bonus episode a little bit, but I have like an ethos when it comes to the idea of what authors owe to their fictional characters. Yeah, and it was created by three very different pieces of artwork. So the first was a short story by David Foster Wallace called, I believe, incarnations of burned children is, I believe, what the short story is called. David Foster Wallace came to my college in 2000 or 2001,. When I was a senior and he spoke. He read several, several pieces. He was brilliant. He also invited anyone who wanted to come to get a drink with him afterwards and it never even occurred to me to go and I'm like, not mad at myself, just didn't occur to me. Like it, just like. Oh, it doesn't really mean me. Anyway, the next day in my fiction writing class, my professor said I have so much respect for Wallace, he is an incredible writer that incarnations of burned children's story was pornographic and it was the first time I'd heard pornographic used in that way, because the story is a vignette of a mother and father of a very small child, a little boy who's, like you know, one, one and a half, able to walk but not able to talk yet who gets scalded by boiling water and it takes them a little while to realize that it is also puddled in his diaper. And the reason why my professor said that it was pornographic is because there was absolutely no reason to put that baby through that. There's no story reason, there was no character reason, there was nothing that made it worthwhile for that to happen. So we were just voyeurs on this horrible moment. And boy did that stick with me. Fast forward about seven years. I was back at my alma mater at Kenya. I was teaching at the Creative Writing program for students. They showed the movie Stranger Than Fiction that has Will Ferrell in it and that movie is about Will Ferrell's character, harold Crick. He starts hearing a voice it's not voices, it's a voice narrating and he realizes he is a character in.

Speaker 1:

Her name is Karen Eiffel and she's played by Emma Thompson In her novel. He learns. All of her novels end in a horrible, tragic death. He ends up being able to contact her. When she learns that he's a real person, she rewrites the ending so that he survives.

Speaker 1:

And I love that movie so much, in part because it takes writing seriously in a way that I don't know. I mean, obviously screenwriters take writing seriously, things like that, but it's a piece of just for general consumption pop culture that really engages with the idea that there is a great deal of power in writing. And then I love the fact that Eiffel knows that this is a real person. She feels incredible guilt about killing him in a way that is actually like Harold Crick ends up reading her rough draft Like it doesn't become real until she types it. So he reads a rough draft and says write this, this is a beautiful end to my life. Yeah, he actually gives her permission.

Speaker 1:

Gives her permission because his death ends up because of a number of different things that he that were unrelated strands come together in one moment where he can save a little boy's life and she decides to have him miraculously survive because of one other strand that she's written through, even knowing that this is an important book for her and it's going to go from being like Pulitzer worthy to okay, and so that, along with the David Foster Wallace moment, kind of gave me this idea that authors owe something to their characters.

Speaker 1:

But I feel like I had a front row seat to this idea because of the monster at the end of this book, because I was willing to go along with this torture of Grover because I knew it was going to be okay. I knew, and so it wasn't being a voyeur and in fact I had agency in reading it. So it's not like the incarnations of burned children, where we don't have any agency. We're just as helpless as the parents watching this horrible thing happen. And then the final piece of art that kind of created this ethos for me was a Nora Roberts novel.

Speaker 2:

Tracy here. You know, emily and I always envisioned bonus episodes, being a patron exclusive, so if you want to hear the rest of our conversation and what Nora Roberts taught Emily about what we owe characters, you're going to have to go join us on Patreon. You can find the link in the show notes or visit us at our website, guygirlsmediacom, to learn how. Thanks for listening. Our theme music is Professor Umlaut by Kevin MacLeod from incompatechcom. Find full music credits in the show notes. Until next time, remember, pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?