Ballast Quarterly Review, V01n4, Summer 1986

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Ballast Quarterly Review

Summer 1986

Ballast Quarterly Review, v01n4, Summer 1986

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Recommended Citation Behrens, Roy R., "Ballast Quarterly Review, v01n4, Summer 1986" (1986). Ballast Quarterly Review. 4. https://scholarworks.uni.edu/ballast/4

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AMBROSIA e LOGENBERRY • ARTICHOKE e BUTTERMILK • LICORICE • TARTAR e SHALLOT

boy named Eddie Shell came ometimes when I am sitting hat interests me is to set up one afternoon to play with at my drawing table thinking what you might call the Frank and me, and at the hour of ideas for a particular W rapports de grand ecart--the A for going home did not know s assignment, it occurs to me most unexpected relationship how to do so. This is a malady that that the total range of my meta possible between the things I want afflicts all children, but my mother phoric invention is circumscribed to speak about, because there is a was not sure how she should handle by a tiny list of events and images certain difficulty in establishing it in Eddie's case. She consulted that caught my attention between the the relationships in just that way, us secretly as to whether he should ages of five and twenty-five. It is and in that difficulty there is an be asked to stay for supper; we disappointing to believe that I be interest, and in that interest there thought not, so she hinted to him came a closed system in my middle is a certain tension and for me that that his mother might be expecting twenties; but I think that in terms tension is a lot more important than him. He was so slow in acting upon of archetypal incidents and objects, the stable equilibrium of harmony, the hint that we were all in despair nothing very strong has been added which doesn't interest me at all. and began to feel guilty because we to my subconscious vault since that Reality must be torn apart in every had not pressed him to stay. What I time. sense of the word. What people for remember now is Eddie standing at get is that everything is unique. last on the other side of the screen James McMullan, Revealing Illus Nature never produces the same thing door and trying to say good-by as if trations (New York: Watson-Guptill, twice. Hence my stress on seeking he meant it. My mother said warmly: 1981), p. 102. the rapports de grand ecart: a small "Well, Eddie, come and see us again." head on a large body; a large head Whereupon he opened the door and on a small body. I want to draw the walked in. • mind in a direction it's not used to fan artist (or scientist) and wake it up. I want to help the Mark Van Doren, The Autobiography uses his work to explore the viewer discover something he would of Hark Van Doren (New York: Green I limits of his own imaginative n't have discovered without me. wood Press, 1968), p. 24. powers, and then, by making them public property, abandons them, Pablo Picasso, quoted by Francoise he will experience not just post Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life With • parturitional gloom, but a state in Picasso (New York: McGraw-Hill, abitualization devours works, which his own boundaries, both in 1964), pp. 59-60. clothes, furniture, one's ternal and external, have been dan H wife, and the fear of war ... gerously weakened. He has subjected And art exists that one may himself to a species of leaching, • recover the sensation of life; it and, temporarily at least, will be uns, pungently pointed and exists to make one feel things, to vulnerable both to the alien from perpetrated promptly are pro make the stone stony. The purpose without and the alien from within. P ductive of a proruption of a of art is to impart the sensation of Each successive work thus becomes a pretty proportion of piquant things as they are perceived and not means of repairing the damage done pleasure; but puns protracted and in as they are known. The technique of by the artist to himself by the pub every person's premises, should be art is to make objects "unfamiliar," lication of the work previous to it. punishable by a propulsion of the to make forms difficult, to increase In this respect, the production of perpetrator from the punning prem the difficulty and length of percep symbolically significant objects, of ises. tion because the process of percep whatever sort, becomes the temporary tion is an aesthetic end in itself cure for the disease of which it is Boston Evening Transcript (6 August and must be prolonged. Art is a way itself the cause. We produce in 1832), quoted by C.G. Loomis in of experiencing the artfulness of an order to recover our equilibrilllll; "Traditional American Wordplay, object; the object is not important. but our equilibrium is in question Wellerisms, or Yankeeisms" in West because we produce. ern Folklore 8 (1949), p. 2. Victor Shklovsky, "Art as Technique" in Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis, Liam Hudson, Bodies of Knowledge: • trans., Russian Formalist Criticism The Psychological Significance of Hark Van Doren: Nothing in nature Four Essays (Lincoln: University of the Nude in Art (London: Weidenfeld is more beautiful than the eye of a Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 12. and Nicolson, 1982), p. 46. horse.

