Zombie Spaceship Wasteland

A successful, creative comedian/actor mistaking randomness for creativity. Let me be clear, my estimation of this book is not some puritan knee-jerk reaction to base material — I have no such prejudice — but simply a reader responding to the lack of structure or vision in the material. A memoir by any other name does not a memoir make: many forget that a memoir not written explicitly and carefully for an audience is just a diary or journal written in retrospect. Better writers than Oswalt have forgotten this. I recently read Venice Observed by Mary McCarthy, an esteemed writer apparently. She likewise failed to connect the reader with the material. You could make a convincing argument that this is the primary job of all writers. Fail at this and nothing else matters. The comparison between McCarthy and Oswalt is an interesting one, I think. The writing style and subject matter could be no further apart, and yet both authors fail in very much the same way. Random memories are just that, your random memories. If you expect a reader to care you need to make those memories the reader's, vicariously, so that the reader can invest. Oswalt tells us he understands this on some level. About half way through the book, the origin of the book's title is made clear. He says:

But for me, and my circle of high school friends, it came down to Zombies, Spaceships, or Wastelands. These were the three doors out of the Vestibule of Adolescence, and each opened onto a dark, echoing hallway. The corridors twisted and intertwined, like a DNA helix. Maybe those paths were a rough reflection of the DNA we were born with, which made us more likely to cherish and pursue one corridor over another.

I'm going to try to explain each of these categories (and will probably fail). And then I'll figure out where I came out, on the other end, once the cards were played. I think this chapter is more for me than for you.