E-Mail This Article to a Friend Dinosaurs and lady friends (continued)

Whether he really understood what he was doing or not, Greenberger was clearly doing something right. Within a few months of the Duplex Planet’s first issue, the magazine had gained a sizable crop of die-hard fans. Subscriptions shot up. Greenberger started to get what he calls an "inordinate" amount of media attention. "He’s what people in the ’zine world call ‘secretly famous,’" says local author Pagan Kennedy, who published a popular ’zine of her own. "He’s famous in certain circles. He’s definitely one of the big figures in that world."

This, actually, is something of an understatement.

On the back cover of a Duplex anthology, Everybody’s Asking Who I Was (Faber and Faber, 1993), there are plaudits from Matt Groening, Michael Stipe, Penn and Teller, and George Carlin. The New York Times compared Greenberger to Chaucer. Actress Lili Taylor performed in a Duplex stage adaptation in New York. There have been Duplex comic books and Duplex spoken-word CDs. XTC, Morphine, and dozens of others have set Duplex residents’ poetry to music. One resident created the cover art for R.E.M.’s Out of Time. Sculptures by another are currently on display at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, in Portland, Oregon. The late Allen Ginsberg was a Duplex fan. Lou Reed still is.

Another high-profile admirer of Duplex is director Jonathan Demme, a long-time subscriber. Then there’s musician Robyn Hitchcock, who says he didn’t discover the magazine so much as it discovered him. "We are all bound there, if we’re lucky," Hitchcock writes in an e-mail. "David is gentle with his interviewees, and — a rare thing in America today — he listens. Reading the dialogues, you can’t help but care about the voices."

I can’t complain too much, I’ve been to California.

Ed Poindexter

You don’t get dirty in banks. You go home with neckties on and not one piece of dirt on your clothes.

John Fay

A quarter of a century since Greenberger took a job there, the Duplex nursing home is long gone, and so are most of its residents. The Duplex Planet, 169 issues later, is still going strong. Today, the 49-year-old Greenberger lives with his wife and daughter in a small town in upstate New York. He produces his magazine in a converted barn in his back yard, among stacks of papers, bags, and boxes. In his life as in his art, Greenberger is a collector; every available spot in his house is filled with bric-a-brac — toys, globes, kitschy statuettes. "He collects the little tags that go on bread bags, with the dates," says Paul Athanas, who befriended Greenberger after making a documentary about the Duplex nursing home in the mid ’90s. "He wanted every date of the year, so we send them to him. He has a notebook with every movie he’s ever seen in it."

Speaking with Greenberger, it’s easy to see why he’s managed to gain the confidence of so many people over the years. Soft-spoken and thoughtful, he has a way of putting you at ease, of making you want to tell him things. His appearance, too, is remarkably soothing. The thick-framed glasses are still there (a little squarer now), as is the curly hair (a little grayer), but the artsy-brainy-geeky thing has given way to what might be described as a kind of inclusive intellectualism. He’ll lean forward in his chair as you speak, nodding with a generosity that you don’t necessarily deserve. Sometimes, he’ll do an impersonation of the people he’s discussing: "Ah, okay" — he waves his hand dismissively — "Do you want anything to eat?"

David Greenberger: What’s a word processor?

Ed Poindexter: Obviously I don’t know at the present. Is everything all right? Can I have a cigarette?

David Greenberger: What’s the difference between addition and multiplication?

Tom Lavin: Three letters.

These days, Greenberger’s subjects tend to be people from the area where he lives. "When new issues come out, I go and give it to them, and they look to see where they are and chuckle over what each other has to say. They enjoy it, this guy coming by asking these crazy questions. ‘I don’t know what it means, but he’s a nice guy.’" Occasionally, he’ll get an invitation from a cultural institution somewhere, and he’ll spend a couple of weeks visiting nursing homes and bingo halls in other states. While he’s no longer "giddy and running around, bumping off walls," Greenberger’s enthusiasm hasn’t waned over the past 25 years, even if his energy has. Certainly, his ability to connect with people is still intact.

"I think he’s a very friendly person, very curious — I guess he’d have to be to ask those questions," says Florence Perry, 77, who lives in the same town as Greenberger. "He asks very unusual questions. I think David’s one of a kind." When asked how old she is, Carolyn Hartwell, another Greenberger subject, says, "Oh! Ha ha ha! I’m 39. No, I’m 73." Hartwell, who lives in "a senior-housing center," lost her husband a few years ago, and she seems pleased with the attention she gets from Greenberger. "David works for this company that puts out a little magazine," she says. "He always has a question for all of us to answer. It’s a lot of laughs. He’s a nice young man. We all like him here, anyway. So write a good article."

Bill Clark: I’m talking to myself!

Frank Wisnewski: I’m talking to myself too. I’ll be goosing flies pretty soon, if this keeps up.

On the surface, it seems strange that these sweet old ladies and funny old men should have found themselves being celebrated by the likes of Lou Reed and Allen Ginsberg. Indeed, it seems strange that these sweet old ladies and funny old men are being celebrated at all. "Old people have literally been put away," says Pagan Kennedy, "out of sight and out of hearing. I think there’s something profoundly humane about [Greenberger’s] project, about restoring the humanity of old people."

Kennedy can still recall the first time she encountered the Duplex. "When I did my own ’zine," she says. "I said, ‘I won’t be calling this Eating Jesus’s Snot.’ There’s a lack of kindness in a lot of ’zines. One thing that made Duplex Planet so fresh and immediately appealing was the generosity and kindness of the project. There was such a whimsy to it. You got to know the different people. Ernest, who wrote these incredibly labored poems. Ken, who did record reviews and liked everything. [Greenberger] struck a good balance, respecting people but not being a pushover and not being boring about it."

David Greenberger: What’s the best way to sell something?

John Hodorowski: The best way — the easiest way — is, "Hey, bub, you got some money? You want to buy this? If you don’t, then so long." You don’t even have to say goodbye, just go.

Some notable exceptions to the ignore-old-people rule have emerged of late. But there’s been nothing like the Duplex Planet. Unlike the motivational gnomes of books like Tuesdays with Morrie or the anecdotal heroics of The Greatest Generation, the words that fill the Duplex’s pages do not conjure easily digested images — the elderly as receptacles of acquired wisdom, or people whose lives amount to an aggregate of their pasts. "Usually, the elderly are drained of any life in the moment," Greenberger says. "They’re giving you a story they’ve told over and over. I’m trying to bring the character to the front. They’ve got to be in the present, they’ve got to be in the now."