from soup to nuts BALLAST Vol I No 4 Summer 1986 eradicable tumbadde

ne day there in Ohio, when I In gutter dispear I am taking my pen was a little fellow, they toilet you know that, being leyde up 0 took me to a neighbor's where in bad with the prevailent distemp an old, old man had died, and ter I opened the window and in flew I stood with my mother looking at Enza. Ballast. him. She went away for a moment and left me in the room with the body. James Joyce, in Samuel Beckett et I stood mute and all atremble in my al., _Our E~agmination~nd His heart when suddenly, without warn Factificatibn for Incamination of BALLAST is privately published. It ing, the old jaw on the dead face Works in Progress (New York: New is a journal devoted to wit, the unhinged, dropped, and the mouth Directions, 1972), p. 193. contents of which are intended to be opened. With an agonized scream I insightful, amusing, or thought pro fled from the room, and so as a voking. Its purposes are education little child I knew and understood al, apolitical, and entirely non as much as any man has ever known of • commercial. It does not carry paid life's two great mysteries--life and y favorite toys in those days advertisements, nor is it supposed death, joy and sorrow, the way we were a clockwork train and to be purchased or sold. It is come and the way we go. M lead soldiers. When the sol issued quarterly, beginning in diers had lost too many limbs Autumn and ending in SU111111er (begin William Allen White, The Autobio to stand up we melted them down in a ning in September and ending in graphy of William Allen White (New frying pan over the nursery fire and J'une). There is no charge for sub York: MacMillan Publishing Company, dropped them into cold water as scriptions as such, and (to the ex 1946). people do now in Sweden on New tent that finances allow) the jour Y~ar's night, seeking omens of the nal will gladly be mailed to people future . who send in their mailing address, • accompanied by two first class U.S. Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (New postage stamps in payment for each ustav Hertz .•. was quite bald; York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), p. of the issues they want . In other his head, shining like a so. words, to subscribe for one full polished billiard ball, was year (any series of four issues), G said to illuminate the dark- you need only send in a total of 8 ened lecture room and make project first class U.S. postage stamps. No ion difficult. He had a peculiarly other currency will be accepted. Do impish sort of humour. Sometimes he not send cash, checks, or money or came to drink tea with the chemists ders. Nor can the journal be order in the laboratory .•• On one occasion ed by phone. All subscription he waved the tea aside with the orders (as well as requests for gift remark "I am fed up with that stuff, subscriptions) must be mailed to: give me the alcohol" and got one of the students to hand him a bottle BALLAST Quarterly Review of absolute alcohol from the shelf. Attn: Obsequious Serf Lise Meitner was horrified "But Undoubtedly one of our favorite 2968 North Prospect Avenue Hertz, you can't drink that, it's books is Adaptive Colo:r!ati'on in Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211 pure poison!" Hertz took no notice, Animals by Hugh B. Cott (London: poured himself a tumbler and drank Methuen, 1940). Most of the Foreign orders are also considered, it down without any ill effects; he illustrations, such as this cam but these are processed case by case, had got the student to fill the ouflaged leg of a frog, are the so that foreign subscribers should bottle with water beforehand. author's drawings. He is a prom simply inquire. Back issues of inent zoologist and a former BALLAST are hard to obtain. However, Otto R. Frisch, What Little I Remem military camouflage officer. xerographic replicas of all issues ber (Cambridge, England: Cambridge can be obtained in person (not by University Press, 1979), pp. 37-38. mail) for the price of producing the copies, at Clark Graphics, 1815 East Locust Street in Milwaukee. As for • • the contents of BALLAST, there is no ere's the Lytton (Strachey) t the age of eighty-nine he shortage of material for future story of his medical examin fell under a tube train owing issues. But our readers should not H ation in the last war. It A to failing eyesight ... He lay, be discouraged from sending in off seems he went equipped with quiet and self-possessed, beat examples of verbal and visual an overcoat, an umbrella, a rug and beside the live rail while the train wit of the sort that the journal an air cushion, and was ushered into moved back and it was found that he might publish. Original material the presence of about 6 doctors and had only bruised a rib ... when he was must be explicitly labeled as that. given a chair. After making a low ninety-one, he fell out of a tree Material which is not original must bow, he proceeded to lay his um (he was pruning the branches) and clearly make note of its author and brella on the floor, took off his for a while he had to take to his source. Unsolicited material will greatcoat and arranged it over the bed, but a more humdrum accident not be returned unless it is accom chair back, put the rug on the seat proved the fatal one, a year later, panied by a self-addressed envelope and the air cushion on the rug--then when he tripped over a chair on the with adequate postage affixed. rose and faced the Board, who sent lawn. He survived quite a while Some up a universal shout of "Exempt". even then, though bedridden •.• and of the books mentioned in BALLAST are He then gathered his possessions to the first sign of his approaching currently available and can be ob gether in inverse order, made end was when my old aunts while un tained through a bookstore. Other another low bow, and departed a free dressing him removed a toe with his books are out of print, in which case man. socks. they may be ava ilable at used book stores and libraries. Edward Marsh, Ambrosia and Small Graham Greene, A Sort of Life (New Beer (New York: Harcourt Brace and York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), pp. Copyright c 1986 by Roy R. Behrens World, 1965), p. 301. 22-23.

