Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Dwight Macdonald. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Dwight Macdonald. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, August 24, 2012

FFB: THE STUFFED OWL, edited by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee (1930); PARODIES edited by Dwight Macdonald (1960)


Two volumes which I enjoyed in part in my earlier years, and which somewhat disappointed, (again) in part because I, unlike many for whom these books were uniformly delightful, had not always been willing (nor forced) to endure some of the targets of the parody, intentional and unintentional, of the work collected in them. Of course, none of the work collected in The Stuffed Owl was meant to be parody; Lewis and Lee simply ranged across the canon of major and near-major poets in English as it was widely understood in 1930 and chose the most purple and self-sabotaging examples they could find from the likes of Wordsworth and Poe, never afraid to go to ridiculous extremes, and others more tone-deaf, while avoiding, for the most part, the more minor and unheralded poets of the previous centuries. While it's difficult to defend much collected here, in what might well be a pioneering volume of its sort, the book taken in large doses at once is more than a little deadening; the worst examples of fustian from experts in fustian are simply well-refined fustian...but taken a bit at a time, the desired effect, of giving perspective to the enshrinement of these artists as unimpeachable (a ridiculous insistence felt much more sharply in 1930 than now, I suspect) is more thoroughly demonstrated.

Likewise, Dwight Macdonald's compilation was brighter for me in many spots than in others, not least the presumption that he should include untranslated material in French (at least untranslated Cervantes I could make a stab at, but surely few cultured Anglophones could be expected to know Spanish, much less the Castilian of his time, and all such people have a working reading knowledge of French!). But it did send me out after the balance of Max Beerbohm's A Christmas Garland, and was my first encounter with the entirety of Wolcott Gibbs's "TIME . . . FORTUNE . . . LIFE . . . LUCE" as opposed to a few choice lines ("Backwards ran sentences until reeled the mind" mostly). And it's a bug crusher, if not quite to the same extent of the more-eclectic if similarly hit-and-miss The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose edited by Frank Muir, so some material is simply more likely to be effective than other inclusions for almost any reader. It probably helped, in comparison, that Bennett Cerf "crowd-sourced" his choices for his YA anthology I recalled the other week, quizzing his kids and their friends and others for suggestions, at least in terms of making for a more satisfying reading experience, as well as perhaps oddly a more consistently interesting one, for the much younger me (and, I suspect, for many other readers) than either of these two more ambitious and many ways pioneering anthologies did for me as an adult. These books are rewarding, as well as monuments in their fields, but simply not as thoroughly delightful as one could hope...and while that's probably not why both are in a sort of shadowy in-print status (since this weekly exercise is all about books of some interest to utter brilliance that face such fates--the Cerf is utterly out of print, the Muir is similarly barely in print after initial publication in 1990...clearly, round number years are ripe for such volumes), it does help them both be more admired than loved.

For more of today's selections, please see Patti Abbott's blog. Barring a pre-emptive hurricane or somesuch, I will be the likely gatherer of links to others' reviews and citations next Friday. ("Be there. Aloha." as Jack Lord would peremptorily intone at the end of the teasers for the next week's episode of the original Hawaii Five-0.)


Table of Contents (courtesy of Modern Library.com)

Parodies: An Anthology From Chaucer to Beerbohm—-and After

Table of Contents

Edited by Dwight MacDonald
Preface by Dwight MacDonald

PART ONE: THE BEGINNINGS
After by
MEDIEVAL ROMANCES Geoffrey Chaucer
GEOFFREY CHAUCER Alexander Pope
GEOFFREY CHAUCER W. W. Skeat
JOHN LYLY William Shakespeare
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE William Shakespeare
THOMAS NASHE William Shakespeare
JOHN DONNE Sir John Suckling
GEORGE HERBERT Christopher Hervey
JOHN DRYDEN George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham
ROBERT BOYLE Jonathan Swift
AMBROSE PHILIPS Henry Carey
JOHN MILTON John Philips
ALEXANDER POPE Isaac Hawkins Browne
JONATHAN SWIFT Isaac Hawkins Browne
ROBERT SOUTHEY G. Canning and J. H. Frere
THE SENTIMENTAL NOVEL Jane Austen

