Some Random Observations

     I used to take better advantage of blogging to toss off some random observations than I do now.  It may be time for a return to older form:

• Watching Trading Places this evening for the first time in many, many years, I was reminded of an old thought: that the movie's best moments don't come from the obvious sources (Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, or gorilla-on-man-gorilla love), but from Denholm Elliott as the butler Coleman.  He steals every scene he's in, and usually with just a lifted eyebrow here or a signed restraint there.  Most of you know Elliott by face if not by name.  He was Marcus Brody opposite Harrison Ford's Indiana Jones, and he was delightful comedic relief there, too.  Oddly, comedy was never one of his primary genres: he regularly played villains and characters broken or breaking on the inside.  If I can do anything today-- even more than nagging my compatriots to get out and vote-- it would be to encourage my readers to have a Denholm Elliott film night.  Check out his integral sadness in Woody Allen's otherwise languid September, or his sad alcoholism in The Defence of the Realm, or his protective paternality in Brimstone and Treacle.  In retrospect, he never did get to play the part I think he was meant to play, the cynical British correspondent Fowler from Graham Greene's The Quiet American.  Michael Caine eventually did it, about fifty years after Sir Michael Redgrave.  Neither quite got it.  Elliott, I know in my gut, would have-- brilliantly.
• The pending election has also had me thinking about delicious endings.  For reasons not entirely within my ken, novels seldom seem to me to end on the right note, to have one of those endings that one reads and says inwardly, "perfect."  I've read-- as most of you can imagine-- more novels than I can remember anymore, but one that sticks with me, like a memory of a first love, is from the oft-forgotten Evelyn Waugh novel A Handful of Dust.  I'm tempted to recount it here, but I won't.  The last sentence sounds like it should be sentimental, but it's not-- not in the least:  "There are passages in that book I can never hear without the temptation to weep."  In fact, it's brutal, vicious, and a death-sentence, literally and figuratively.  And it's perfect.  (There's actually a chapter of epilogue, but it's pure coda.)  One of my favourite endings, ever. 
• Irony:  in the film adaptation of A Handful of Dust (with James Wilby, Judi Dench, and Kristin Scott Thomas), that final speech is delivered by Sir Alec Guinness as the benevolently menacing Mr. Todd.  The novel to which Mr. Todd refers is Dickens' Little Dorrit, which when finally filmed starred (wait for it) Alec Guinness, as the debtor-patriarch William Dorrit.  Go figure.  Further irony: Denholm Elliott eventually took over from Guinness one of the latter's most lauded roles, George Smiley.  Even when I don't intend it, my thoughts sometimes seem as if they're within six degrees of Alec Guinness.
• Tuesday should be weird, with meetings and all, and my students will be watching It's A Wonderful Life.  You can only imagine my disbelief last week when I asked my students if they had seen the film before.  Only two had.  It makes me wonder about the kids these days. 
       BTW:  Jimmy Stewart starred in The Shootist with Lauren Bacall, who starred with Alec Guinness in A Foreign Field.  Damn....
• Odd background quote: "Things that are banging on their knees shouldn't be hanging out there."  Discuss and comment.
• The realization that I've now had Jenny, my character of a cat, for a year has caused me to think of something much more sombre.  I won't write about it here, or anywhere, but it strikes me that it would have been almost ten years.  I don't know what to think about this fact.  Actually, I do, but that's neither (as they say) here-nor-there. 
• People are in for a bit of a shock this week from the Not-So-Good Doctor.  We shall see what happens.  My students will probably react with something Linda-Blair-like--- hopefully sans pea soup.
• Many of the observations I had meant to post have now vanished into the recesses of what others might generously call my "brain."  (It doesn't qualify, except generously and/or glibly.)  Oy.
• This week is Robbie Burns' Day, or-- more appropriately-- Raaabbie Burrrrns Day.  I won't be near a computer to post here to celebrate it, so go read your Burns.  Don't just do the Scotch.  Do the Scotch, certainly.  But do the Burns, too. 

Tomorrow I have to read a paper on Sidney-- itself not a bad thing, at all-- save that I don't think I'll have anything to say beyond what has already been said about it by (cough, cough) a genuine Sidney man.  And I have somehow to find time, before week's end, to write a letter for a lass as she applies to a Canuckistani university.  Damn, damn, damn.  I'm a freaking idiot.  And a freaking idiot directed Star Wars, and it starred....