2 gastritis emigration

Ladies and jellyspoons: ife's more important than a like much to lie with my head I come before you living. So many people who I very high. I think i t i s To stand behind you L make a living are making healthy to do so. At home I To tell you something death, not life. Don't ever always have a couple of pill- I know nothing about. Join them. They're the gravediggers ows, and if I am in a strange house, Last Thursday of our civilization--the safe men, the first thing I ask is whether I Which was Good Friday the compromis ers, the money-makers, can have a couple of pillows. I ask There will be a mothers' meeting the muddlers-through. it without the least ceremony, For fathers only. whether of gentlemen or of ladies. wear your best clothes James Hilton, Random Harvest (Bos When I was at Laird Heron's in Gall If you haven't any, ton : Little Brown, 1941). oway, I said to the lady of the And if you can come, house, "I beg you, Madam, let me Please stay at home. have your best bedroom and a couple Admission is free • of pillows." She could not grant me So pay at the door elect such subjects that your pupils cannot walk without my first request, but she saw to the Pull up a chair second. Likewise, when I was at the And sit on the floor. seeing them. Train your pu s pils to be observers, and Earl of Galloway's , my Lord Garlies It makes no diff erence was so polite as to show me to my Where you sit have them provided with the speci mens about which you speak. If you bedroom and say , "Mr. Bos we 11, you The man in the gallery · will have the goodness to mention it Is s ure to spit. can find nothing better, take a house-fly or a cricket, and let each if there is anything you lack." I We t hank you for your unkind walked very softly over and looked attention. hold a specimen and examine it as you talk. at the bed. "My Lord," said I, The next meeting will be held "there is nothing lacking but a At the four corners of the round couple of pillows, and I hope I table. Louis Agassiz, in Lane Cooper, ed., Louis Agassiz as a Teacher: Illus sWall have enough interest to pro trative Extracts on Hi s Method of cure theill." Sometimes I have for Nonsense verse, quoted i n Barbara gotten to ask for my pillows, or Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, editor, Speech Instruction (Ithaca, New York: Com stock Publishing, 1945), p. 82. have asked for them when it was too Play: Research and Resources f or t he late; when the housekeeper had gone Study of Linguist ic Cr eati vi t y (Phil to bed and had her keys in her adelphia: Uni ver sity of Pennsylvani a pocket carefully placed under her Press, 1976) , pp. 108-109. head. In such a case I have been extremely embarrassed. I have been at my wits' end. However, I have • always found some expedient. I have y mother was sitting by the sometimes put my c lothes and some window, about a yard away M times a cushion in place of the pi ll from the table. My sister ows. I would rather use a s t one than was at school and our maid in sleep without having my head well the kitchen . Suddenly there sound raised. ed a report l i ke a pistol shot. I j umped up and r ushed i nto the roan James Boswell, in Mark Harris, edi from which the noise of the explos tor, The Heart of Boswel l (New York: ion had come. My mother was sitting McGraw-Hill, 1981), pp. 102-103. flabbergasted in her armchair, the knitti ng fallen from her hands. She stammered out, "W-w-what's happened? • It was right besi de me:" and stared am convinced that the model at the table. Following her eyes, for most painters and artists I saw what had happened. The table I of our generation was the top had split from the rim to beyond comics. For artists who have the center, and not along any joint; grown up during the last fifty years, the split ran right through solid Above: An illustration from Karen copying the comics is almost the wood. I was thunderstruck. How equivalent of the Academy. could such a thing happen? ..• Some Fredericks, Modern Love, available frOJII Printed Matter, Inc., 7-9 Lis two weeks later I came home at six James McMullan, Reveal ing Ill us t ra o'clock in the evening and found the penard Street, New York, New York 10013, for $6. 95 plus- $1 postage and tions (New York: Watson-Guptill, household--my mother, my fourteen 1981), p. 10. year-old sister, and the maid--in a handling for first book, 50¢ each great state of agitation. About an book thereafter. Order #Al801X. hour earlier there had been another Other great titles by Fredericks • deafening report ..• In the cupboard include Girl Talk ($2.00, #B436 E), Mississippi said to Missouri containing the bread basket I found Shame ($1.50, #BB0023E), and Reme If I put on my New Jersey a loaf of bread, and, beside it, the brance of Smells Past ($2.00 , #B435 What will Delaware? bread knife. The greater part of El. Virginia said, Alaska. the blade had snapped off in several pieces. The handle lay in one corn Children's verse , quoted in Carl er of the rectangular basket, and in • Withers, A Rocket in My Pocket (New each of the other corners lay a York: Henry Holt, 1948), p. 193. piece of the blade. The knife had What's the difference between photo been used shortly before, at four graphers and the whooping cough? • o 'clock tea, and afterward put away. One makes facsimiles and the other What do you get when you cross a Since then no one had gone to the make sick families. mobster with a conceptual artist? sideboard. You get an offer you can't under What's the difference between a stand. C.G. Jung, MellK)ries, Dreams, Reflect church bell and a pickpocket? One ions (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962} peals from the steeple, and t 'he Suggested by Roger Holmes, a reader pp. 105-106. other steals from the people. from Woodbury, Connecticut.

