In the wake of the
most surreal presidential election in America's history
(one that even at this writing 48 hours later is still
undecided), Dr. Schrapnel instructs the SSS
staff to post an appropriate passage from his influential
1995 essay "Wisdom and Cynicism." Why he wishes this is
never made clear. The piece is a comparison/contrast and
extended definition of the words wisdom,
wit, and cynicism. Dr.
Schrapnel cautions therein about using the words
synonymously. The entire text of the essay, and numerous
reader responses, are in The Clan of the
Flapdragon.
from "Wisdom and
Cynicism"
Oh, cynicism! Now there lies a specter of sorts.
Cynicism denotes a scornful, bitterly mocking attitude or
quality. And a cynic is one who believes that all people
are motivated by selfishness (Cf. Freudianism). There is
classical etymology here. For the Greek philosopher
Diogenes founded the Cynic school, which stressed
self-control and the pursuit of virtue. Cynic is from the
Greek, kúon, for dog. Diogenes and his
Cynics, because of the dog-like sneers they uttered
during critical discourse, were often called
kunikós, or currish. Curmudgeon, with roots
heretofore uncertain or muddled, no doubt derives from
this Grecian term too, although most lexicographers
decline to believe so. I may be wrong, but I doubt it . .
. .
"Analyze, don't diogenize," a philosophy professor
once instructed. "The acquisition of wisdom is never
easy, but it is usually rewarding. Wisdom may not wear a
smiley face each day, but behind the fashionably smug
grin of cynicism grows a brain tumor." I still believe
that to be one of the silliest things an academic has
ever told me. But you know, that prof, who requires
anonymity, was once the president of an Ivy League
institution. Furthermore, the verbalization (diogenize,
from Diogenes, and meaning to wax and posture cynically)
is darn charming, whereas a diogenical outlook is not.
You see?Finally, when the temptations of cynicism knock
at your spiritual gate, it is a bromide to recall
Diogenes himself, the archetypal cynic who wandered
nightly, with a lantern, the streets of ancient Athens
looking for an honest man. Diogenes, who showed his
contempt for life's amenities by living in a tub.
Diogenes, who was known to bark, urinate, and masturbate
in public. Any questions, class?
letters
["The important thing, I think ... is to avoid
succumbing to cynicism--that weary resignation that
passes, in the decadent West,for wisdom and wit."
--Edward Abbey]
Interesting that you
choose a quotation from Edward Abbey to begin your essay
on wisdom and cynicism. Abbey, to me, is an overbearingly
cynical writer and not much of a thinker. His blithering
romanticism masquerading as environmentalism is another
shortcoming of his 'philosophy.' And although his
infamous The Monkey Wrench Gang is a sort of
gospel to the radical toe of the green movement, The
Fool's Progress is his finest work by far, one that
he himself referred to as "the thick masterpiece." It was
the last novel he published in his lifetime and one that
shines with some calculated insight absent from most of
his environmentalist rants, as your quotation reveals.
Perhaps in his declining years Abbey saw the holes in his
raison d' etre. Pity he is not around now to patch them,
that time ran out on him, as it did for Henry Lightcap.
-- L.W. 'Moose' Cravens, Casper, WY
You infinite bore!
Having read and criticized you for years, I am
nonetheless astounded by your bombastic gall. Why would
any intelligent reader believe that you know the
differences between wisdom, wit, and cynicism? Anyone who
trash talks poetry readings, Republicans, Romantics,
karaoke, Rober James Waller, the National Hockey League,
and multiculturalism, and the great American publishing
industry (to name but a spoonful) is not wise or cynical.
I'm not sure there is a word for you and your writing,
but finding it, I suspect is an etymological and
lexicographic adventure with no good ending. Go suck on a
water moccasin! -- Elvis Peebles, SUNY,
Duluth
The recent
election fiasco in Florida was
described by one forgetable media creep as having
gusto. Almost coincidentally, B.M.W. Schrapnel,
Ph.D., includes gusto on one of his lists of words
("Schrapnel's List 1997") he claims need to be used more
in standard English; thus the following excerpt from
The Professor's New Clothes. This
edition of SSS is dedicated, then, to the
right honorable Katherine Harris, Baroness to the Banana
Republicans, Arch Wench of Bushdom, Dubya's Damsel Droog,
and next U.S. Ambassador to the Italian Riviera. Let
Democracy thrive... along with irony!
"Gusto
Redux"
Experts and mavens of
the worlds of writing and literature have been mumbling,
stumbling and backing into one another much lately,
trying to settle and agree upon the word or phrase that
best describes 20th century American
literature.