The Carrion Forecast

     Tomorrow's election day in Canada, and that fabled fat lady is about to sing, providing she doesn't swallow her epiglottis in rehearsal.  The Liberals are making their last protestations of relevance, the Tories their last blushes of coyness, while Rex Murphy sharpens his arsenal of aphoristic alliterations.  Layton, Martin and Harper are lurking in the wings, waiting to be summoned to the stage, and they all know one thing, that the fat lady won't be singing Verdi tomorrow, much to the fifth party's chagrin.  No, the playbill is promising Wagner, which usually means a long trip to Valhalla for the governing party.  (Just ask Kim Campbell.) 

 

     But wait--- let's think a bit before we let visions of metaphysical abattoirs dance in our heads, because that fat lady can be pretty temperamental and she might still surprise us.  Let's factor things through:

• With all the talk about the inevitability of a Conservative government, remember the first rule of politics, Sometimes it doesn't help to be in the lead.  With poll numbers favouring the Tories so heavily, there is the possibility that a number of Conservative swing voters won't bother dragging themselves to the polls, assuming their votes won't be needed.  This won't matter in neck-and-neck ridings like many of the ones in British Columbia, and it won't matter in ridings in Alberta that are foregone conclusions.  It may matter, though, in kinda blue ridings, where the Tory lead is just big enough to allow complacency and not large enough to survive it.  The Liberals are under siege, and their supporters more than ever are sure to vote.  The Dipper vote, where it is substantial enough, may spoil more matters than any strategists are expecting.  At this stage of the game, this is the Liberals' only hope, the "false surmise" (in Milton's phrase) of a Tory win.  This is a double-edged sword for the Grits, though, as some Toronto ridings may not be as safe as they have so far seemed. 
• The true indication of how things will turn out will emerge from Quebec.  The Tory infrastructure in la belle province isn't as established as the Liberal one, and this could spell problems there in terms of getting out the vote.  A party on election day is only as strong as its foot soldiers.  If, though, the Tories can win more than eight seats in Quebec, the Liberals may as well ready the boats and prepare themselves for a mass Norse funeral. 
• Ontario, contrary to public expectation, will be formative rather than decisive.  The Grits are being eaten from both sides outside of (and in a few cases, even inside of) Toronto, and the issue here is merely how many seats here will be chomped from the Liberal carcass.  The Tory support, where it exists, is crystallized, and the Dipper support, again where it exists, is stauncher than it has been since 1988.  For once, Ontario won't decide the result, but it will provide-- Zelda will like this-- the carrion forecast.  (By the pecking of their bones, / Something ticked-off this way comes?)
• British Columbia will decide the fate of the next government, although it seems that by the time the results start pouring in, the Liberal fate will have long-since been certain.  BC has a lot of three-way races, and a number of two-way races in which the Liberals are not contenders, and strength of the Tory win-- if it happens-- will be decided by its battles with the New Democrats on the West Coast.  This could prove the province of dark-horse victories and grand upsets, and electoral turn-out will be more crucial in BC than in any other province.  If the Dippers don't draw significant blood here, from both Tories and Grits, we could be looking at a majority government. 

In other words, it's going to be a late night tomorrow for those of us on the Eastern side of Manitoba, waiting to look upon the feast of Stephen.  Let us hope, too, that if the Tories win we can finally have a respite from the wretched wailing of Western injury we've endured for so long. 

     That's the election stuff, but elections are like bikinis and statistics in that what they reveal is often less interesting than what they conceal.  If the Liberals lose tomorrow night, the cries for blood within that party will be audible from Mongolia.  The real story may be in what the Grits do to themselves in consequence, beyond the obvious matters of leadership.  Liberals do not take well to being out of power, and some Liberals, looking to opt out of an age of internecine warfare, may well switch allegiances to the Tories or the Dippers.  Unless the Big Red Machine can miraculously turn things around, we may be looking at Mr. Martin's legacy, a party staring at its own wrists and seeing less flesh than red.  And frankly, that wouldn't bother me a bit.  The Liberals need to decide what they're really about-- beyond cynical hectoring and insidious fear-mongering. 

You Don't Say....