3 leader

ohn Hoskyns, the Painter, uddenly there fell upon me being at Freshwater, to drawe without any warning, just as pictures, Mr Hooke observed if it came out of the dark- J what he did, and, thought he, s ness, a horrible fear of my Why cannot I doe so too? So he own existence. Simultaneously there gitts him Chalke, and Ruddle, and arose in my mind the image of an ep coale, and grinds them, and putts ileptic patient whom I had seen in them on a Trencher, gotta pencill, the asylum, a black-haired youth and to worke he went, and made a · with greenish skin, entirely idiotic, picture: then he copied (as they who used to sit all day on one of hung up in the parlour) the Pictures the benches, or rather shelves there, which he made like. against the wall, with his knees drawn up against his . chin, and the John Aubrey (describing Robert coarse gray undershirt, which was Hooke, 17th century experimental his only garment, drawn over them philosopher, whose portable drawing enclosing his entire figure. He sat mechanism , a hooded camera obscura, there like a sort of sculptured is illustrated below) in Oliver Egyptian cat or Peruvian mummy, mov Lawson Dick , editor, Aubrey's Brief ing nothing but his black eyes and looking absolutely non-human. This Lives (Middlesex , England: Penguin Above: Xerox of a specimen of a image and my fear entered into a Books, 1982), p . 242 . See also Cecropia moth (Hyalophora Cecropia), species of combination with each John H. Hammond, The Camera Obscura: largest moth in the United States, A Chronicle (Bristol, England: Adam other. That shape am I, I felt, po tentially. Nothing that I possess here reduced to 72\ of actual size. Hilger, 1981). At BALLAST, we have raised Cecropia can defend me against that fate, if moths for several years, along with the hour for it should strike for me Luna moths and Monarch butterflies. as it struck for him. There was such a horror of him, and such a See Paul Villiard, Moths and How To Rear Them (New York: Dover Publi perception of my own merely moment ary discrepancy from him, that it cations, 1975). For addresses of was as if something hitherto solid where to buy eggs or cocoons, ask within my breast gave way entirely, BALLAST. and I became a mass of quivering fear. • none of these Sunday excurs- William James (describing his emo ions when I went along I tional breakdown, disguised as the 0 remember that we amused our statement of an anonymous French selves during the long black correspondent), The Varieties of blowy subway ride by playing the Religious Experience (New York: metaphor game: by turns each des Collier Books, 1961), p. 138. cribing an inanimate object in such a way as to portray without naming a public figure. Jim developed a • second-hand flute into Leslie Howard, Shirley Oneple, and a Grand Rapids easy chair into Shirley Twople, Carl Sandburg. Shirley Threeple, Shirley Fourple, Robert Fitzgerald (recalling the Shirley Fiveple, writer James Agee), ed., The Collect Shirley Sixple, ed Short Prose of James Agee (New Shirley Sevenple, York: Ballantine Books, 1970), p. 23. Shirley Eightple, he whole secret lies in Shirley Nineple, • arbitrariness. People usu Shirley Tenple. e (Paul Klee) was, she says, T ally think it easy to be aloof and unapproachable, arbitrary, but it requires Children's game verse, recorded in "like St. Christopher carry much study to succeed in being ar Edinburgh, England, circa 1940. H ing the weight of the world bitrary so as not to lose oneself in on his shoulders," but she saw his it, but so as to derive satisfaction work and loved it. Every six months from it. One does not enjoy the • or so his recent watercolors were immediate, but rather something ogic exists in the mind. shown on the walls of a corridor at which he can arbitrarily control. Numbers exist only in the the Bauhaus; Anni admired them tre You go to see the middle of a play, L mind. I don't get upset when mendously and bought one. She also you read the third part of a book. scientists say that ghosts had a chance to participate in a By this means you insure yourself a exist in the mind. It's that only birthday celebration held for Klee very different kind of enjoyment that gets me. Science is only in on his fiftieth birthday, in 1929. from that which the author has been your mind too, it's just that that Three students in the Dessau weaving so kind as to plan for you. You en doesn't make it bad ... Laws of nature workshop hired a small plane from joy something entirely accidental; are hlllllan inventions, like ghosts. the nearby Junkers aircraft plant so you consider the whole of existence Laws of logic, of mathematics are they could have this mystical, from this standpoint; let reality be also human inventions, like ghosts. other-worldly man's birthday pre stranded thereon. The whole blessed thing is a human sents descend to him from above. invention, including the idea that Soren Kierkegaard in "The Rotation it i sn't a human invention. Nicholas Fox Weber, "Anni Albers to Method" in Robert Bretall, ed. , A Date" in the catalog, The Woven and Kierkegaard Anthology (New York: The Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Graphic Art of Anni Albers (Washing liodern Library, Random House, 1959), Motorcycle Maintenance (New York: ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute, pp. 31-32. Bantam Books, 1974), p. 34. 1985), p. 19.