PART TWO: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
After by
GEORGE CRABBE James Smith
WILLIAM COBBETT James Smith
ROBERT BURNS Shirley Brooks
ROBERT BURNS James Clerk-Maxwell
LORD BYRON Thomas Love Peacock
LORD BYRON J. K. Stephen
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH J. K. Stephen
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Smith
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH John Keats
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Catherine Fanshawe
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH James Hogg
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH John Hamilton Reynolds
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Lord Byron
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Walter Savage Landor
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH Hartley Coleridge
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER Bret Harte
EDGAR ALLAN POE Anonymous
EDGAR ALLAN POE Bayard Taylor
EDGAR ALLAN POE Thomas Hood, the Younger
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW Anonymous
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW J. W. Morris
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW George A. Strong
FREDERICK LOCKER-LAMPSON H. D. Traill
EDWARD LEAR Samuel Foote
CHARLES DICKENS Robert Benchley
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON William Aytoun
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON Algernon Charles Swinburne
ROBERT BROWNING J. K. Stephen
ROBERT BROWNING Bayard Taylor
ROBERT BROWNING Anonymous
ROBERT BROWNING H. D. Traill
ROBERT BROWNING C. S. Calverley
ROBERT BROWNING J. K. Stephen
EMILY DICKINSON Firman Houghton
WILLIAM MORRIS C. S. Calverley
WILLIAM MORRIS Anonymous
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI A. C. Hilton
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI H. D. Traill
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Mortimer Collins
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE A. C. Hilton
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Richard Le Gallienne
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Lewis Carroll
WALT WHITMAN J. K. Stephen
WALT WHITMAN Bayard Taylor
WALT WHITMAN E. B. White
HENRY JAMES Max Beerbohm
GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS Anthony Brode
RUDYARD KIPLING Guy Wetmore Carryl
RUDYARD KIPLING J. K. Stephen

PART THREE: BEERBOHM--AND AFTER

SOME LEAVES FROM MAX BEERBOHM'S A Christmas Garland
P.C., X, 36 ….............………... R*DY*RD K*PL*NG
Endeavour ..............…………. .JOHN G*LSW*RTHY
A Sequelula to The Dynasts…..TH*M*'S H*RDY
Scruts …………...................... ARN*LD B*NN*TT
Perkins and Mankind ....……...H. G. W*LLS
A Recollection ....………........ EDM*ND G*SSE
PLUS THREE TWIGS:
The Sorrows of Millicent …………….. M*R*E C*R*LLI
The Blessedness of Apple-Pie Beds ..... R*CH*RD L* G*LL*"NNE
The Defossilized Plum-Pudding ........... H. G.W*LLS

Post-Beerbohm:
after by
A. E. HOUSMAN Humbert Wolfe
WALTER DE LA MARE Samuel Hofjenstein
GERTRUDE STEIN Arthur Flegenheimer
THEODORE DREISER Robert Benchley
MENCKEN and NATHAN Robert Benchley
T. S. ELIOT Henry Reed
T. S. ELIOT "Myra Buttle"
ARCHIBALD MACLEISH Edmund Wilson
EZRA POUND Gilbert Highet
ROBERT FROST Firman Houghton
ALDOUS HUXLEY Cyril Connolly
J. P. MARQUAND Wolcott Gibbs
WILLIAM FAULKNER Peter De Vries
ERNEST HEMINGWAY Wolcott Gibbs
ERNEST HEMINGWAY E. B. White
THORNTON WILDER Kenneth Tynan
JAMES GOULD COZZENS Nathaniel Benchley
JAMES GOULD COZZENS Felicia Lamport
JAMES JONES Peter De Vries
JACK KEROUAC John Updike
ALLEN GINSBERG Louis Simpson

PART FOUR: SPECIALTIES
The NONSENSE POEMS IN THE Alice BOOKS, by Lewis Carroll;
with the Originals by Dr. Watts and Other Hands
SOME UNRELIABLE HISTORY, by Maurice Baring
THE REHEARSAL
JASON AND MEDEA
KING LEAR'S DAUGHTER
FROM THE DIARY OF MRS. JOHN MILTON
FRAGMENT OF A GREEK TRAGEDY, by A. E. HOUSEMAN
VARIATIONS ON A THEME
SALAD, by Mortimer Collins
THE POETS AT TEA, by Barry Pain
VARIATIONS OF AN AIR, by G. K. Chesterton
THAT ENGLISH WEATHER, by Ezra Pound and Anon
REVIEWS OF UNWRITTEN BOOKS, by "Baron Corvo" and/or Sholto Douglas
MACHIAVELLI'S DESPATCHES FROM THE BOER WAR
TACITUS'S Scripturae de Populis Consociatis Americae Septentrionalis
TIME . . . FORTUNE . . . LIFE . . . LUCE, by Wolcott Gibbs
The Literary Life on the TIMES
LITERARY LOST & FOUND DEPT., by Robert Benchley
SPEAKING OF BOOKS, by Donald Malcolm
ALF STRINGERSOLL'S REPORT ON BROOKLYN, by William Atwood
W. B. Scott:
CHICAGO LETTER: Agony, a Sense of Plight
GAETAN FIGNOLE: Pages de Journal
Cyril Connolly:
WHAT WILL HE DO NEXT?
YEAR NINE
Paul Jennings:
THE BOY'S GOT TALENT
RESISTENTIALISM
PRIMITIVISM—ENGLISH: from Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
PRIMITIVISM—AMERICAN: from Torrents of Spring, by Ernest Hemingway
SOME EXCURSIONS INTO THE VERNACULAR
A BALLAD UPON A WEDDING, by Sir John Suckling
THE HUMBLE PETITION OF FRANCES HARRIS, by Jonathan Swift
GRANDFATHER'S OLD RAM, by Mark Twain
MUSEUM TOUR, by James Joyce
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE IN AMERICAN, by H. L. Mencken
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS IN EISENHOWESE, by Oliver Jensen
THE WEST POINT ADDRESS, by Dwight David Eisenhower
INAUGURAL ADDRESS, by Warren G. Harding
THE AVANTGARDE VERNACULAR: by S. J. Perelman