You know, when a century closes out, people in verily
every vocation and profession grope for highlights,
common memories, something, anything that will shrink
their collective past (maybe focus it) down to a word or
phrase, the best descriptor, or lowest common
denominator, what the MBAs used to call "the bottom
line." So, the question has bobbed up: What word
or phrase best describes the tenor of 20th century
American literature? (You know, as perhaps
romanticism
names the 19th century, and
plagiarism
nails the 18th century, a tradition and practice that
the sleazy Washington Irving perpetuated in the early
19th century as well). Adventures
in Etymology
locked horns with the question of a 20th century lit
descriptor in a somewhat old fashioned way. I mass mailed
a multiple choice form to 2,000 people, a computer-
generated mailing list comprised of professors, critics,
housewives, engineers, flight attendants, hops farmers,
honor students, grooms, software designers,
hypochondriacs, and black jack dealers. There were six
choices, and the survey read as follows:
Which word or phrase
best describes to you the tenor of 20th century American
literature?
a)
not
meaning, but being;
b) minimalistic;
c) gusto;
d) colorful; e) a
circus; f)
provocative
as cheap wine
The proverbial runaway
choice was gusto; and a grand choice it is.
Although some readers will associate the word with beer
and beer only, thanks to the folks at
Schlitz
and their catchy advertising of days past,
gusto has a rich usage history above and
beyond its current slangy prevalence. Originally from the
Latin, gustus, taste, gusto refers
to individual or particular liking, relish or fondness
for something, something usually artsy or expository. One
can exhibit gusto in speech or action by conveying
relish, or zest for the moment, as when George Eliot
writes, in 1866, "The second Tory joke was performed with
great gusto." Gusto may also denote the
style in which a work of art is presented. Laurence
Sterne, for example in Tristram
Shandy,
writes, "There is something of a hardness in his manner .
. . but then there is much greatness of gusto." Sterne's
observation teeters, perhaps, on an archaic sense of
gusto--aesthetic appreciation or perception. Or does
it?
But alas and as noted,
gusto got slangy in 1966 when
Schlitz
beer promoted the slogan, "You only go around once in
life, so grab for all the gusto you can." A can of their
beer is what they meant. Yet this pseudo-epigram contains
shades of carpé
diem,
does it not? Imagine a bunch of modern day beer drinkers
cluttering the smokey, smelly tavern guzzling brewski,
shouting tasteless sexist jokes, or cheering their
favorite sports heroes. Is it not reminiscent of the best
cavalier poets of yore, carousing and cavorting about the
court of Charles I, quaffing port, reciting their bad
poems, and trash-talking the Roundheads? Oh, antecedents,
antecedents, antecedents!
Nowadays, too,
gusto can be a verb, as in, "Yo! Morton, my man!
What say we uptown to the Parrothead
Pub
and gusto til we upchuck." And in gustoing until they
regurgitate, Morton and Pepys engage in numerous forms of
pseudo-gusto itself: playing
Jeopardy
with the bar crowd; bumming cigarettes; discussing
Picasso,
Whistler,
Rubens,
Mondrian;
snorting cocaine; "sucking face with some freshman
pusshead" behind a potted
palm; and finally,
dialing 911 for intervention. You can read all about it
in Barbara Longwood-Bathgate's most recent contribution
to the Books-A-
Million bargain
tables, The Fine Arts
Majors (Purity Press, 1996).