     Oh, gee, colour this blog surprised:

More than 50 percent of [American] students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

Don't worry, I'll spare all of you the rant you're surely expecting.  I will say this, though: any of my compatriots smugly entertaining the idea that this is just an American phenomenon should definitely think again.

Irony Note For All You 24 Fans Out There

     Ponder it:  David Palmer lasted only one term (four years) in office.  How many did he last on 24 before he had his neck blown out?  Four years-- and less than five minutes.  Coincidence?  Methinks not.  Besides, the former President has to go sell insurance now (ooh, the irony thickens!).  But, fans of the show, I encourage you to be angry, furious, livid, utterly outraged:  not only was he pegged off so easily and non-chalantly after so many previous attempts against him, but the producers of the show should at least have gotten the assassin right.  Knock him off with a nobody who's dead by the end of hour one?  Bah, humbug.  If you've been watching the show since the beginning, you know who should have killed him.  Right?  Right. 

 

     Now let's just hope our now rag-doll boy-brat gets killed off sooner rather than later-- and in a fashion suitable for a Sam Peckinpah movie. 

Five Minutes, Two Cheers, And An Involuntary Rrowwwr

     It's an old saw now, but Winston Churchill once famously said that "[t]he best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."  With the Canadian election just eight days away, The Star's Thomas Walkom went out and obviously had a few five minute conversations, and his article seems almost a mathematical proof of Churchill's claim.  Among the more perspicuous reasonings of those with votes?  I haven't forgotten Rae Days (apples and oranges), Maybe we should let them in so they can fall flat on their face and wreck us like Mike Harris did (oh, the civic responsibility!), and this one about Stephen Harper, which speaks volumes about the logical processes of some voters:  I don't trust Harper. For some reason, there's something about him. As a woman. He has this little smirky smile. I just don't like it.  (See also the equally insightful, There's just something about him.... It's not his looks.  There's just something about him.) 

 

     I try not to be an elitist snob, but I fear that reading this sort of thing brings out that part of me because the almost utter absence of logic astounds me.  You mean you're casting your vote on someone's smile?  On the memory of a government that has been out of power for ten years, which represented an entirely different form of government, and which was responding to an entirely different set of social and economical circumstances?  You're voting for someone in the hope he will fail so you can smugly aver how right you were about him?   Such people make me want to throw up my hands in frustration-- sometimes despair-- and ask them how they can possibly justify their rights to vote.  There are legitimate reasons to distrust or detest any and all of the parties, and there are equally legitimate reasons to champion or favour them.  This isn't a matter of partisanship.  It's about stupidity-- or, more accurately, it's about the fundamental laziness that manifests itself as stupidity because people don't want to do the brain-work required to make a coherent and defensible decision.  Check out the genius at the end of Walkom's article who has "read too many articles."  "I follow the crowd usually," he says.  Snort.  So do lemmings. 

 

     No wonder some of us get a little haughty under the collar, when some people respond to an election with the same depth of thought that Homer Simpson would at a movie festival.  (Gather ye footballs in the groin while ye may.)  Sometimes I think people should have to justify their votes in the same way that I have to justify my students' grades on individual assignments: to explain the reasoning, the criteria, and so forth; "showing your work," as they used to say in math classes.  It's not feasible, of course, and I'm sure the intellectual dullards would rant and rave about the value of "intuition" or some-such thing.  You'll forgive me, I hope, if I roll my eyes in anticipation of getting the government we deserve.  E.M. Forster once said that we should give two cheers for democracy, but not three, because two was all it deserved.  I, for one, will always hold back the third, and sometimes I want to hold back the second.  For every conscientious voter, there always seems to be one following the crowd. 

 

     Other brief political notes, with eight days left until this blasted thing is done: 

• Democratic Space has been attempting to project the probable results of the election, and they've adjusted their numbers for post-New Year's trends.  The numbers, if they bear out, are interesting:  Conservatives 133, Liberals 84, Bloc Quebecois 60, NDP 31.  The interesting number is the NDP one, because if the projection is close to what actually happens next Monday, means the Dippers will hold the balance of power.  It also means that the Liberals are in even deeper trouble than anyone may have thought (unless you're Doug Fisher).
• Irony alert:  The NDP, for its rally yesterday in Toronto, chose "Won't Get Fooled Again" as its theme song.  Oh, Jack, Jack, Jack: as the guy whose relevance is always being questioned, you do not-- DO NOT-- choose a song by The Who for your late-campaign mantra.  I believe it's called "tempting fate." 
• Add grain of salt: There are rumblings the Prime Minister may be in trouble in his own riding of LaSalle-Emard.  Frankly, I think this doubtful, but if he does lose it, he'll be the first sitting PM to lose his seat since Kim Campbell, who seems more and more to be Paul Martin's closest historical forerunner. 

