Nursing Home Newsletter Spawns a Media Star : Publishing: David Greenberger took notes of conversations with elderly residents in Boston, which evolved into trading cards, CDs and even a play.

When David Greenberger began interviewing residents of a suburban Boston nursing home in the late 1970s for an in-house newsletter, he certainly wasn’t thinking of a career in multimedia.

The elderly residents at the all-male Duplex Nursing Home were delighted to provide fodder for the photocopied issues of the “Duplex Planet.” They were quite willing to be quoted at length. But they had no interest in reading it.

Greenberger’s friends, however, couldn’t get enough. Greenberger’s questions to his elderly friends were bizarre and capricious: “Would you swim in coffee if it weren’t too hot?”

The anecdotes and conversations he gleaned contained a strange mixture of wisdom and disconnectedness.

“If you are an old man and you go into a bar in pajamas, people will buy you drinks,” Duplex resident Francis McElroy once told Greenberger.

Word about “Duplex Planet” got around. Eventually, he had 500 subscribers, including such luminaries as movie director Jonathan Demme and REM’s singer Michael Stipe.

Now, 14 years later, the nursing home is closed and most of Greenberger’s original sources are dead or relocated.

But the “Duplex Planet” has taken on a life of its own.

Now available from the Duplex industry, for example: trading cards with quotes and illustrated portraits of some Duplex residents; CDs featuring musical adaptations of the text or Greenberger’s spoken word recordings; a Duplex Planet Radio Hour monthly broadcast by Greenberger over a public radio station in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

There’s more: Greenberger has written a play based on characters from the Duplex and he travels the country on reading tours, spreading the Duplex word from a lectern--including a recent performance at Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Arts.

His subjects may ramble, but Greenberger generally pares their remarks to pungent commentary or deeply personal tales, sometimes clouded with lapses in logic and other times told with crystal clarity.

“We are all sweethearts, some of us are fresh sweethearts and some of us are stale,” quipped William Ferguson.

“Snakes are some of the finest things in the world, but they’re also one of the finest things to leave alone,” said Henry Turner.

Greenberger said he’s trying to abolish societal or cultural fears about aging and at the same time remind us that--no matter what--growing old is just part of the deal.

“I feel this material speaks to everyone because this is something that happens to all of us,” said Greenberger, now 39.

“It just never made sense to me the way in which people resist aging. I mean there’s a certain natural fear of dying, but if you’re going to resist something, you might as well resist something that’s going to give a little.”

Recently, Faber and Faber published Greenberger’s book--”Duplex Planet: Everybody’s Asking Who I Was.” It is a compilation of several editions of the fledgling magazine, with entire chapters based on questions like “Who is Frankenstein?” or “How close can you get to a penguin?”

It shares shelf space with “Duplex Planet Illustrated,” a comic book series published by Seattle-based FantaGraphics Books that utilizes Greenberger’s text and combines it with illustrations from some of the country’s most avant-garde cartoonists.

“I’m pleasantly baffled over how something this strange is starting to gain widespread appeal,” said cartoonist Daniel Clowes, who was the first to start illustrating excerpts from Greenberger’s magazine on the back pages of his popular comic book “Eightball.”

“I definitely feel like it’s starting to reach more people,” said Greenberger. “The book is a major step in getting the word out. It’s meant for people to take this in and have them reflect on a part of themselves.”

At his live readings, Greenberger becomes an actor of sorts. He affects a strange stage presence while reading from his interviews--something like a philosophic lounge act.

When the audience chuckles over some of Greenberger’s interviews, however, the whole thing begins to sound a little like Art Linkletter’s campy TV show, “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” Both deal with groups of people who are completely devoid of self-consciousness. Except Greenberger isn’t quoting unabashed and naive children. The humor in his text sometimes stems from senility and decline.

But Greenberger said his Duplex Planet products are not a case of exploitation, profiting from the condition of others under the guise of exploring the wry or even bizarre perspective of the elderly.

“Generally, people who voice that concern fear the notion of growing old. It’s like going up to them and screaming, ‘Cancer,’ ” he said. “I don’t edit out the people who don’t make sense. Some of these people don’t make sense all the time, but the only option is leaving them out and that wouldn’t be a complete picture. If we pretend it’s not funny it becomes condescending.”

Greenberger said he continues spending time in nursing homes, building relationships, asking questions and, of course, taking notes. If he can’t erode a cultural fear completely, Greenberger said, at least he’s made some friends.

“I feel I’m very lucky I’ve gotten to know these people,” Greenberger said. “A lot of them are still my friends and I’m very thankful for that. People should never underestimate other people and their abilities simply because of their age.”