letters
One of the most insidious mottos to crawl out of the
Sixties is that advertising slogan of the
Joseph Schlitz Brewing
Company: "You only go around once in life, so
grab for all the gusto you can." When exposed to the
light of Multiculturalist Deconstruction, this seemingly
innocent beer drinker's creed may be seen as a clear
rejection of many sacred Eastern philosophies, and
consequently an attack on the major authors of the
American Beat movement who fervently and wisely embraced
such spiritualism. The belief that one "goes around" but
one time on this earth scoffs at the concept of
reincarnation; and the prescription to drink beer
voluminously supports a mind-numbing epicureanism that is
at violent odds with the core spiritual activities
adopted by the Beats from the East, such as a moderate
indulgence in mind-expanding narcotics, for religious
reasons feared and misunderstood in Occidental, white,
European male-dominated society. The average
American
Joe, then, when
confronted with beliefs from another hemisphere, is
subliminally swayed away from any consideration of those
ideas by the writing on his beer can, his handy tome. In
short, such popular advertising breeds and perpetuates
racism, and a host of phobias toward Asians, people of
color, poets, writers, bald-headed men and women, thin
men and women, bearded men in gowns or loose cotton
clothing, and anything and anyone not beer-guzzling,
stereotypically American. Therefore, your endorsement of
gusto as a word needful of revival and more frequent use
smacks of the sort of political incorrectness and hate
mongering that infests the United States at every level
of its being. You, and writers like you, must be censored
if America is ever going to reach the level of
sensitivity it should in order to once again become a
world leader in human rights. ---Lotus Ming Wong,
Stanford University
I do share your dismay that irony and
ironic are victims of widespread misuse throughout
American media and literature. I doubt, however, that
even a well-organized effort by concerned professionals
to curb the gush of such careless ignorance will effect
the lamentable fact that irony's definition is foolishly
expanding, providing by such example more fodder for that
ridiculous Law of Denotative Explosion you coined many
Adventures ago. Yes, as you and other mavens often remind
us, whatever the laymen believe a word to mean, that word
truly does come around to mean it, even in the most
conservative dictionaries. The definitions of words
change through popular use, whether the usage is sloppy,
slangy, or simply erroneous. Because television and its
clones (Computers are just televisions with hundreds of
thousands of channels.) reach millions of people that are
not touched by venues like Adventures in Etymology (to
many a great blessing), the relentless exposure to
sophomoric, less than pedestrian, thinkers and writers
that Americans endure hourly exerts a profoundly
debilitating effect on their intellectual, aesthetic and
communicative potential. However, what frightens me even
more than the looming possibility that I live on an
overpopulated planet crawling with mental/spiritual
cretins is how many times lately I notice myself in
agreement with YOU! I fear it to be an index to a
creeping madness, and know not whether to love you or
hate you for it. Please advise. ---Dorchessa
Grain, Rancho de Funco, California
The word
campestral in a publicity
flier for a new writer's school in Ohio cues our hero,
B.M.W. Schrapnel, Ph.D., to visit the campus in its final
days of preparation for opening.Only the school's
museum--The National Museum of Beat
(NUMB)--is
open. Roman Ginsberg, the institution's founder, (and
several of his administrators) takes Dr. Schrapnel on a
tour of the underground galleries. Below is an excerpt
from his controversial 1997 review of the experience,
followed by a few of the many reader replies. This piece
is part of Schrapnel's current work in progress,
The Professor's
New Clothes, and appeared in
Oasis three years ago.
from
"Ginsberg, Ohio,"
Suddenly I hear
gunshots coming from a corridor just off the left side of
the Burroughs Wing. Molson grins and says, "Let's go,
man. You gotta see this." Reluctantly I follow. At the
end of the corridor is a small pistol range. Roman
Ginsberg greets me, waving a .22 caliber handgun. He
laughs. "Cool, man. It's the William S. Burroughs
Memorial Pistol Range, Schrapnel. And just look at the
targets, man ... really cool."
Life size mannequins of
women authors (mostly American) past and present line the
end of the range. I recognize a few: Mary Rowlandson,
Jane Austen, Phillis Wheatley, Mary Shelley, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, Willa Cather, Dorothy Parker, Jacqueline
Susann, Toni Morrison, Truman Capote, and LeAnn Rimes. An
eager Liam Breathmenthe blows the forehead off of Pearl
Buck and shouts, "Ya know, the old master Hawthorne would
dig. Ya know how he hated those women writers of his day
who were selling all their trashy, sentimental books,
like today, and making real authors sweat. And notice how
the back wall there is spattered with blood, well,
ketchup really. Ya see, I been saving those little
packets from McDonald's
and Burger
King
and all those cats for years. We stuff'em in the targets'
heads for effect."
"You can rent a pistol
and six rounds of ammo for five dollars," adds Ginsberg,
who has just pumped five shots into the likeness of
someone he calls Jori Graham. "We don't want visitors to
dwell. So six shots is the limit."
Good thing it's not a
tavern, I observe privately. "Well, what's the
point of this little aside?" I scratch my brow and give
him a polite smile.
Ginsberg, Molson, and
Breathmenthe look at each other, eyes wide open, then
look at me. They place their guns on the side tables of
their respective booths. Molson has just shot the breasts
off of Emily Dickinson, no easy feat, he
claims.
"One of the darkest
deals in the life of Burroughs," Ginsberg says, "was the
accidental shooting death of his wife. You know, down in
Mexico. They were playing William Tell and he was just
trying to shoot a glass off of her head, and he missed
low. So this is a way to help the world and our visitors
to get over it, to erase the misdemeanor and put things
in perspective. Because the writing is what matters, and
we do have a shit-load of it on display here at
NUMB,
wouldn't you say?"