SELF-PARODIES: Conscious
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Max Beerhohm
William Faulkner

SELF-PARODIES: Unconscious
Richard Crashaw
Abraham Cowley
Samuel Johnson
Edward Gibbon
George Crabbe
Lord Byron
Edgar Allan Poe
Percy Bysshe Shelley
William Wordsworth
Robert Browning
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Charles Dickens
Walt Whitman
Rudyard Kipling

SCIENTIFICATION (i): The Parameters of Social Movement, a Formal Paradigm,
by Daniel Bell
SCIENTIFICATION (ii): Struwwelpeter, a psychoanalytical interpretation
by Dr. Rudolph Friedmann

UN PEU DE FRANCAIS:
L'AFFAIRE LEMOINE, par Marcel Proust
Apres Balzac
Apres Flaubert
Apres Michelet
EXERCICES DE STYLE, par Raymond Queneau

THE OXEN OF THE SUN PARODIES, by James Joyce
THREE NONSENSE PLAYS, by Ring Lardner
Dinner Bridge
Clemo Uti (The Water Lilies)
I Gaspiri {The Upholsterers)

APPENDIX: SOME NOTES ON PARODY, by Dwight Macdonald
INDEX


Related link: Seriously Funny edited by Gerald Nachman
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Thursday, April 16, 2009

Friday's "Forgotten" Books: NELSON ALGREN'S OWN BOOK OF LONESOME MONSTERS (also published as 13 MASTERPIECES OF BLACK HUMOR)




From the Contento Index:

Nelson Algren’s Own Book of Lonesome Monsters ed. Nelson Algren (Lancer 73-409, 1962, 60¢, 192pp, pb)

7 · Preface · Nelson Algren · pr
11 · A World Full of Great Cities · Joseph Heller · ss Great Tales of City Dwellers, ed. Alex Austin, Lion Library Editions, 1955
24 · Talk to Me, Talk to Me · Joan Kerckhoff · ss, 1962
34 · Show Biz Connections · Bruce Jay Friedman · ss, 1962
44 · Hundred Dollar Eyes · Bernard Farbar · ss, 1962
54 · The Man Who Knew What Ethopia Should Do About Her Water Table · H. E. F. Donohue · ss The Carleton Miscellany, 1961
68 · Among the Dangs · George P. Elliott · nv Esquire Jun ’58
95 · Peacetime · Brock Brower · ss, 1961
111 · The Shores of Schizophrenia · Hughes Rudd · ss, 1961
120 · Day of the Alligator · James Blake · ss The Paris Review #17 ’57
136 · Address of Gooley MacDowell to the Hasbeens Club of Chicago · Saul Bellow · ss The Hudson Review, 1951
143 · The Closing of This Door Must Be Oh, So Gentle · Chandler Brossard · ss The Dial, 1962
157 · Entropy · Thomas Pynchon · ss The Kenyon Review Spr ’60
173 · The House of the Hundred Grassfires · Nelson Algren · ss, 1956

So, you want to talk noir...if there's a concept in "darkness" that can be as argued about and misconstrued as noir, it's probably "black humor." Grotesquerie, biting satire, modest proposals. This book is a handsome sample of what was available in 1962, assembled by the writer best remembered for The Man with the Golden Arm, but who should be remembered for a much wider range of work, including the story that he immodestly caps this anthology with. As with Joe David Bellamy's SuperFiction from a decade later or Dwight Macdonald's fat Parodies from a couple of years before, this has been a widely-distributed anthology touching on the fantastic and the grimly realistic, surfiction and some stuff that at least verges on metafiction. Saul Bellow, not usually thought of as a comic writer (though his wit was just one of his many facets) delivers what might be the slightest and lightest piece here; Hughes Rudd, in the 1970s the acerbic anchor of the CBS Morning News (which was actually more or less a news program, imagine) gives him a run for that laurel (any joking aside, CBS News had several fictioneers on staff in those years, including Reid Collins on the radio side). George Elliott's "Among the Dangs" is straight-up science fiction enough to have been reprinted in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction before its appearance here, and Pynchon's "Entropy" might've been squeezed in without too much forcing the issue. The Heller is from a fine, pioneering Lion Books all-originals paperback anthology, and Joan Kerchoff probably shouldn't be the only woman to be represented in the book (how many Dororthy Parkers did he pass by? No Mary McCarthy?), but it's a solid, grimly funny read (and not only grimly funny) under either of the titles Lancer Books, that ultimately doomed publisher, chose to reissue it (Bernard Geis Associates did the hardcover, which I've never seen). Somebody else should; it's been gone too long.