4 oscillatory jujube

e didn't any longer want to Humpty Dump Dublin squeaks through Do you carrot all for me? fool the eye, we wanted to his norse; My heart beets for you. W fool the mind. The sheet ot Humpty Dump Dublin hath a horrible With your turnip nose newspaper was never used in verse; And your radish face order to make a newspaper. It was But for all his kinks English, plus You are a peach. used to become a bottle or something his irismanx brogues If we cantaloupe like that. It was never used liter Humpty Dump Dublin's grandada of all Lettuce marry ally but always as an element dis rogues. Weed make a swell pear. placed from its habitual meaning in to another meaning to produce a James Joyce, quoted by Anthony Children's verse, quoted in Carl shock between the usual definition Burgess in Joysprick (New York: Har Withers, A Rocket in Hy Pocket (New at the point ot departure and its court Brace, 1973), p. 136. York: Henry Holt, 1948), p. 193. new definition at the point ot arri val. If a piece of newspaper can become a bottle, that gives us some thing to think about in connection with both newspapers and bottles, • too. This displaced object has en l tered a universe for which it was ' not made and where it retains, in a measure, its strangeness. And this strangeness was what we wanted to make people think about because we were quite aware that our world was becoming very strange and not exact ly reassuring.

Pablo Picasso, quoted by Francoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life With Picasso (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 77.

Above: Haircuts of young Native American males of the Osage and Omaha • nations were indications of the plant or animal clan with which they were everal players are seated in associated. For example, the first haircut from the left on the top row a circle. The leader takes was analogous to the head and tail of an elk, while the second from the a pair of scissors in his right on the bottom row was emblematic of the teeth of a reptile. See s hand, crosses his legs unob F. La Flesche, "The Osage Child-Naming Rite" in 43rd Annual Report o f the trusively, and says, "I received Bureau of American Ethnology 1925-1926 (Washington, D.C., 1928). them crossed and I pass them uncrossed." As he repeats the words "I pass them uncrossed," he uncros or Burt, particularly during What's the difference between a ses his legs, and hands the scissors F his years of retirement, boxer and a person with the common to the player nearest hiDI . The letter writing was an extrem cold? One knows his blows, and the scissors pass clear around the cir ly important channel of cC1111- other blows his nose. cle, and the joke is to see how many munication ... At a rough estimate he of the players fail to cross and would write something approaching What is the difference among the son uncross the legs. 1500 letters a year. A great many of a king, the wc thar vf a monkey , of these would be in his own beau a bald head, and an orphan? The son A game observed in Arkansas, des tifully legible handwriting and no of a king is an heir apparent; the cribed in Paul G. Brewster, American copies would be kept. Important mother of a monkey is a hairy parent; Nonsinging Games (Norman: University letters were typed, and copies filed. a bald head has no hair apparent; of Oklahoma Press, 1953), p. 124. From 1958 onwards the files are sys and an orphan has nary a parent. tematic and full. Burt was a fluent letter writer, and many of his let ters were of extraordinary length, • at times amounting to a dozen, or even twenty, pages. The time he de Come smoke a coca cola, voted to correspondence must have Drink catsup cigarettes been prodigious. See Lillian Brussels wrestle With a box of castanets. L.S. Hearnshaw (describing the per Pork and beans will meet tonight sonal habits of the British psychol And have a finished fight ogist, Sir Cyril Burt), Cyril Burt, Chauncey de Pew will lecture on Psychologist (Ithaca, New York: Sopolio tonight Cornell University Press, 1979), p. Bay rum is good for horses 199. It is the best in town Castoria cures the measles If you pay five dollars down Teeth extracted without pain • At the cost of half a dime Want a collapsible butterfly net? overcoats are selling now How about a copy of the definitive A little out of time study of The Nesting Behavior of Do me a favor--drop dead. Dung Beetles? Or (as pictured on the left) an affordable stereo Children's verse, quoted in Florence microscope? Write for a fr.ee cata Maryott, "Nebraska Counting out log from BioQuip Products, P.O. Box Rhymes" in Southern Folklore Quart 61, Santa Monica, California 90406. erly 1(1936), pp. 58-59.