I'LL SAY, I want to say
with irony. But I just nod my head in fake understanding,
because these guys --I keep reminding myself-- have pot,
acid, and guns. Solemnly and slowly twitching and gasping
now, Roman Ginsberg turns and leads us out of the pistol
range, back through the Burroughs Wing, and down another
corridor into the final gallery on the tour, The Kerouac
Arcade — All
of the Dharma!
letters
I suspect that when they read what you wrote about
Ginsberg that they won't invite you back. You would be
better off at some place like
Harvard or Oxford,
where you might fit in better with all the brainy old
crabs. And besides, I hear that at Harvard they've
upgraded to 2-ply bathroom tissue. -- Mitchell "Mitch"
Meltz, Berkeley, CA
BEEJEEBERS!! Schrap my man when i scoped your
adventure i mean i had to go to go and get a job there
among my gods and idols and blessem i did until THEM the
national guard with guns-n-rollers and by bobby weez
busted and freaked ... i escaped like an ishmael but lima
and g-man and fm remain canned ... some state brains from
the ed mafia take over so it can still go on time to make
poets ... now sneakin back to my c-bar ... happy trails
and thanks anyway -- frostbite freddy, At
Large
The contempt you no doubt have for the Beat Generation
is too evident. By emphasizing what must be to many the
more deplorable and stereotypical downsides of the
counterculture, you make your attitude clear. You hate
them, even fear them. Perhaps you are homophobic, which
is beside the point, but mostly you are ignorant and
insensitive to the serious issues
that Beat literature
confronted daily. Allen Ginsberg and his friends
advocated world love and peace. They were constantly
critical of big, crooked government. They were rightly
fearful that greedy, selfish political insanity could at
any time annihilate the planet by way of nuclear war.
Mostly, the Beat Generation was a movement that cared
about the people, all of the people, everywhere. Today's
youth hold similar attitudes and harbor similar
skepticism, and are highly tuned in to the dateless
messages from the Beat decades. It is fine writing and
beautiful thinking. Wake up or die! -- Eve
Priestly, Greenwich Village
As Duhdubya
slouches toward Washington with his
train of ill-educated plutocrats, lawyers, and tramps --
thus dooming the American environment, along with
millions of honorable working-class incomes -- how
appropriate it is to excerpt from Dr. Schrapnel's 1998
summary of the last public words of underground
ecoterrorist Forrest Jones, penned just before Jones
thoroughly disappeared to plot the use of weapons of mass
destruction against "the growing ungreen humanity."
Forrest Jones is a sometime writer mostly admired (feared
as well) by Schrapnel for his snappy vocabulary and
crackling prose, as well as his equal opportunity
misanthropy.
from
"Testosterone Nation ..."
"I'm
not going to sit around with a waggle of weenies and
practice omphaloskepsis, hoping to find--quote
unquote--answers.
We're not a murmuration of brown
study mice, or a gossamer of
green
study geeks. Negotiation serves only the enemy. Surprise
attack, violence of a grotesque scale, are our only
chances, and it is the slimmest hopes at that. As I once
told you, Schrapnel, my going will be on my own terms,
and a grand exit it will be."
So
writes Forrest Jones in a lengthy snail-mail to me dated
April 22, 1998, postmarked Elkins,
West
Virginia,
from which he is surely long gone. Jones, you recall, is
the underground ecoterrorist extrordinaire of the FBI's
most wanted category. A felonious
wizard
of the first magnitude, and a madly passionate
environmentalist who takes no prisoners (at least not for
very long), Jones writes me that he has declared all-out
war on humanity, has resigned himself to the role of
lightspeed, underground hit man, and frankly has evolved
into a fearless, obsessed stalker of anyone in any
station who even slightly participates in activities that
hasten the deflowering of planet earth; you know, the
usual enemies of environmentalists: big business freaks,
land developers, mining and lumbering moguls, most
Republicans, the indigent of developing countries, and
anyone in sympathy with all of the above. Sounds like he
is out to nail most of us.
Now the
Forrest Jones vocabulary has often fascinated me. Note a
few of the word choices in that opening quote.
Omphaloskepsis is the contemplation of
one's navel. Such a focus is reputed to be an aid to
meditation, to provide inertia
into the inner and/or outer world of truth and
tranquility. It derives in part from the Greek word for
navel, omphalos.
In the 1920s, the English added the also Greek
skepsis
(examination) thus coining a word rarely used to denote
the act of deep and thoughtful (sometimes) inquiry.
Omphalos
was also the fabled conical stone in the temple of Apollo
at Delphi which marked the supposed central point of our
then flat earth. Please, let us not get into the
etymological dynamics of the
"phalos"
part of this word. I've heard enough this month from the
Gender
Critics
and feminists who have just begun to realize how much men
have "screwed us over" on the language fronts. The point
here is, Forrest Jones denounces ponderings of the belly
button.