Please Patti Abbott's blog for more "Forgotten" books for this Friday.
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Friday, January 24, 2014

FFB: Helen Hoke, Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis, Michel Parry, Hugh Lamb and Some Other anthologists of my early reading...

While I've written a fair amount about magazine editors, and such (and sometimes Also*) anthology editors as Robert Arthur* and Barry Malzberg*, Ellen Datlow* and Jerome Charyn, Betty M. Owen and Dwight Macdonald*, Bill Pronzini and Joe Lansdale, Gerald W. Page* and Nelson Algren, Henry Mazzeo and Judith Merril, Jessica Amanda Salmonson* and Harold Q. Masur, Marcia Muller and Ann VanderMeer*, Harlan Ellison* and Robert Silverberg, I haven't yet touched much or at all upon at least five anthologists important to my early reading: Helen Hoke, (Ms. and Ms.) Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis (names that are hard to forget), Michel Parry, and Hugh Lamb--all of whom contributed to the enjoyment of horror and suspense fiction, and more. 

 Helen Hoke might've been the most prolific producer of anthologies, particularly for young readers, among this handful, but not by much. She did have a long (and trans-Atlantic) career as a writer and editor, as her 1990 New York Times obituary notes, 

 In the late 1930's, Ms. Hoke inaugurated and managed children's book departments at several publishing houses, including Henry Holt, Reynal & Hitchcock and Julian Messer. In the 1940's, Ms. Hoke, whose first marriage, to John Hoke, had ended in divorce, married Franklin Watts, founder the New York publishing company that bears his name. She became the company's vice president and director of international projects.

 She would go on to collaborate on at least one book each with one of her sons and one of her grandsons. And she didn't restrict herself too much...along with such titles as Monsters Monsters Monsters and Jokes Jokes Jokes, she also offered both Nurses Nurses Nurses and Doctors Doctors Doctors, which mixed short stories with essays and autobiographical excerpts.

 But it was her horror and humor anthologies and compilations that I remember, particularly the former...she relied mostly on chestnuts, but intelligently arrayed, and for young readers, this isn't the worst strategy. From ISFDb: 

 Anthologies
...and so, I missed the preponderance of her work in the horror and fantasy fields, having left behind the younger-readers' sections of libraries by 1976, but I do remember the early volumes well, with their often rather uninspired covers, but usually interesting content (ISFDb, again):

Weirdies (aka Weirdies Weirdies Weirdies): 

  • 9 • A Creature Imagined (excerpt) • shortfiction by C. S. Lewis
  • 11 • The Cocoon • (1946) • shortstory by John B. L. Goodwin
  • 35 • The Hair • (1928) • shortstory by A. J. Alan
  • 47 • The Brown Hand • (1899) • shortstory by Arthur Conan Doyle (variant of The Story of the Brown Hand) [as by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ]
  • 67 • The Nightmare Lake • (1919) • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 70 • Mrs. Manifold • (1949) • shortstory by August Derleth [as by Stephen Grendon ]
  • 86 • The Ancient Track • (1930) • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 88 • The Monster of Baylock • shortstory by F. H. Lee
  • 94 • Phase Two (excerpt) • shortfiction by John Wyndham
  • 109 • The Night Crawlers • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 110 • The Howler • [Fungi from Yuggoth • 12] • (1932) • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 112 • A Crossbreed • shortstory by Franz Kafka (trans. of Eine Kreuzung 1931)
  • 116 • The Mansions of the Dead • (1965) • poem by Robert Blair
  • 117 • Hallowe'en in a Suburb • (1926) • poem by H. P. Lovecraft
  • 119 • The Quest for Blank Claveringi • (1967) • shortstory by Patricia Highsmith
  • 138 • Wentworth's Day • (1957) • shortstory by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth
  • 153 • The Shark-Man Nanaue • shortstory by E. M. Nakuina
  • 164 • The Monster (excerpt) • shortfiction by Edmund Spenser
  • 167 • The Upper Berth • (1885) • novelette by F. Marion Crawford
  • 192 • What Was It? • (1859) • shortstory by Fitz-James O'Brien
  • 211 • It • (1940) • novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
    • My first encounters with at least some of this work, and not mine alone...

     Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis in their turn didn't specialize as thoroughly in books for younger readers, but mixed their bags sufficiently that some librarians probably put a few aimed more at adults in the juvenile sections...when such things happened where I could see them in the early '70s, my feeling were rarely bruised:

     Anthologies
    ISFDb, unsurprisingly, doesn't choose to list their criminous anthologies, of which there were a few, and such outliers as Cat Encounters: A Cat-Lover's Anthology or the nonfiction anthology Polar Secrets.  As WorldCat notes, this couple could turn in an impressive (and feminist, particularly given the ironic subtitling) compilation of crime-fiction, as well:

    (New York, Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co., 1973.)
    Sayers, D. L. The leopard lady.--
    Nesbit, E. The head.--
    Dickens, M. To reach the sea.--
    De la Torre, L. Goodbye Miss Lizzie Borden.--
    Meade, L. T. and Eustace, R. Madame Sara.--
    Bowen, M. Cambric tea.--
    Spofford, H. P. The ray of displacement.--
    Rice, J. The willow tree.--
    Biographical notes.