5 impugnable trapshooting

nd how war yore maggies? ames's behavior in the class ne Daniel Healy, of Donagh Answer: They war loving, they room was energetic and uncon more, in Ireland, having A love laughing, they laugh ventional. In his enthusiasm three different times dreamed weeping, they weep smelling, J or his absorption in a prob 0 that Money lay concealed they smell smiling, they smile hat lem, he would assume unorthodox under a large Stone in a field near ing, they hate thinking, they think positions , sometimes sprawling on where he lived, procured some Work feeling, they feel tempting, they the floor to scribble on a hand-held men to assist him in removing it, tempt daring, they dare waiting, blackboard. In his brown tweeds, and when they had dug ~ar as the they wait taking, they take thank students thought he looked "more foundation, it fell suddenly and ing, they thank seeking, as born for like a sportsman than a professor." killed Healy on the spot. lorn in lore of love to live and Others felt that he acted like a wive by wile and rile by rule of "nervous thoroughbred," fidgeting, John Aubrey, Aubrey's Brief Lives ruse 'reathed rose and hose hol'd active, high-spirited. · Even those (Middlesex , England: Penguin Books, home, yeth cometh elope year, coach who found James's philosophy and 1982), p . 59. and four, Sweet Peck-at-my-Heart classroom techniques wanting were picks one man more. prepared to admit that he was always • "throwing off sparks." In his pri ct. 12, F., a handsome maid James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (New vate life he suffered from bouts of living in Catstreet, being York: Viking Press, 1959), pp. 142- morbid sensitivity, but in class he 0 deeply in love with Joseph 143. displayed an inveterate sense of Godwin, a junior fellow of humor, so that students frequently New Coll., poyson'd herself with • addressed him with, "But, Doctor, to rats-bane. This is mention'd be ometimes he would with great be serious for a moment.u cause it made a great wonder that a earnestness place his feet in maid should be in love with such a a particular pos,ition, some James R. Mellow (in his description person as he, who had a curl'd shag s times making his heels to of William James), Charmed Circle: pate, was squint-ey'd and purblind, touch, sometimes his toes, as if he Gertrude Stein & Company (New York: and much deform'd with the small was endeavouring to form a triangle, Avon Books, 1975), pp . 46-47. pox. at least the two sides of one, and after having finished he would beat Anthony Wood (17th century Oxford his sides, or the skirts of his • antiquary), The Life and Times o f coat, repeatedly with his hands, as Anthony a Wood (London: Oxford Uni if for joy that he had one his duty, HELENE- I THINK THl5 versity Press, 1961), p. 71. and what was extraordinary, after he had quitted the place, particularly '/)!ET/NG THING" H-45 GONE at the entrance of a door, he would ~..,.~FAR ENOUGH .' • return to the same spot, evidently, ell, sir, we left New York I thought, from a scruple of con drunk and early on the morn science, and perform it all over W ing of February second. again. After fifteen days on the water and six on the boat, we fin Frances Reynolds, sister of Sir ally arrived on the shores of Africa. Joshua Reynolds (describing the pe The first morning saw us up at six, culiar gesticulations of the 18th breakfasted and back in bed at seven. century genius Samuel Johnson), as This was our routine for the first quoted in James L. Clifford, Diction three months. We finally got so we ary Johnson: Samuel Johnson's Middle were in bed at six thirty. The Years (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), principal animals inhabiting the p. 281. African jungle are moose, elks and Knights of Pythias. Of course, you • know what a moose is. That's big layers are divided into two game. The first day, I shot two groups approximately equal in bucks. That was the biggest game we P number. One group goes to had ... The elks, on the other hand, one side of a building, the Above: An illustration from Lynda live up in the hills, and in the other to the opposite side. A play J. Barry, Girls & Boys (Seattle: spring they come down for their an er on one side throws the ball over The Real Comet Press, 1981), avail nual convention. It is very inter the building, calling as he throws able from Printed Matter, Inc., 7-9 esting to see them come to the water it, "Anthony over!" (usually cor Lispenard Street, New York, New hole. What they're looking for is York 10013, for $5.95 plus $1 post rupted into "Handy over!" or "Anty an elkahole. One morning I shot an over!"). Those on the other side age and handling for first book, elephant in my pajamas. How he got are on the lookout for the ball and 50¢ each book thereafter. Order in my pajamas, I don 't know. Then #Al572E. try to catch it. If the ball is not we tried to remove the tusks, but caught, someone on the opposite side they were embedded in so firmly that then throws it back over, with the • we couldn't budge them. Of course, same cry. If the ball is caught, is wit was usually agressive. in Alabama, the TUskaloosa. But however, the player who caught it Sometimes he chose the rap that's entirely irrelephant to what runs around to the other side of the H ier. Lady Astor neither gave I was talking about. We took some building and tries to hit one of the nor asked for quarter, and pictures of the native girls, but they players of the second group. The she got none from him. At a dinner weren't developed, but we're going player hit must then join the side party she told him: "Winston, if I back in a couple of weeks. of the one who hit him. The game were your wife I'd poison your soup." continues until all those of one side He replied, "Nancy, if I were your Groucho Marx (in the role of Captain have been hit. husband, I'd drink it." Jeffery Spaulding) in the 1930 Para mount film Animal Crackers, as trans A game observed in Kansas, described William Manchester, The Last Lion, cribed in P.D. Zimmerman and B. Gold in Paul G. Brewster, American Non Winston Spencer Churchill (Boston: blatt, The Marx Brothers at the singing Games (Norman: University of Little Brown and Company, 1983), p. Movies (New York: New American Lib Oklahoma Press, 1953), p. 84. 34. rary, 1970).

