Within the last few months, I’ve adopted a new name. Kerry and I are not Mr. and Mrs. Trisler – not least of all because that still sounds like my parents – but Matthew and Kerry Crawford Trisler. I’ve even made the difficult decision to abandon my old pseudonym, William Wolfe.
In fact, if you go to williamwolfe.net, you’ll find yourself directed to matthewtrisler.com. I haven’t abandoned my bachelor name totally – I still use it for creative pursuits.
It’s useful for Matthew Trisler to hang around for SEO, I guess, but what becomes of ol’ William Wolfe? Well, there’s that one page in the McSweeney’s book of lists, and I think the songs on my MySpace page are still tagged as William Wolfe, but he’s dead.
Enter Nazanin Rafsanjani’s contribution to this week’s “On the Media.” A journalist from the Harvard newspaper wrote a story a few years back about anonymous sex via Craigslist. He doesn’t want that following him into his new career as an elementary school teacher. So he changed his name and had a funeral for it.
"Halloween Mask, 2005" by huberton on Flickr
Which is a little bit better than poor William Wolfe’s fate, set adrift in a vast sea of Google results.
There’s also an interesting story about creative nonfiction/memoir/personal essay, wherein Brooke interviews Ben Yagoda. He doesn’t seem taken with the genre, despite having written a history about it.
It doesn’t help that memoir’s reputation as a genre has been sullied by self-indulgent writers who bend facts to get at truth – which needs to be done on occasion in creative works, though never in journalism, which deals in facts, anyway, and not greater Truths.
The problem I see with that situation is not that facts aren’t valued, but that the writers are frequently disingenuous about where they bend the facts.
Here’s the real kicker though.
In the signoff, Bob claims his name, too is Brooke Gladstone! Whoa!
They’re spoonfeeding us. It’s more fun to have to work to spot The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name.
With that, though, Radio Sweethearts is produced by Matthew and Kerry Crawford Trisler in Memphis, Tenn., with the full knowledge – and less consent than amused tolerance – of Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield.
We won’t be covering the next two weeks of On The Media, because they’ll likely be repeats anyway, and we’re not holding our breath over here for any mention whatsoever of the end of “Editor and Publisher.”
Who will watch the Watchmen, Brooke? We wanted you to pick up the ball so we can change our tagline to “Watching those who watch the watchmen.” Also, “watch” is a weird looking word.
The Crawford Trisler household wishes everyone who’s stuck with us this far a Merry Christmas, and we’ll see you – briefly – next week.
Post a Comment