    ...the Edward Gorey covers, when they occurred, never hurt a bit.


     An earlier example:

    Suspense: A Treasury for Young Adults
    New York : Funk & Wagnalls, ©1966.

    Miss Phipps Improvises / Phyllis Bentley --
    The Signalman / Charles Dickens --
    The Gloria Scott / Sir Arthur Conan Doyle --
    The Symbolic logic of murder / John Reese --
    The sleepwaker : Lady Macbeth / William Shakespeare --
    The Macbeth Murder Mystery --
    A Tale of the Ragged Mountains --
    The Ghost-Extinguisher / Gelett Burgess --
    Tobermory Saki (H.H. Munro) --
    A Terribly strange bed / Wilkie Collins. Stepping westward / William Wordstorth --
    A Charm / John Dryden --
    For though the caves were rabbited / Henry David Thoreau --
    The Witch's whelp / Richard Henry Stoddard --
    The Night-wind / Emily Bronte --
    After I shot the albatross / Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
    Song of the mermaids / George Darley --
    The Indian burial ground / Philip Freneau --
    The Witch's ballad / William Bell Scott --
    The Haunted palace / Edgar Allan Poe --
    Hymn of Pan / Percy Bysshe Shelley --
    Phantom / Samuel Taylor Coleridge --
    Proserpine / Algernon Charles Swinburne. The Lotus-eaters / Alfred Lord Tennyson --
    Dream-Pedlary / Thomas Lovel Beddoes --
    Darkness / George Gordon, Lord Byron --
    The Story of a conscience / Ambrose Bierce --
    The Dressmaker's doll / Agatha Christie --
    My queer dean / Ellery Queen --
    How I wrote Frankenstein/Mary Shelley --
    Frankenstein's monster / Mary Shelley --
    Rappaccini's daughter / Nathaniel Hawthorne --
    The Trail of the catfish \ Allen Lang --
    The Haunted space suit / Arthur C. Clarke --
    Your world of suspense / Seon Manley and Gogo Lewis.


    It's remarkable how poorly Parry's
    books were packaged in the UK;
    ...this is the least-bad UK cover
    I see among web images...
    Michel Parry, as his name might suggest, probably didn't begin speaking in English first (he was born in Belgium)...and, as his list demonstrates, didn't by any means restrict himself to YA anthologies. But that didn't stop him from putting together excellent books that were both slotted and collected for the young readers that included me in my youth:

    Anthology Series
    Anthologies
    ...albeit an X certificate on films in the UK was likely to be handed to any sort of horror film, at least until the 1970s, whether with Hammer-style sexuality or not. Beware of the Cat was a fine start, if obviously missing a Fritz Leiber story:
    US editions rather better, on balance.
    I definitely would've appreciated seeing the Mayflower Books series as they were being published...as it happens, I still haven't. No US editions aside from the first, I gather.

    And that first was from Taplinger, which also did a number of the anthologies of Hugh Lamb, whom (when first encountering his books ca. 1976) I rather inexactly used to think of as a sort of protege of Peter Haining, given that Haining's books seemed more numerous, in similar editions frequently, and he would pop into the odd Lamb anthology to provide a guest introduction. But while there were similarities in the compilations, Lamb was even more an assiduous scholar than Haining, digging out lost stories (most famously an M. R. James, early in his career) and generally going even wider into stories which were less-traditional horror and more bizarre psychological studies, for his anthologies of the weird...

    Anthologies
    My first Lamb, I believe, was A Wave of Fear...Lamb, more than any other editor, introduced me to the brothers' works, the Other Bensons, alongside the brilliant horrors of E. F. Benson (best remembered in the '70s and perhaps now for his relatively sunny comedy of manners novels about Mapp and Lucia).

     For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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    Friday, January 14, 2011

    FFB: Joe Gores: SPEAK OF THE DEVIL (Five Star, 1999); John Simon: MOVIES INTO FILM (Dial Press, 1971); JOHN SIMON ON FILM: 1982-2001 (Applause, 2005)

    Joseph Gores, 1931-2011.



