Deeper Than Cool

Toward the end of his last novel, 2017’s The Sarah Book, Scott McClanahan reads to his children from a Sesame Street book. This is a book the author remembers from his own childhood, and in it, Grover begs the reader to stop turning the pages, warning them that there awaits a monster at the end. Grover builds walls and sets fires and does all sorts of crazy things to stop them from turning the pages, but naturally, the reader does it anyway. “The best thing about books is you can turn back and start all over,” McClanahan says to his children. “You can turn back to page five and the people will still be here inside of the pages.” But then the author remembers that life is not a book. “I could see right then that I was just like Grover and I wanted everyone to stop turning the page.” The twist is that the monster who is waiting on the last page is no one but the Muppet himself.