Afficionados
of modern American poetry may remember the opening stanza
of John Crowe Ransom's "Bells
for John Whiteside's
Daughter."
There
was such speed in her little
body,
And
such lightness in her footfall,
It
is no wonder that her brown
study
Astonishes
us all.
And
while the poet in this context may mean coffin,
brown
study also denotes a hypnotic state, or arrest of body
movement, all of which are appropriate in the world of
this poem, and especially current in Ransom's day.
Nowadays, brown
study implies a state of serious absorption or
abstraction, not necessarily "gloomy" in the older sense
of brown,
Ransom's sense. So, what Forrest Jones means, I guess, is
that he and his followers no longer intend to lounge
around and debate or contemplate what is to be done next
in their struggles against the
Rape
the Earth Hordes.
That is, things are too far gone to be reversed or
remedied through political or social discourse.
Green
study-- which includes mostly concerned letters to
clueless politicians and editors who really don't give a
hoot--is pointless, because those of us with a little
common knowledge (even a few scientists) know that the
planet is a goner. So just go berserk, banzai, ballistic,
ape
shit.
It's kamikaze
time.
Another
charming characteristic of Jones's diction is his use of
terms of venery (nouns of assemblage) like "waggle of
weenies," "murmuration of . . . mice," and "gossamer of .
. . geeks." You bet I won't get into any etymologies of
venery
and its kind. But these are onomatopoeic venereal (in its
archaic sense--hunting) terms, as explained by James
Lipton in his wonderfully unnecessary 1991 reference
work, An
Exaltation of Larks
(Viking), a book described by
Kurt
Vonnegut
as "a barrel of laughs." You know, terms of multitude,
like: a gaggle of geese, a rag of colts, a kindle of
kittens, a bask of Floridians, an ambush of used-car
salesmen, a regurgitation of reporters, an attitude of
rappers, a cete of badgers, a paddling of ducks, a flap
of sailboats, a defecation of lawyers, a tedium of
footnotes, a blur of impressionists, an enigma of
Elvises, a pot of hippies.
But alas, in this
long letter there are no outlines for action, no plans
revealed, only a sense of disgust with his fellow man,
with his homeland, yet a simmering urgency to save what
is left of this haggard rock. I don't know how many
comrades Jones has, when or where they intend to strike,
or what levels of technology and weaponry are at their
disposal; but huge, I guess. His letter would frighten me
greatly were it not for the closing paragraphs, wherein
Jones reflects on the elusive yet seemingly simple heart
of the matter, waxing mythological and spiritual, causing
me to wonder whether or not he is a genius psychopath
devoid of hope for this world, or just another of those
guys ahead of his time. Behold: "When the
gods of the Greeks
strutted down from Olympus--boiling in their titanic
hormones,
at once and for all the great diluters of soul and
reason--and raped and replaced the ancient Earth
goddesses, there you have the beginnings of a brand of
patriarchal politics containing the end of respect (much
less reverence) for Nature.
A fundamental attitude toward the awesome graces of
organic Earth was perverted, the general collective
consciousness of humankind twisted. Ergo, the global
masses must undergo a spiritual renaissance, a revival of
basic moral attitudes, a rebirth of
Earth
consciousness . . .
or else. And because what confronts and confounds us is a
purely moral issue above and beyond politics, technology,
and science, there is not the proverbial
popsicle's
chance in a Key
West August that preservation and/or restoration are
around the corner. Oh, obese likelihood . . . fat chance!
I hate you all, Schrapnel. So don't be near Miami on New
Year's Eve, or you'll be going bye-bye with a major
stinking canker on this Testosterone
Nation."
Hmmm . . . how cryptic,
yet true sometimes, are the reflections of Forrest Jones
the ecowarrior. I'm sorry to write that I don't expect to
hear from him again, although I believe we will be
hearing much about him soon. Furthermore, I sense he's
let me off the hook, so to speak, as far as having to
absorb any of the blame for the despicable condition of
earth
and the smug, self- centeredness of its dominant, upright
mammal. I mean, as he once chided, who really listens to
English teachers and published literary critics anyway?
