Gabfest Reads is a monthly series from the hosts of Slate’s Political Gabfest podcast. Recently, David Plotz spoke with Alexandra Petri about her new book, Alexandra Petri’s US History: Important American Documents. They discussed how Alexandra whittled down hundreds of essays and chapters to a lean, 320 pages, including an appearance from Minister Jonathan Edwards she was desperate to include.
This partial transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
David Plotz: How did you test whether a piece worked? Because I assume you wrote like a 100, but probably you wrote a 100 more.
Alexandra Petri: Oh yeah. These are the ones that survived the culling.
How did you do that? Do you read them out loud to a spouse? Do you put them on the internet, and see what happens?
Mostly, I would just send sheaves of these to my editor, and he would be like, “This one, I laughed on the subway, and this one I’m confused by it.” And I’m like, “Great, well, we’ll keep the first one, and then I will write you another sheave.”
And so, I kept doing this for months, until I actually, slightly may have missed my deadline a tiny bit, because I just kept going. And also it was during the pandemic, and I sort of didn’t connect the date that it was in the year that it was, in my mind, with the date and the year that my book had been due. And then I was like, “oh, it is in fact that time of that year, and today is that day,” but they were very understanding about it.
And then I also had a baby during that time, and so I was like, “I do know that my deadline is before the baby comes,” but I was expecting that she would be sort of late to arrive, because she’s my child, and as mentioned previously, I’m never on time to anything.
“I’ve probably got at least a week after her due date before in which I could really polish this, and get it all good to go before I go on maternity leave,” and it turns out that that is not how things work. So, if you notice that elements of the book seem like they were written by somebody who was trying to time it to go to the hospital - there is one section that that’s true of, at least for the first draft of how it happened - and I will leave readers to guess which one it was.
What was the one you wrote that you were most pained to leave out?
Ooh. I mean, I was going to say, I did like three different drafts of the Jonathan Edwards-spider one. I was obsessed with that, and none of the drafts worked. Like the first draft was, “you may already be a sinner”, type vibes.
And the second draft was, “what if at the debate with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the third person had been, not John Edwards, but Minister Jonathan Edwards?”—a concept that was only funny to me, and not even very funny to me once I actually had to sit down and write it.
And the third one was, “What if we hear from the spider?” And that one did get in. So, I’m just glad that something is in there involving Minister Jonathan Edwards.
What writers bring you the kind of laughing joy that you bring to me, and so many other people? Who else should we be reading?
I was always a big fan of Allie Brosh, Lindy West, Danny Lavery. And R. Eric Thomas, is hilarious. So those are folks working today—and Robert Benchley, who is a ghost now, but if he puts anything out, new, I will be there for it.