6 atrophic dragon

What's the difference between a hen a real inspirational What's the difference between a lazy jailer and a jeweller? One watches storm strikes, as it did student and a fisherman? One hates cells and the other sells watches. W Rilke, it strikes not John his books, while the other baits his Jerk but a genius; it is as hooks. What's the difference between a ball prepared for as a blitzkrieg; and it and a prince? One is thrown in the is the summation of a lifetime of What's the difference between a cat air and the other is heir to the commitment and calculation. If we and a comma? One has its claws at throne. think it odd the gods should always the end of its paws, while the other choose a voice so full and glorious has its pause at the end of a clause. What's the difference between a big ly throated, when they could presum storm cloud and a lion with a tooth ably toot through any instrument, we What's the difference between a ache? One pours with rain while the should remember that it is their riddle and two elephants sitting on other roars with pain. choice of such a golden throat, each a hamburger? One is a conundrum, time, that makes them gods. while the other is a bun under 'em.

William H. Gass, "The Soul Inside What's the difference between an RECOMMENDED the Sentence" in Habitations of the irate circus manager and a Roman • Word (New York: Simon and Schuster, barber? One is a raving showman, l 1984), p. 117. while the other is a shaving Roman. I John Allen Paulos, I Think, • • Therefore I La ugh: An Alternative his issue of BALLAST is post Approach to Philosophy (New York: humously dedicated to the Columbia University Press, 1985). T Reverend William Archibald Spooner, who was the Warden Charles Harrison and Fred Orton, of New College in Oxford from 1903 eds., Modernism, Criticism, Realism: to 1924. During his lifetime, he Alternative Contexts for Art (New became associated with metaphasis, York: Harper and Row, 1984). See the accidental transposition of especially their portrait of Lenin, sounds in spoken language, as when in the style of Jackson Pollack. one intends to s ay "Let me show you to your seat" but says instead "Let Michael Baxandall, Patterns of me sew you to your sheet." This Intention: On the Historical Explan type of mistake is commonly called ation of Pictures (New Haven, CT: a spoonerism. Supposedly, Reverend Yale University Press, 1985). Spooner made many errors of this kind. He was, for example, reported Edward R. Tufte, The Visual Display to say "A well-boiled icicle" in of Quantitative Information (Chesire, place of "A well-oiled bicycle." Or CT: Graphics Press, 1983). "I have in my bosom a half-warmed fish" for "I have in my bosom a half Bauhaus Photography (Cambridge, MA: formed wish." Or (in scolding a MIT Press, 1985). student) "You have hissed my mystery lectures, and you have tast Jonathan Miller, States of Mind (New ed a whole worm" instead of "You York: Pantheon Books, 1983). have missed my history lectures, and you have wasted a whole term." To Elliott Oring , The Jokes of Sigmund find out more of Spooner's life (for Freud: A Study in Humor and Jewish example, that he was an albino), see Identity (Philadelphia: University William Hayter, Spooner: A Biography of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), par (London: W.H. Allen, 1977). A hand ticularly the illustration on the ful of photographs accompany the dust jacket. Reverend & Mrs. William A. Spooner text, including a double portrait (reproduced here) of the Reverend Leonard zusne and Warren H. Jones, and Mrs. Spooner. See also the sec Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of none bar, I remember, I was tion on spoonerisms in Tony Augarde, Extraordinary Phenomena of Behavior dancing with a handsome and The Ox ford Guide to Word Games (Ox and Experience (Hillsdale, NJ: Law I unusually well-built girl, ford, England: Oxford University rence Erlbaum, 1982). who asked me, 'Kohi shimas' ka?'--Shall we make coffee? Her Press, 1984), pp. 172-177. D. Lamb and S.M. Easton, Multiple intention was so patently goodheart Discovery: The Pattern of Scientific ed that I was quite moved, and went Progress (England: Avebury Press, to some trouble to explain that, • 1984), including sections on acci much as I liked the stuff during the dental discovery, and originality in day, I found that I couldn't sleep ell Serret that I should be art and science. after it in the evening ... 'So?' she desperate if my figures were responded sympathetically, and we T correct, ell him that I do Bevis Hillier, The Style of the Cen continued to dance. Fondly recall not want them to be correct. tury 1900-1980 (London: Herbert ing the girl's considerateness the ... Tell him that my great longing is Press, 1983) . next morning, it suddenly struck me to learn to make these very incor that it was not kohi she had pro rectnesses, those deviations, remod posed to make, but koi, a word elings, changes in reality, so that rather similar in pronunciation but they may become, yes, lies if you • having the meaning of 'love between like--but truer than the literal man and woman' . truth. What's the difference between an oak tree and a tight shoe? One D.J. Enright, Memoirs of a ·Mendicant Vincent Van Gogh, Complete Letters makes acorns, and the other makes Professor (London: Chatto & Windus, (Greenwich, Conn . : New York Graphic corns ache. 1969), p. 18. Society, 1958) .