Yes, we've tried to lift some members of the species out
of the wallow of cretinous jack-offs that over-run the
American continents; and I'm certain that colleagues
abroad have attempted likewise, with identical lack of
success. It's just that, well, hardly anyone reads
anymore. And when one does, it's usually a
TV
Guide. I may be
wrong, but I doubt it.
letters
HELLO! Earth to
Dr. Schrapnel! Hasn't it hit you that Forrest Jones has
exposed the root of all evil here: the ancient shift in
Western culture to a totally patriarchal society? When he
observes that when the Greek's Olympus godheads screwed
over the Earth goddesses everything started to go to
shit, well, can't you see why we are in the mess we are
in now? It is no coincidence that the demise of respect
for Nature parallels the enslavement of women by men. I
wouldn't be surprised if most of Jones's followers are
women, or that Jones is actually a woman, or at least a
man who is seriously considering a sex change. How can
you hairy, testosterone-heavy slobs live with yourselves?
How can you look into a mirror without barfing? And by
the way, Jones hasn't said much that Dave Foreman hasn't
all ready. If he really wants to slow down the spread of
populations into what's left of the American wilderness,
he needs to start blowing up roads, yes roads! He should
make it unhealthy for anyone to be employed by state
departments of transportation. Roads are arteries that
the cancer uses to destroy what little is left of
pristine Nature. Think about it, shitferbrains. ---
Ozma May Ferry, Sisters, Oregon
The most
frightening thing to me about Duhdubya as the bastard
prexie is what his very candidacy indicates about the
quality of the education of almost half the people in
America. Yes, look for environmentalism in the US to be
squashed by corporations owned by Duhdubyas's 700
millionaire supporters. And don't believe a word about
this joker being the "education president'' when even his
crooked cronies know that a better educated populace
would never have elected him or the likes, not that he
has been legitimately elected on any ethical grounds; I
mean, there's something really surreal and suspicious
about this whole thing coming down to Florida, maybe the
wierdest place on earth. But as one of your readers once
observed, probably in a letter exposing the baloney brain
of Rush Limbaugh, education is the enemy. "Keep'em
marginally stupid, or filthy rich, and you ken fool'em or
keep'em happy almost all the time," that's what my uncle
the political science prof always used to say. This
election/presidency is the political equivalent of the
O.J. Simpson trial, but this time I'm scared. -- Chad
Wright, St. Augustine, FL
Indeed
we are a society fond of lists of every sort.
Ergo the Schrapnelvania Staff, led by
B.M.W. Schrapnel, Ph.D. himself, chooses the first
SSS of the official new millennium to
declare its top ten choices of the 20th century's most
major happenings in American Literature. Certainly no
simple study is it, since so much of the writing and
supposed milestones of the past century are so benign or
political, thus quasiliterary. Nevertheless, here you
go.
Top
Ten Significant Events in 2oth Century American
Literature
10 ...
Although
it may appear egotistical and self-serving, in order to
infuse this list with total legitimacy,
The
Schrapnel Satire
Sentinel
(2000)
must be considered a major happening. It brings much
needed attention to the luminary nature of Dr. Schranel's
work, to his neglected book,
The
Clan of the
Flapdragon,
and his ignored manuscript, The
Professor's New
Clothes.
In a cyberspace thick and sick with pablum,
SSS
provides
critical satire and fabrication that is occasionally
correct. Schrapnel's work is an offspring of his
"Adventures in Etymology" columns which began in the
literary magazine Oasis
in 1992.
9
...
Robert
Frost's North
of Boston
(1914) is a final nail in Romanticism's coffin,
exposing the indifference of nature to man and further
revealing the sloppy, nature-boy sentimentalism at the
heart of the graying Romantic movement. Romanticism
enjoys a brief revival in the hands of the Beats (circa
1950-70), but their shallowness of intellect and spirit
--and their drug addictions-- only lead into hysterical
environmentalism.
8
...
Herman Melville's Billy
Budd
is first published in 1924, providing more proof that
the literary taste of the 19th century was less than
pedestrian. If that is not enough, it is not until 1955
that a complete edition of Emily
Dickinson's poems
is published, such tardiness again demonstrating that our
literary critical ancestors were largely morons for
nearly ignoring these master works.
7 ...
In
1976 Elizabeth
Bishop
is the first woman and first American to recieve the
Books Abroad Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
She should have received a Nobel Prize as well, but
Bishop's work punctuates the reality that most American
women poets are better poets than most American males of
the same livelihood.
6 ...
E.
Annie Proulx's The
Shipping News
(1994) wins the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, further
confounding one of the primary gripes of radical
feminism--men can't truly represent women in
literature--by proving that a woman can write wonderfully
about the travails of a widower. Think about it,
kids.
5 ...
The
accidental death by motorcycle of novelist
John
Gardner
(1982) will be viewed by the next generation of critics
as a tragic, premature loss to American literature,
comparable to the death of the young John Keats to
British literature. It will take at least another twenty
years to realize this because today's critical climate is
still a bit groggy with Ulysses,
and can't get past Grendel.
4
...
