(2 of 2)
So professional has Maddick become that prospective diarists now receive Schaap's "General Guide to Maintaining a Diary for Publication," a five-page instruction manual on achieving literary immortality. Excerpts: "The little detail, the minute fact, creates reality. The more little details the reader is provided with, the more he feels a total sense of reality ... It can be helpful to go on the assumption that most of life, or at least much of life, is absurd, and that each man's preoccupation with what he himself does is even more absurd. Don't be afraid to poke fun at yourself and to poke fun at your particular field." And most important of all, Schaap adds. "BE SURE YOUR TAPE RECORDER IS WORKING PROPERLY."
The Schaap shop turns out books that are not written; they are spliced together. Nor are they really read, in the traditional sense; going through these fragile works is more like listening than reading. Still, Instant Replay has many of the elements of good fiction; it offers real tension, arising from the Packers' march to an unprecedented third successive National Football League championship. At his best, Schaap has drawn ingenuous and appealing narratives from people whose stories might otherwise never be told. And by keeping his function as an editor within bounds (no direct rewriting), he has helped to chase the ghost out of ghostwriting.
As for the instant bookmaking process itself, "it's a great way to learn a new field," says Schaap, "and there's always plenty of material left over for future novels." A final plus comes from the psychic stimulation of having a whole wardrobe of identities at his disposal. "You wake up in the morning," he says, "and ask yourself who will I become today. Will I be Joe Namath and get vicariously drunk? The rabbi and feel saintly? The violinist and feel aesthetic?" What about a diary of his own? "I tried that," he says, "but I'm just not as interesting as my subjects."