Hehehe.... As I've been writing this, CBC Sunday Morning has begun an experiment in electoral speed-dating, with representatives from the national parties courting a quartet of supposedly undecided voters.  Andrea Horan, the representative of the Green Party, surprisingly, is quite the little cutie.  Rrowwwr....  Hmmm, maybe I should vote Green on Monday.  Hey, it's as good a reason as half the ones I've heard so far.  Hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray.

     UPDATE:  CBC Results:  2 NDP, 1 Conservative, 1 Green, 0 Liberal.  Glad the Green sweetie got a vote; I expected her to get shut out.  ;-) 

Let Your Fingers Do The Walking

     For those of you that have just been dying to stick it to the man....

He's The Same Boy He Used To Be

     No wonder he was given the position of "Government House Leader."  Harrumph. 

 

     None of this surprises me in the least.  Valeri has to my mind been one of the most vile members of the PM's inner circle, as evidenced so plainly two years ago in his gormless participation in the political assassination of the only-slightly less-detestable Sheila Copps.  Personally, I'll be elated if this scheming, self-aggrandizing Macchiavel is given a pink-slip next Monday.  And at least in Hamilton, that can happen without getting on the Harper bandwagon.  Thank heavens for minor mercies.

 

     (Ironically, last year, the Not-So-Good Doctor did some indirect, and very minor, copywriting work for the engineering company named in the article.  Go figure.  It's a small town after all....)

The Common Touch

     Heard recently in beer-flavoured conversation:  "Stephen Harper has become quite the tactile politician."  Oh really? Why, Stephen, we hardly knew....

 

     By the way, this blog hardly wants to get in the habit of remarking on the silly twists and turns of this election campaign, but the Liberal self-annihilation has been remarkable to watch.  Martin's decision to make the notwithstanding clause an issue in the leaders' debate has to have been the final act of seppuku.  What politician-- what person?-- of even miniscule intellect would want-- nay, dare-- to make the constitution an issue again?  Most of my compatriots would rather be sodomized with Pringles containers than tinker with the constitution again, the former being an agony that at least be over with sooner or later.  Martin can only hope that the press can verify that Stephen Harper eats babies, slowly and with a tangy orange sauce, if he's going to have even a chance at re-election.  Goodnight sweet Paul, and it's time to go (ba-doom-ba-doom)

I Think I Swam, I Think I Swam, I Think I Swam

      And oddly enough, it's not The Little Drunk Driver That Could....

 

      For the record, how inappropriate is it that Kennedy named his dog "Splash," considering the Mary Jo Kopechne incident? 

 

      (And, yes, I'm over-tired and procrastinating....  Duh....)

One Of These Things Doesn't Belong Here....

     Anyone remember Sesame Street?  Well, my readers, check out this list and see if you can figure it out.....

The Still Unwavering Eye: Layton Redux

      As promised in a comment here, RK has posted an entry on Irving Layton, along with the poems "Against This Death" and the wonderful "Berry Picking."  Go read them.  Please.  Consider it an act of defiance, if you must, of the ludicrous correctness that has spurned him for far too long.  And afterwards, let me know if you can tell the difference between contemporary "correctness" and old-fashioned philistinism, because, frankly, I can't. 

 

     FOLLOW-UP:  Or, rather, further reading.  Here is (arguably) Layton's most famous poem, and certainly a personal favourite:

 

The Cold Green Element (1940)

At the end of the garden walk
the wind and its satellite wait for me;
their meaning I will not know
           until I go there,
but the black-hatted undertaker

who, passing, saw my heart beating in the grass,
is also going there. Hi, I tell him,
a great squall in the Pacific blew a dead poet
           out of the water,
who now hangs from the city's gates.

Crowds depart daily to see it, and return
with grimaces and incomprehension;
if its limbs twitched in the air
           they would sit at its feet
peeling their oranges.