7 mystery nasalization

n 1847 I gave an address at .•• as he went further into old age, ne evening we were reading Newt on, Massachuset t s , before his health grew increa singly fra Othello, with the capta in of a Teachers' Institute con gile. It was l ike an old suit, he 0 Oppidans taking the title I ducted by Horace Mann . My wrote--as s oon a s one hole got patch part. When he was accusing subject was grasshoppers. I passed ed up , i t s pr ang anothe r hole in Desdemona of her unfaithfulness, a around a large jar of these i nsects , another place. sur prising modesty overtook him, and and made every teacher take one and instead of bursting out with "You hold it while I was speaki ng. If Ruth Suckow, A Memoir (New York: have played the strumpet in my bed," any one dropped the insect, I Rinehart and Company, 1952) , pp. 84- he rather hesitatingly mumbl ed: stopped till he picked it up. Thi s 85. "You have playe d the . • . trumpet in my was at that time a great innovati on, bed " upon which the Shakespeare s ocie ty di ssolved in explosive and excited much laughter and de ~ •• • ,Z I .. --~I" ~ • ~~ • ~ ;,.; rision. There can be no true pro -~ . l aughter. - . ~ ' , . gress in the teaching of natural J ulian Huxley , Memories (London: science until such methods become George Allen and Unwin , 1970) , p . general. MENCKEN 49. Louis Agassiz, in Lane Cooper, ed., Louis Agassi z as a Teacher : Illus GATHERED BY ALISTAIR COOKE • trati ve Extracts on His Method of s ergeant was lect uring on Instructi on (Ithaca, New York: Com shi p building, and began by stock Publishing, 1945), p. 82. A saying t hat two t rees were mos t ly used , t he Hoak (voi ce from t he class ) Isn't it Oak, sir? know a man •who, when I ask Ser gean t . The Hoak and t he Helm. him what he knows, fetches Voice . Isn't i t Elm, s ir? me a book to show me. He Sergeant . The Hoak and the Helm. I These trees are also used in making cannot so much as tell me he has piles in his behind until he Piles f or Pi ers, by which I do not first looks up in his dictionary the mean Hemorrhoi ds for Hari stocrats meaning of "piles" and "behind." like that young #\: @¢ i n the corner.

Michel de Montaigne (Renaissance Edward Marsh, Ambrosia and Small essayist) in Marvin Lowenthal, ed., Beer (New Yor k : Harcour t Brace and The Autobiography of Michel de World, 1965), pp. 268-269 . Montaigne (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1935). ome Cow-stealers• will make a hole in a hott loafe newly • s drawne out of the oven, and Lulu had a steamboat put i t on an Oxes-horn for a The steamboat had a bell convenient t ime, and then they can Lulu went to heaven turn their soft ened hornes the con The steamboat went to trary way: So the owner cannot Hello, operator, give me number nine sweare to hi s own beast. Not long If you disconnect me, bef ore the King's restauration, a I'll kick you in the fellow was hang'd at Tyburn for this Behind the refrigerator Trick, and sayd, that he had never Lies a broken glass ooking over the whole range come thither, if he had not heard Lulu fell .down L of his work today, we can see this Trick spoken of in a Sermon. And broke her big fat that if he was overrated in Thought he, I will try this Trick. Ask me no more questions, his day as a thinker, he was I'll tell you no more lies, vastly underrated as a humorist with John Aubrey, Aubrey's Bri ef Lives That's what Lulu told me one deadly sensible eye on the be (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, Just before she died. havior of the human animal. He 1982), p. 33. helped along this misconception by Children's rhyme, recorded May 1976 constantly reminding people that he • in Baltimore, Maryland, quoted in was a critic of ideas, which was y whole work from a career Susan Stewart, Nonsense: Aspects of true only as the ideas were made point of view has been to try Intertextuali t y in Folklore and Lit flesh. He was, in fact, a humorist M t o abandon what I knew how to erature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins by instinct and a superb craftsman do. I started out doing University Press, 19791, p. 105. by temperament. So that when all humorous illustrations, then doing his private admirations were aped more serious illustrations, then I and exhausted, there emerged the became more interested i n design, • style of H.L. Mencken, purified and then I became a magazine designer, do not know in what year, a mellowed in later years, a style then I suddenly found myself doing cow chased me across the flexible, fancy-free, ribald, and interiors; now I am designing. super I barnyard and would have had always beautifully lucid: a native markets and play parks f or children me on her horns had not my product unlike any other style in and new petrol stations and so on. father run to close a gate between the language. And I always realized that if you us ... The next day my father shut the are lucky, you can abandon your own cow into a stall and sawed off her Alistair Cooke, regarding the Amer mastery . Learn how something is horns; I witnessed the operation, ican editor, essayist, and critic done and do it well, and then move and learned for the first time that Henry Louis Mencken, in his intro on to something else. horns are full of blood. duction to The Vintage Hencken (New York : Vintage Books, 1955), the Milton Glaser, "I Listen to the Mark Van Doren, The Autobiography cover of which is reprinted above. Market" in Marshall Blonsky, ed., of Mark Van Doren (New York: Green On Si gns (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins wood Press, 1968), pp. 7-8. Universi t y Press, 1985), p. 468.

8 June 1986