    From the Contento index:
    Speak of the Devil: 14 Tales of Crimes and Their Punishments Joe Gores (Five Star 0-7862-2035-X, Nov ’99, $20.95, 200pp, hc)
    · Speak of the Devil · ss
    · The Second Coming · ss Adam Aug ’66
    · Raptor · ss EQMM Oct ’83
    · Plot It Yourself [“Detectivitis, Anyone?”] · ss EQMM Jan ’88
    · Smart Guys Don’t Snore · nv A Matter of Crime v2, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli & Richard Layman, HBJ, 1987
    · Watch for It · ss Mirror, Mirror, Fatal Mirror, ed. Hans Stefan Santesson, 1973
    · Quit Screaming · ss Adam’s Reader Nov ’69
    · Killer Man [“Pro”] · ss Manhunt Jun ’58
    · Faulty Register · ss Two Views of Wonder, ed. Thomas N. Scortia & Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Ballantine, 1973
    · You’re Putting Me On—Aren’t You? · ss Adam Bedside Reader, 1971, 1970
    · The Andrech Samples · ss Swank Sep ’70
    · Night Out · ss Manhunt Oct ’61
    · Sleep the Big Sleep · ss EQMM Apr ’91
    · Goodbye, Pops · ss EQMM Dec ’69

    Joe Gores died the other day, and I have seen nothing but fond remembrance of him as a person, as a pro's pro, as a guiding light of a man. Of course, few run around insisting what a bastard the recently deceased might be, unless they are inarguably so, but this outpouring bespeaks of the kind of person one is utterly glad to have known. I tend, at least sometimes, not to want to disturb such folks with fan letters and such, assuming (probably incorrectly) that they might not need any more affirmation from random folks off the street. But a number of the stories collected in this volume are among the most influential fiction I've read, at very least "The Second Coming," which I read at about age ten in one of the adult Hitchcock Presents: anthologies, probably one of Harold Masur's (I could go look it up, and probably will). I hadn't thought too hard about capital punishment at that point, but was not fond of the concept; this story, about would-be hipsters thinking they're about to have a kind of strange lark in weaseling their way into being among the witnesses of a state execution, and how that experience affects them, certainly affected me. I have been a confirmed opponent since.

    Other stories here have stuck with me over the decades, as well..."Watch for It" and "Goodbye, Pops" were also in AHP: volumes, and made Gores's curiously upfront name (he certainly knew how to hook up into one's gut) one to look for; I can't remember for the life of me where I first read "Quit Screaming" all those years ago. Sitting down with the Contento/Ashley and/or Stephensen-Payne indices would probably tell me that, too.

    But for now, I'm just ready to buy a copy of this collection, and remind myself of some of the talent and compassion, the anger and grace of the writer we just lost. And, again, condolences to all those folks fortunate enough to know the man, as well.

    My greatest obligation is to what, correctly or incorrectly, I perceive as the truth. It is also a genuine satisfaction to express the truth as you feel it should be expressed.
    --John Simon, "The Art of Criticism (No.4)," The Paris Review, Spring 1997.




    I've recently been re-reading Movies into Film, the first John Simon book I read, and the relatively recent (and still in print) John Simon on Movies, and it remains an enjoyable and compulsive pastime...to read a critic who is not wedded to a specific ideological framework, who is so clear in esthetic judgments and open about his biases but nonetheless strives to take the work in question on its own terms...if those terms are in the pursuit of what he sees as actually achieving art, or at very least intelligently-assembled amusements. His criteria can be questioned, of course, as every Barbra Streisand idolater will insist, but not his commitment; his wit and elegance and open-mindedness are models for me that I only infrequently begin to emulate.

    It’s wonderful to be hated by idiots. A German writer whom I love and whom I’ve translated, Erich Kästner, gives advice in one of his poems to a would-be suicide. He tries to give this man various reasons for not blowing his brains out. The man remains unconvinced, so Kästner says, in essence, all right, the world is full of idiots and they’re in control of everything. You fool, stay alive to annoy them! And that, in a sense, is my function in life, and my consolation. If I can’t convince these imbeciles of anything, I can at least annoy them, and I think I do a reasonably good job of that. --ibid.

    As with all good critics, even when you find yourself disagreeing with his conclusions, you can see where he's coming from. He mildly enjoyed Tootsie, a film which rather bores and annoys me; he utterly dislikes The Rapture and Before Sunrise, films I see virtues in, particularly the former. But his reactions are well-explicated and only very rarely wrongheaded--there is one instance in the newer collection where he clearly misunderstood what was being suggested by the film under review, but I don't have the book at hand and don't remember which it was (I'll slip that in later), but this instance is surprising in its near-uniqueness, in my experience. More often, part of what he so very good at is in isolating what is wrong with a deeply flawed film, whether it be Midnight Run or In the Company of Men, without losing sight of their strengths; in thoroughly castigating the dishonest film, such as Smooth Talk (where the greatest dishonesty is in how it traduces the career-making short story by Joyce Carol Oates that it supposedly seeks to adapt, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?") and celebrates the great, nearly perfect attempt to crystallize truth, such as Badlands. And he is not afraid to turn his analysis to the work of other critics, often demonstrating more virtues in Pauline Kael, for example, or even Andrew Sarris, than I might otherwise credit them with.

