title: Life on the List: Assorted Sordid Tales and Unsavory Revelations
author:  Jeffrey Essmann 
description: Jeffrey Essmann was a fixture on the New York downtown performance scene in the 80s/early 90s, known primarily as a character comedian whose work was compared to that of Lily Tomlin. His one-man show Artificial Reality at New York Theatre Workshop was nominated for a Drama Desk Award, and his early work can be seen on the video New Wave Comedy and the alternative-comedy show The Talent Pool. His cult hit Triplets in Uniform at La MaMa marked his transition to playwriting and a decreasing focus on performance. In the throes of a premature midlife crisis, Essmann left New York in the early 90s for a 10-year stint in Chicago, where he focused on journalistic and literary journal work as well as playwriting. His retirement from performance lasted a couple years, and then he began working on new material at local clubs and fringe theatre festivals. He was a featured performer in a performance series at Steppenwolf, and became a regular contributor to the Chicago NPR affiliate. In 2005 he returned to New York, the same year his short piece Johannes, Pyotr &amp; Marge was produced at the Humana Festival, where it also won the Heideman Prize. His one-man show Skin Deep was commissioned by Dixon Place as part of its HOT! Festival in 2006, which, along with another one-man show a year later, The Usual Freak Show at La MaMa, marked his return to the New York theatre scene. He did a new translation of Brecht's Life of Galileo for Manhattan Theatre Club, and is currently working on a new play, The Indifferent Narrator. Life on the List is his first book.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  O N E
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  THE TALE I HAVE TO TELL, my Lord, which for twenty years or more I have kept
  to myself, is a strange and terrifying one. There
  
  
  are those who might say it would be better to leave the story forever untold.
  Yet, as a man reaches a certain age he must,
  
  
  perforce, settle his debts and fulfill his obligations to those who will live
  after him. I do not believe that in my case
  
  
  this ordering of affairs should stop at my own gates. I believe it is my duty,
  my debt to the past, to tell the story I have
  
  
  to tell.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  So I will relate the history of my friend, the unfortunate Victor
  Frankenstein, the story of a soul which took itself to perdition,
  
  
  a man who was the author of his own, terrible, downfall. Whether my
  revelations will bring good or evil in themselves I am
  
  
  unable to predict.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  My story begins in November 1825—but first I will say something of myself as I
  then was, a young man of not quite thirty years,
  
  
  health