And turning over I embrace like a lover
the trunk of a tree, one of those
for whom the lightning was too much
            and grew a brillant
hunchback with a crown of leaves.

The ailments escaped from the labels
of medicine bottles and all fled to the wind;
I've seen myself lately in the eyes

             of old women,
spent streams mourning my manhood,

in whose old pupils the sun became
a bloodsmear on broad catalpa leaves
and hanging from ancient twigs,
            my murdered selves
sparked the air like muted collisions

of fruit. A black dog howls down my blood,
a black dog with yellow eyes;
he too by someone's inadvertence
             saw the bloodsmear
on the broad catalpa leaves.

But the furies clear a path for me to the worm
who sang for an hour in the throat of a robin,
and misled by the cries of young boys
             I am again
a breathless swimmer in that cold green element.

I should also point out that my earlier entry on Layton managed to find itself collected by a woman named Tara Gowland who put together a commemorative blog for Layton.  Nice-- very nice-- to see.   

 

     By the way, for the report on the funeral proceedings, just click this way. 

The Paper Chase

     Just a few brief notes from the Not-So-Good Doctor's already-cluttered desk:

• The NYT informs me that M.H. Abrams has decided to step down as General Editor of the Norton Anthology of English Literature.  It's a bit unfortunate that Abrams is retiring, though he's certainly earned the break.  More a cause for pause:  Stephen Greenblatt, New Historicist and Cultural Poeticist Extraordinaire, has been appointed to succeed him.  Greenblatt, for those of you not in the know, has caused me no end of migraines over the years, his propensity for the preposterous having effectively legitimated some of the grossest misreadings students and acolytes could fathom.  He's the one who made The Tempest a study of colonialism, and the Henriad a study in Machiavellian politics.  He also famously described The Taming of The Shrew as "a very chilling play," an assessment that's as obtuse as it is wispy.  I tremble to think what will become of the Norton (anecdotes, anecdotes!) under his tenure, but there is a hint of appropriateness, I guess, to his appointment: if you're going to continue the production of the granddaddy of paper-thin readings....
• Speaking of paper-thin readings, I remain quite behind on my marking, and the next day and change are will require me to make a sortie against the essays as bold and lunatic as the charge on Agincourt.  Sleep?  Sleep?  I don't need no stinking sleep..... (Zzzzzzz....)
• Monday evening is the English-language leaders debate, which, as dull as it will doubtlessly be, may be Must-See TV, if only to watch the Prime Minister protest that we shouldn't stick a fork in him yet.  The key will be whether or not Captain Canada can cow soft NDP voters (aka "New Timidcrats") into voting for him for fear of electing Stephen "Nobodaddy" Harper.  My gut says not this time.  The numbers really won't matter in relation to the Tories, the Grits, or the Bloc: they'll only matter in relation to the NDP, and whether or not they'll have enough seats to play kingmaker. 
• From the Oh, Jer... file:  Said to the Not-So-Good Doctor, for the umpteen-billionth time, over pints the other day:  What you need is a good woman.  (And all the fisher king needed was the grail.)  Thanks, Dr. Crane, I'll get right on that....
• Have actually been teasing through a premise for a new paper, based on an idea so obvious I'm almost surprised no one (to my checking) has actually proposed it.  Will have to discuss it with someone knowledgeable about Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate, and then find the time (oy vey) to sketch through a draft, but the paper should be relatively easy to put together.  We shall see.

But marking and Austen have, unfortunately, to come first.  The days ahead will be hectic.  So much for getting everything done in rough accordance with a schedule. 

The March of the Martinets

      Beyond the basic fact of my recent ennui with writing, I haven't written much (anything?) about the current federal election campaign.  My readers here that are not residents of Canuckistan are probably not aware that we are going to the polls for the second time in two years; they're also probably not aware that Canada more than anytime since 1993, seems ripe to make a significant political change. The once-unfathomable is beginning to seem possible-- not just the defeat of the Liberals, but the idea of a Tory-NDP proto-coalition that would allow Canadians to send the Libs to the woodshed for a widely-wanted ass-whooping.  The latter borders on being a lesson in mixology, and the collective bartender has to get things right: four parts right plus one part left seems to be the desired combination, like that of a large martini.  If so, you've got to love my countrypeople.  They've got a very, very dry sense of humour.