    I think it's time I finally dug out his Acid Test, and picked up my own copy of Private Screenings, which I believe I've read but am uncertain. Dwight Macdonald's introduction to the first is probably worth the cost of admission in itself, or so I hope.

    For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog for a roundup.
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    Friday, August 16, 2013

    FFB: LAUGHING MATTERS: A CELEBRATION OF AMERICAN HUMOR edited by (of all people) Gene Shalit (1987)

    Gene Shalit had a long but not all that distinguished career as a film (and to a lesser extent book) reviewer for television, usually the NBC morning series Today, before retiring in 2010. He has been fond of puns and lightweight judgment, and as such, not too much less illuminating in his compass than Siskel and Ebert (and their various heirs at their tv series) were in theirs, and the latter usually had more time to go on. 

     Given that, it's mildly surprising (to me, in any case) how engaging his very eclectic 622-page (including index) bugcrusher of a humor anthology is...his taste in stories, essays, verse, cartoons, sketch scripts, jokes and other expressions of wit on the page isn't so much surprising as nonetheless rather sound, and while nostalgic, wasn't ignoring the then current-crop of contribution to the traditions (a generous helping of Crockett Johnson's Barnaby comic strip is supplemented by examples from Nicole Hollander's Sylvia, Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury, and Gary Larson's The Far Side, for example). Amusingly, Shalit was a schoolmate of Fran Lebowitz's father and apparently knew her from her childhood, so her work is introduced here with a bit of memoir. Also notable is the focus on material published during Shalit's lifetime...a few older chestnuts, from Mark Twain and others, are included, but more likely to be encountered here is the sequencing that goes from a short Lebowitz essay to a Charles Schulz Peanuts strip to an E. B. White rumination.

     Doubleday did him few favors in pricing this book in '87 at $24.95, but copies can be had relatively inexpensively now, and in slightly shrunken dollars...

     Here's Annie Van Auken's somewhat condensed (and alphabetical rather than in sequence of appearance) list of the contents:

     Introductions by: Gene SHALIT, 

     [these taken from other books:] Dorothy PARKER, Louis UNTERMEYER and Alexander WOOLCOTT

    - - - - - - - - - - PROSE - - - - - - - - - -

    Franklin P. ADAMS
    A Pair of Sexes

    Woody ALLEN
    Confessions of a Burglar
    Hasidic Tales, with a Guide to Their Interpretation by the Noted Scholar
    The Kugelmass Episode
    The Scrolls
    Selections from the Allen Notebooks
    The Whore of Mensa

    Kurt ANDERSEN
    Affectations

    Russell BAKER
    Francs and Beans

    Henry BEARD
    The Congress of Nuts

    Robert BENCHLEY
    Christmas Afternoon
    Kiddie-Kar Travel
    Opera Synopses

    Roy BLOUNT, JR.
    Blue Yodel 9 Jessie
    The List of the Mohicans
    What to Do on New Year's Eve---I and II

    Roark BRADFORD
    Green Pastures

    Lynn CARAGANIS
    U.S. Torn Apart by French Attitude

    Craig CLAIBORNE
    Just a Quiet Dinner for Two in Paris:31 Dishes, Nine Wines, a $4,000 Check

    Gordon COTLER
    More Big News from Out There

    Steven CRIST
    Letterati

    T. A. DALY
    Mia Carlotta

    Finley Peter DUNNE
    Over the Counter
    Short Marriage Contracts
    The Vice-President

    Ian A. FRAZIER
    Into the American Maw

    Veronica GENG
    Curb Carter Policy Discord Effort Threats
    My Mao
    The Stylish New York Couples

    Jeff GREENFIELD
    The White House is Sinking!

    Milt GROSS
    Ferry-tail from Keeng Mitas for Nize Baby

    Garrison KEILLOR
    Attitude
    Shy Rights: Why Not Pretty Soon?

    Arthur KOBER
    Boggains in the Bronx

    Ring LARDNER
    Some Like Them Cold

    Fran LEBOWITZ
    An Alphabet of New Year's Resolutions for Others
    Ideas
    The Last Laugh
    Lesson One
    Tips for Teens

    Don MARQUIS
    The Rivercliff Golf Killings

    Bruce McCALL
    Rolled in Rare Bohemian Onyx, Then Vulcanized by Hand

    H. L. MENCKEN
    The Wedding: A Stage Direction

    George MEYER
    Food Repairman

    Christopher MORLEY
    Unearned Increment

    Howard MOSS
    The Ultimate Diary

    Ogden NASH
    I Never Even Suggested It

    Mark O'DONNELL
    Insect Societies

    Mark O'DONNELL and Chris AUSTOPCHUK
    The 1985 Old Codger's Almanac 

    Michael O'DONOGHUE
    How to Write Good

    NATIONAL LAMPOON
    Classified Ads

    Dorothy PARKER
    An Apartment House Anthology

    S. J. PERELMAN
    Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer
    No Starch in the Dhoti, S'il Vous Plait
    Nothing But the Tooth
    Waiting for Santy

