The Grotesque State

Two New Jersey characters talk New Jersey character

As I was listening to comedian Chris Gethard interview journalist Brian Donohue on the New Jersey is the World podcast, a thought that I’ve had many times as a resident of New Jersey went through my head: “why do I love living here so much?”

I don’t think I’m alone. It’s not the usual explanation—the proximity to both Manhattan and Philadelphia, access to mountains, ocean, forests, rivers, swamps, beaches and ski slopes, and residents sharing their culture and foods from all around the world—though they certainly come into play.

It’s the people.

And of course, the people are what we complain about the most. It’s a peninsula, and a small one in comparison to the other states, so it can get a little congested in places. But the people are what make the state.

Because we can be a little weird. And proud of it.

I mean, there’s an entire magazine called Weird New Jersey. (I have a few photos in the next issue, and an article in an upcoming 2023 issue). Brian Donohue is the host of a great segment on News 12 called Positively New Jersey, which focuses on lesser known people and history in the state, and he profiled me when I was reading the 1855 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in Crystal Spring, the park where he wrote some of it.¹ That’s how I discovered his show; I had followed him on Twitter when he was a reporter for the Star-Ledger, and missed when he moved on. He started the segment when politics get especially virulent; the Ledger had him running a snarky local politics vlog, and he rightly felt that we had enough of that.² Even a Jersey native learns something new when watching Brian’s segments. He digs deep.

And he features a lot of … characters. I guess that’s the most polite name for them. “Oddballs” seems incorrect, when there are so many of them. The word I learned in the first year of college as an English major was much less savory: grotesques.

Our teacher had us read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, a collection of short stories about the titular town and its characters. They felt very familiar; I grew up in a north New Jersey suburb called Nutley, which was famous for having a Bohemian art colony and being the brief home of Annie Oakley, and infamous for having several lawsuits for racially discriminatory private pool clubs, the hometowns of Martha Stewart and Robert Blake, and once having a house owned by Benito Mussolini, which was knocked down to build an American Legion outpost.

Our town was full of characters. Or as my Rutgers professor called them, grotesques.

This is a literary term, not an insult; like the parades in a Fellini film. Which is fitting, because the term grotesque comes from the Italian for cave, grotto, because the grotesque is the real, but near-fantastical; exaggerated, like ancient cave art.³

We love our grotesques in New Jersey. We honor them. In Weird NJ magazine, and by making a local hero out of cable access variety showman Uncle Floyd, who not only showcased them, but is one himself. Here’s another example of a Jersey band that Brian profiled: Shorty Long and the Jersey Horns:

I would never call the lead singer the g-word. Listen to their cover of “Sir Duke.” The band is awesome! He’s in a wheelchair, but he’s not letting that stop him from being a star. This isn’t about having a disability, though the blind owner of the Bendix Diner, who was profiled in a recent documentary, is another example. That tee-shirt that reads New Jersey: Only the Strong Survive is no joke. Susan Boyle, who was mocked by career asshole Simon Cowell for not being traditionally beautiful, but could sing the devils out of hell, is an example. She’d not only be welcome here, but celebrated.⁴

Not everyone is as successful as Shorty Long, either. I remember the Elvis impersonator who used to park his wagon near Garrett Mountain in Paterson and just sing all day. There are the people who decorate their lawns with everything from mannequins to genital topiary (Nutley had a hedge that was pruned into the shape of a penis for many years).

Not everyone is a good character, either. We’ve got plenty of mobster wannabes who think being racist on YouTube makes them a character, but that just makes you a cafone. And we have plenty of those. That comes with the “tough” demeanor that we elevate too often, here. Having respect for Doing It Yourself and making your own way doesn’t mean that causing suffering is all right. Chris Gethard wrote about this very well in his open letter to West Orange High School:

I tell ya something, after I graduated from high school, I went to Rutgers. And when me and all the kids I was meeting would sit around the dorm telling stories about our high school days, invariably I’d share what I thought was a funny story. You know, hilarious stories about fights and bullying, or the rumors about teachers we’d hear. And the other kids would look at me like I’d said something truly disturbing.

This town is a weird place. Nobody in a position of authority likes to tell you that straight up, so I will; If you get the sneaking sense in your gut that this town is weird, you’re not wrong.

It’s a beautiful place. I’m so glad I grew up here. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. But it’s weird.

It’s tougher than it needs to be. There’s a strange pride in toughness. I think a lot of North Jersey is like that. But I get the sense we amp it up to 11. I don’t know why. It makes me wonder, though — why is there so much anger and so much pain under the surface of this town?

He wrote this after the school Superintendent said that he would have to doctor his act if he was to speak at his alma mater, because he spoke about his suicidal feelings as a young person. Which Gethard rightly says is probably the most important thing to talk about with high school kids. You can read his full letter here.

This spoke to me, because growing up two towns over in Nutley, I felt the same. Bullying was not only ignored by the teachers, but tolerated. It felt like one of those English boarding schools or Irish borstals, in a lot of ways. I wrote about this in Bad Boy Boogie, and all the acts of bullying in that novel are true. They didn’t all happen to me, but they happened to somebody.

I don’t think that produces character. Or even characters. I think Brian Donohue and Gethard both hit on it when discussing the news business for New Jersey. We’re between Philly and “the City,” New York, but we are neither of them. And we are proud not to be! However, like a planetary object between two gas giants, we have an eccentric orbit and are subject to tidal forces that make a unique biosphere, and species that can’t live elsewhere can thrive here.

The characters. The oddballs. The grotesques.

Maybe I should make a tee-shirt:

New Jersey: Grotesque and Proud!

1. This exact edition was also featured in an episode of Breaking Bad, which I had forgotten.

2. I still don’t subscribe to the Ledger because they give professional crank Paul Mulshine the prime spot. I love Pete Genovese’s articles, but I don’t like the direction the paper has gone in the past decade.

3. This page has a good long explanation of The Literary Grotesque.

4. You ever wonder why the “best” musicians and actors all tend to be traditionally gorgeous? Maybe they aren’t the best. Maybe there are a lot of Susan Boyles out there who’ll never be heard because the PR team thinks they are too unattractive.