Jacques Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play ..." turns
up at an international symposium on structuralism held at
Johns Hopkins University in 1966. The three decades of
bullshit masquerading as literary criticism that follows
this event is numbing. Hundreds of university English
departments are consequently infested with
"deconstructionists"
instead of literature teachers, and many acres in the
field of literary studies appropriately go
brown.
3 ...
Concluding
an unprecedented literary duel of venomous poems,
Toulouse Mars fires a cannon that explodes a box of
dynamite whereon his rival Argus Pleasant stands, blowing
parts of that poet from St. Martin Parish to Smithereens,
Louisiana. However, details of
The
Great
Fryting
at Lampoon Lagoon
(1972) are not made public until twenty-five years later
by Mars's biographer. The news reminds a reading public
nearly alienated by what Harold Bloom tags the "schools
of resentment" (various trends in literary theory) that
literature can be plain, clear, and damn deadly
fun.
2 ...
Egdon
Heath, the waste land in Thomas Hardy's The Return of
the Native, is reborn as Egdon Heath the lawyer in
The Bushwhacked Piano (1978), by
Thomas
McGuane.
The implications for American literature, and archetypal
theory, are of course initially missed.
1
...
The death
of T.S. Eliot (1965)
opens the floodgates for the nihilism, iconoclasm, and
general stupidity that drives deconstruction,
multiculturalism, and political correctness. American
literature, and literary theory, slips into a bit of an
ice age with the passing of the person Leslie Fiedler
called the guardian of the treasury of culture. How? Why?
Well, with the last respected practitioner of a critical
method operating from a genuine set of standards and
principles safely gone, anything goes, and much of the
literary lapses into largely mindless agendaisms and
posturings.
letters
[Because the above installment
occurs in real time, letters in response will appear next
week, or so. Included are more recent missives pertaining
to past issues. You may need to consult the
Archives
for some helpful
context.]
Its about time some one imortified the
massivity of those Harry Porter books and the book world
owes you a slap on the back. Ive read all three books and
I say we bring that Rawlings guy to America to write the
rest of them where theyl be praysed and apresheated. --
George W. Bush, Austin, TX
Your Viagra rant contains a lot of
truth. People really do need to do things in more
moderation. Things like eating, drinking, reading,
driving, and copulating should require a weekly purchased
permit when you reach the age of sixty-five. I don't care
where they got the word, so you can just stick your
smartsy entomologies in the future and get to the point.
-- Delbert Wiff, Tucson, AZ
The apparent cynicism and outrage of
your ecowarrior acquaintance Forrest Jones is something
that will need to be contagious for very many if the
American environment is going to survive four years of
the Illegitimate One. Already his string of cabinet
appointees is beginning to look like a list of anti-green
gestapo agents. If Mr. Jones is looking for pissed off
volunteers who are willing to go underground and berserk,
he can contact me if you print this. -- Gladys
Patton, Elkins, WV
here are some
letters in response to the Top 10 List
By omitting L. Frank Baum's
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) from your list
you are ignoring a work whose influence on American
culture has no bounds. Nearly every serious artist,
literary and otherwise, of the past century has had to
come to grips with Dorothy, the Lion, Toto, the Wicked
Witch of the West, and Kansas, to name a few. These
things manifest themselves everywhere on our literary
panorama, as well as in song, cinema, and the White
House. On the other hand, if you insist that 1900 is the
last year of the 19th century, and not the first year of
the 20th century, then you win on a technicality.
However, some technicalities should not count in art. --
Linda R. McKee, Director, Museum Library Services,
The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, FL
You cretinous, blabbering, uneducated
moron! A list of American literature's top ten events of
the past century and you don't include the likes of
Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, O'Connor,
Updike, Stein, Morrison, Waller, Buffett, Plath, or Dove?
You blew it big time, blowhard. Why, even my Introduction
to Literature students at the community college can do
better than that. -- Hart Bliss, Melancholy
Community College, WA
Again your racism and pure white
chauvinism shines. I venture to say that no one today in
the field of literature would agree with your ASSessment
on twentieth century American literature. It also
frightens me that you actually had a "staff" work on this
too, which means that there are at least a few
like-thinking sickos hanging around wherever it is you
come up with your crap. -- Melinda Gass,
Amityville, NY
Yes! Yes! Yes! It's about time someone
pointed out that the American literary scene is full of
degenerate nonsense, from the bestseller lists to the
rigamarole covered in college English classes. You may be
on to something when you say that T.S. Eliot had
something to do with it, since it's been my belief for
many years that he's had something to do with everything.