    Noel PERRIN
    Answers to Poets' Questions

    Lois ROMANO
    English Lit(mus)

    Leo Rosten
    Christopher K*a*p*l*a*n

    Philip ROTH
    Letters to Einstein

    William SAROYAN
    Old Country Advice to the American Traveler

    Max SCHULMAN
    Excerpts from Barefoot Boy with Cheek

    Casey STENGEL
    Organized Professional Team Sports

    Frank SULLIVAN
    The Cliché Expert Testifies on Literary Criticism
    The Cliché Expert Testifies on the Movies
    A Garland of Ibids

    James THURBER
    The Little Girl and the Wolf
    Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife

    Calvin TRILLIN
    Ben's Diary

    Mark TWAIN
    Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

    Ellis WEINER 
    Patriotic Spot (60 Secs.)

    E. B. WHITE
    Across the Street and into the Grill
    Dusk in Fierce Pajamas
    The Sexual Revolution: Being a Rather Complete Survey of the Entire Sexual Scene

    - - - - - - - - - - VERSE - - - - - - - - - -

    Franklin P. ADAMS
    To a Thesaurus

    ANONYMOUS
    Great Fleas

    Morris BISHOP
    Mournful Numbers

    John Collins BOSSIDY
    On the Aristocracy of Harvard

    Margaret FISHBACK
    I Stand Corrected
    The Purist to Her Love

    Robert FROST
    A Considerable Speck

    Samuel HOFFENSTEIN
    Budget
    The Notebook of a Schnook
    Oral History and Prognostication
    Poems in Praise of Practically Nothing
    Poems of Passion Carefully Restrained So As to Offend Nobody
    A Simple Tale

    Earnest A. HOOTEN
    Ode to a Dental Hygienist

    Frederick Sheetz JONES
    On the Democracy of Yale

    Harold A. LARRABEE
    The Very Model of a Modern College President

    Don MARQUIS
    the coming of archy/mehitabel was once cleopatra/the song of mehitabel/
    the old trouper/the flattered lightning bug/the lesson of the moth
    the honey bee

    Ogden NASH
    The Firefly
    How to Harry a Husband or Is that Accessory Really Necessary?
    Look What You Did, Christopher!

    Dorothy PARKER
    Résumé

    D. F. PARRY
    Miniver Cheevy, Jr.

    Edwin Arlington Robinson
    Miniver Cheevy

    Allan SHERMAN
    The Drapes of Roth

    Bert Leston TAYLOR
    The Bards We Quote
    To Lillian Russell

    UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA
    Engineer's Yell

    - - - - - STAGE, RADIO & MOVIE - - - - -

    Bud ABBOTT and Lou COSTELLO
    Who's on First?

    Fred ALLEN
    Jack Benny in "Allen's Alley"

    Marshall BRICKMAN
    "The Enigma Redundancy"

    George BURNS and Gracie ALLEN
    Say Good Night, Gracie

    Marc CONNALLY
    A Fish Fry (Part I, Scene 2 of "The Green Pastures")

    Brad DARRACH
    Interview with Mel Brooks (from Playboy magazine)

    Bob ELLIOTT and Ray GOULDING
    Garish Summit---Episode 1

    Harvey FIERSTEIN
    Scene One: Arnold

    Frank JACOBS and Mort DRUCKER
    Antenna on the Roof (Mad Magazine spoof of Broadway musical)

    George S. KAUFMAN and Morrie RYSKIND
    Groucho and Chico Make a Deal

    Garrison KEILLOR
    U.S. Still on Top, Says Rest of World

    The MARX Brothers
    Why a Duck?

    Will ROGERS
    Timely Topics

    - - - - - CARTOON & COMIC STRIP - - - - 

    Charles ADDAMS
    Peter ARNO

    George BOOTH

    Roz CHAST
    Frank COTHAM

    Robert DAY

    Jules FEIFFER
    FLENNIKEN

    Rube GOLDBERG
    Edward GOREY
    Sam GROSS

    Bud HANDELSMAN
    Johnny HART
    George HERRIMAN
    Nicole HOLLANDER

    Rea IRVIN

    Crockett JOHNSON

    B. KLIBAN
    Ed KOREN

    Gary LARSON
    Bill LEE

    Jeff MacNEELEY
    Robert MANKOFF
    Howard MARGULIES
    Skip MORROW

    Mike PETERS
    George PRICE

    Arnold ROTH

    Charles SCHULZ 
    Tom SMITS
    Gary SOLIN
    M. STEVENS

    James THURBER
    Garry TRUDEAU 

    Jim UNGER

    Gluyas WILLIAMS
    Gahan WILSON

    Jack ZIEGLER

    Afterword by Kurt ANDERSEN

    For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

    Of related interest:
    Bennett Cerf's Houseful of Laughter
    Parodies, edited by Dwight Macdonald, and The Stuffed Owl edited by Lewis and Lee
    Funny Papers: from 5 years of reviews on this blog
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