Is This A Record?

Some time ago, somebody at the Guinness Brewery (headquartered in Dublin, Ireland) had a brainwave. People in pubs were always arguing about the most this, or the longest or tallest that – but there was no handy authoritative way of settling these disputes. Why not publish some kind of reference book, to be available in places where people gather to drink and talk? It would of course bear the company’s name, and be an excellent piece of promotion for Guinness beer. And thus was born the “Guinness Book of World Records,” a publication which, through various editions, over many years, has itself held a world record as a best-seller.

I myself have long claimed one record – that I am the world’s most highly-paid author, per word – an assertion which, if valid, should, by all rights, qualify me for inclusion in the “Literature” section of the Guinness publication. My claim was based on the fact that the previous record was held by Ernest Hemingway, who, in 1960, was paid $30,000 by Sports Illustrated Magazine, for a 2,000 word article on bull-fighting. This worked out to $15 per word. But in 1982, I was paid $15,000 by the Hallmark Card Company. This was intended as an advance on a deal which was to involve using my work on scores of different products. But in the end, they only ever used three of my epigrams, totaling 32 words, on a few greeting-cards. This enabled me to claim a rate of $468.75 per word.

Unfortunately (for me), before I ever got around to doing something about this, a new claimant had appeared on the scene (and in the Book). According to Guinness, a Mrs. Deborah Schneider of Minneapoli ,had in 1958 won a contest by writing 25 words about Plymouth cars. The prize was $500 every month for life, which “based on normal life expectancy,” should earn the lady $12,000 per word.

There was only one way I could hope to make lemonade out of this particular lemon. The item stated that those very lucrative 25 words never had been published, and never would be, during Mrs. Schneider’s lifetime. This meant that I could still claim to be the world’s most-highly-paid-per-word PUBLISHED author. I submitted my case to the Guinness editors – but they wouldn’t buy it. And in fact, they eventually dropped that entire category from their contents. (Incidentally, I can find no confirmation from any other source that Mrs. Schneider or the supposed contest ever even existed.)

Where then did that leave me, in my pathetic quest for statistical eminence? There was just one other record I could contrive, which would never get me into Guinness, but which some people might consider impressive. I could call myself the “World’s Most Quotable Author,” and could base this claim on the indisputable fact that, over a specific period of 14 months, the Reader’s Digest magazine, in its regular “Quotable Quotes” section, quoted Ashleigh Brilliant five times, which was actually more times than any other author, including Mark Twain and Will Rogers.

Be that as it may, in view of the undoubted popularity of the Guinness Book of World Records, one might expect that this would have inspired a plethora of other Books of Records, based not on the whole world, but on smaller areas – countries, states, counties, or even cities. Wouldn’t you be interested to know who holds the record in your locality for being the fastest runner, or the champion chess-player, or the owner of the most cats, or married the longest? And what about the steepest street, or the largest collection of candy-wrappers? The search for superlatives in your own neck of the woods could be vastly entertaining and rewarding, especially if published in regularly updated editions.

Meanwhile, I will continue my own quest for recognition for having, to date, authored, copyrighted, published, marketed, and maintained in print (on postcards), 10,000 different epigrams, none of which is longer than 17 words. In case you are unfamiliar with that questionably stupendous body of work, here are a few examples, on the subject at hand:

#682 “My success lies in having achieved a record number of failures.”

#1867 “Every day I beat my own previous record for the number of consecutive days I’ve stayed alive.”

#2052 “People have survived without love for long periods, but I’ve no desire to break the record.”

#3099 “I think I hold the world’s record for the amount of time wasted by a single person.”