-- Cartwright Moss, Shepherd College
One of the most overlooked novelists
of our day is Thomas McGuane, so I'm pleased that you've
thrown some recognition his way. He's a bit of a
Hemingway with a sense of humor and a normal hormone
level, and he writes much more elegant sentences. --
Anonymous, Key West, FL
Romanticism is hardly dead, although
you seem to imply it! And there is a Beat revival in
America and across the continent which can save us from
the evil that is Bushdom if we just come together and
stockpile lots of weapons and bombs over the next year or
so, then use them wisely. Just listen to the wind, but
don't confuse the sound with the flatulence that comes
out of your mouth, or goes through your keyboard. --
Martina Guess, Casper, WY
Who is Toulouse Mars, and where can I
find his books? I've read your pieces on him for years,
but damned if I can find any reference to him in any
library or anywhere online. I mean, come on ... I need a
topic for my dissertation, fast! -- Mike Trike,
Brown University
The following
is in Dr. Schrapnel's 1997
collection, The Clan of the
Flapdragon, and appeared a few years earlier in
Oasis. Usage of prufrockery is not quite
catching on as yet, except among English departments and
members of Sigma Tau Delta honors society. And a couple
of members of the Association of Literary Scholars and
Critics have been heard to accuse a rival colleague or
two of prufrockery.
Prufrockery
Prufrockery
is a word I coin to designate the multifaceted
dysfunctionality displayed occasionally-to-often by some
middle-aged yuppies with liberal arts degrees. You
remember, J. Alfred Prufrock is T.S. Eliot's famous,
fearful wimp who cannot decide whether to pop the
question or pop his arteries, as it is explicated in
undergraduate intro to lit courses. Al is a lot like
Hamlet in that his indecision holds him in a wheelspin.
But unlike the Prince, he never jumps ship and reaches
the proverbial breaking point to wreak carnage upon his
social disorder. Just think about it.
One is
afflicted with prufrockery if she no-shows a job
interview because, "Well, gee, I really don't think I
want to be a garbage woman, er, I mean, sanitary engineer
anyway. I mean, what will people say? And so what if it
pays twenty dollars an hour, and the twins are off to
college in the fall?"
Prufrockery,
you see, is not a male gender phenom. It can stymie even
the most matriarchal wench. Prufrockery has you by the
thigh hairs when you refuse another snifter of Napoleon
before midnight because you remember what such similar
stuff did to Dylan
Thomas
finally. You think of his besotted, puking near-corpse in
writhing coitus with the Eternal Footperson on the floor
of the White Horse Tavern. Aah, legend! It is such a
vivid intimidator, the Great Deluger on
parade.
At last,
prufrockery has nailed you when you buy a giant
telescopic lens for your 35mm, but don't use it to
Kodacolor the young mermaids as they strut the white sand
in their slight ensembles. In fact, you are certainly in
the throes of prufrockery when you will not dare walk the
beach with the whole phallic thing around your neck,
fearing comparison to the Ancient Mariner, or some other
old hippie.
Ludicrous,
you say?
Well, of
course it is! But would you want your daughter to marry
J. Alfred Prufrock? Or do you think that T.S. Eliot
worries about Philistine opinions you may harbor? Do
you?
All
digression and red herring aside now, prufrockery is
something to take up cudgels against. It is debilitating
for certain. But there is a sort of nostrum, a cure to
which Eliot alludes in his eximious long poem. And this
saving formula is as old as
Catullus--carpe
diem!
Or gather ye rosebuds,
etceteras, etceteras. So go at each day with throttle
unbent and open for business, but pause at times to read
some good verse, at least in snatches. Start with Marvell
(as in Andrew, not comics) and his sapient "To His Coy
Mistress." Have a ball.
letters
[Letters in response to the above
piece are so unremarkable that the Staff chooses not to
print them. Instead, here are some missives more
current.]
On February 2, I wish you a grand
celebration of the birthday of the great James Joyce,
who, if alive, would be disgustingly old today, and quite
blind I'm sure. Also, let us hope that Punxsutawney Phil
(and damn those cheap imitations) does not see his
shadow, as I grow weary of winter here in the
Adirondacks. If winter comes, it must be the Viagra. --
Wilbert S. Caboodle, Upstate, NY
... and another thing, your top 10
list is missing Dave Barry, who's the funniest guy in
America since Mark Twain, even though he just writes for
some rag down in Miami. American literature has a helluva
sense of humor that you tend to overlook, shitferbrains
... and don't censor 'shitferbrains' because it's a word
you said we should use more often in one of your
"Schrapnel's List" things that I always look forward to
so I can impress my mother-in-law, the famous speech
teacher at Wanton High. -- Joy Kasparitis,
Bangor, ME
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