Well That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes

Wasn’t it just delicious to have one hour of black people riffing on current events for one hour every day four nights a week? I’m talking about Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. Noah has come a long way, but at the time, my favorite was Wilmore’s show. It was no contest. His format and panel of commentators and guests appealed to me. One of the people that Wilmore introduced me to was Franchesca Ramsey so when I realized that she had a podcast, Last Name Basis, I subscribed immediately. Her podcast was lighter than I imagined. On the podcast, her audio presence contrasts with her more somber toned appearances on Wilmore’s show. Ramsey seems like a really light-hearted person: giggly, funny, etc. (I’m behind on all my podcasts BY YEARS, but Last Name Basis hasn’t released a new episode since March 26, 2019 so I think that it is over.)
When I realized that she was writing a book, Well That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes, I decided that I would read it to get a fuller idea of her as a person.
Well That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes wasn’t what I expected, but instead of being pleasantly surprised, I would have probably skipped it entirely if I had fully known what I was getting into. Please don’t conflate that with a view of the quality of her book. I was interested in the memoir part, and it is really a kind of how to book with vignettes about being a decent person online and growing as a person in the twenty-first century. I don’t think that a book exists that is solely devoted to Internet etiquette with an emphasis on social activism so I think that it fills a void that everyone who is online could benefit from reading.
Here is the problem: if your goal is to have a huge online presence, would you read any book, including Well That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes? Only Ramsey’s publishers know the answer to that question. I read books, and I would not have read it—not because I didn’t find the book helpful, but because I’m not into that genre of books. I’m also not consciously trying to have an online presence—as I write a review that is online along with thousands of others that often address social justice issues…I’m not saying that I don’t need it, but that I wouldn’t read it. I haven’t read advice books for a long time mainly because I realized that if you can’t internalize what you learn, then you’ll forget it or will have to walk around with the book everywhere and take notes, but Ramsey’s book is also not that kind of a book.
I was hoping that Well That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes would be more about Ramsey’s life. Being Internet famous is still a relatively new phenomenon, and I do think that there needs to be a book, i.e. a more permanent record, devoted to one of its pioneers, how she got there and what it was like. One day the Internet, Twitter, YouTube are going to die out like the payphone so it is important to explore what it was like to delve into an industry at its inception because that adventurous spirit will translate to other unknown frontiers for other innovative readers. Ramsey does explore those issues, but I read memoirs and biographies fairly regularly, and she takes the pose of a teacher instead of a raconteur which creates a certain amount of distance between her and the reader. Even if other memoirs and biographies are only creating the illusion of intimacy and frankness, it is a necessary illusion which Ramsey is unable to create even as she genuinely tried by sharing personal stories that I’m sure were not easy to channel into words then put those words on paper.
I know that authors don’t always get to choose the title of their books so it is possible that Ramsey was not ever planning to write a memoir and always planned to write an Internet etiquette book or a self-help book on how to be a better person in the twenty-first century. I took the memoir part of the title seriously so I was disappointed, and it was a slog for me to finish even though it is a quick and humorous read. I just wasn’t into it, but I’m a completist so while other readers may have dropped it and moved on to the next book, I dutifully kept reading it—even the graphics that I usually think of as filler when actual content is low.
Ramsey has a good heart and earnestly devotes each chapter to imparting a valuable lesson to her reader while attempting to inject some humor into the proceedings, but she isn’t a strong enough writer to really nail jokes other than in a conciliatory ha ha way as opposed to genuinely eliciting laughter from her readers or making poignant quotable statements that will resonate long after the reader is done reading the book. It kind of evaporates on contact.
Well That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes reminded me of I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual, which does not evoke the promise of being memoir and was closer to a book of essays that could have easily appeared separately as opposed to a collection in a single book, but still felt intimate like one while offering the author an opportunity to play professor and school her readers without sounding wooden. I’m Judging You conveyed the author’s personality in a way that Ramsey’s book never fully captures.
Ramsey has many gifts: smart, beautiful, caring, loving, a great online and small screen presence, a terrific podcast persona. Maybe it is too much to expect her to also be an amazing writer. I’m not going to count her out yet. Later on if she revisits the idea of a memoir, experience and maturity may develop her written voice, but right now, her written word does not convey who she is as effectively as when she is simply talking and Well That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes does not rise to the level of Ramsey’s true, engaging self. Her writing is still too measured and needs time to simmer for her to find the balance between being expressive and holding back without being pedantic.
If you are trying to translate your ambition and talent into Internet success while being a decent person then you should definitely read Well That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes, but if you came for a more traditional chronological memoir about Ramsey’s life, you’re going to leave dissatisfied and probably should just skip it. I actually never checked out her channel on YouTube, but I think that there are probably a lot of other satisfying ways that you can support Ramsey without reading her book, listening to her podcast or watching Wilmore’s show (I’m still salty that it got cancelled). A brief look at her Twitter feed shows that she has a new show called Franchesca & Show, which I will have to check out with the caveat that I am so severely behind on all the shows that I have a spreadsheet dedicated to that subject, which has not helped me actually watch what I want in the slightest (latest goal is to watch all the Marvel Netflix and Hulu series before Disney+ releases).