 

      I realize that I made a prediction like this at about this stage in the last election campaign, before the Tories managed to wrest defeat from the jaws of victory.  I realize, too, that I'm making this assertion before the debates to come next week.  Stephen Harper still has time to self-destruct; the Grits still have time to Chicken Little the country back into submission, perhaps, as Paul Wells wryly notes, by reminding Canadians of the possibility of Stockwell Day as Foreign Minister.  Who knows, Paul Martin might finally recover from that nasty case of cranial-glutimal ensconcement that has afflicted him since he not-so-solemnly set down his coronation.  But something seems to have happened over the Christmas hiatus, as if people over turkey and rye finally steeled themselves to a decision, and a major one at that.  And that, I think, is what makes this election different than the last one. 

 

      Set aside some of the other issues people are talking about (Harper not being as scary as he once seemed, a minor surge for the NDP, scandals great and small), because they all now seem to be subsidiary to the larger ballot question, one that the Liberals accidentally and unwisely encouraged.  The Liberals-- formerly Team Martin, a brand-name that died faster than New Coke-- didn't counter the cynicism that they helped so prominently to engender, a cynicism made worse and not better by the Prime Minister's mad-as-hell tour and his we're-the-best-you-can-do campaign strategy.  The Tories and the NDP haven't really had to articulate broad visions for Canada, and nor have they had to inspire people to vote for them.  They haven't had to.  Barring a major-- and I think now quite unlikely-- shift in the campaign, we know what the ballot question is.  It's not Who will best lead the country?  No, it's much more cynical, and yet oddly strategic, than that.  The question has become Can we afford to punish the Liberals?  The desire to do so has been lurking for some time, but over the break it seems that a majority of Canadians finally leaned towards, "Yes, I think we can."  No wonder so many are sniffing blood. 

 

      I think, though, we now know the shape of things to come, and Martin has effectively reduced himself and his party to being spectators in their own fates.  They've fundamentally lost control of the campaign in a way that hasn't happened since Kim Campbell soldiered her Tories into slaughter.  Monday night, I'm willing to bet, people watching the debate won't be paying Mr. Martin much attention.  They'll be thinking instead of the viability of a different political cocktail, even if it's the Prime Minister who  has ultimately been-- wait for it, you know it's coming-- shaken and not stirred. 

PoMological Discourse

     In the words of Homer Simpson, "it's funny because it's true...."

 

     For the record, I entered Graham Greene and Brighton Rock and got (among others):  "Notions as Mythos: Supplementing Orgasmic Oppression in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock" and "Seduction as Corpses: Nationalizing Female Corpses in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock."  And, gee, they didn't even use "diaspora."

The Aching And Triumphant Impeccability Of His Life (updated)

     Sad news:  Canadian poet Irving Layton passed away yesterday in Montreal.  In recent years, Layton had been suffering from Alzheimer's, a fate beyond cruelty for a man who was once one of this country's finest poetic minds.  He also taught for many years at the institution I rather shamefacedly describe as my employer, and in a department that now only rarely dares to mention, let alone teach, him in undergraduate courses.  Some of his poems are as good as any poet's of the twentieth-century, with "The Cold Green Element" and "The Birth of Tragedy" seeming to me especially powerful.  It seems appropriate, though, to commemorate Layton's passing with "Grand Finale," a poem sadly too ironic by half.  Here it is:

 

Grand Finale

 

I've seen the grey-haired lyrists come down from the hills;

they think because they howl with eloquence and conviction

the townspeople will forgive their disgraceful sores

and not care how scandalous and odd they look;

how vain their contrite blurtings over booze and women

or the senescent itch for the one true faith.

 

Not for me sorrowful and inglorious age

not for me resignation and breastbeating

or reverbing of guilts till one's limbs begin to tremble

and a man's brought to his knees whimpering and ashamed;

not for me if there's a flicker of life still left

and I can laugh at the gods and shake my fist.

 

Rather than howl and yowl like an ailing cat

on wet or freezing nights or mumble thin pieties

over a crucifix like some poor forsaken codger

in a rented room, I'll let the darkness come only when I

an angry and unforgiving old man yank the cloth of heaven

and the moon and all the stars come crashing down.

 

--- 1978

It's also worth glancing at this (rather old) article from The Toronto Star about Layton and his most famous mentee, Leonard Cohen. 

 

     UPDATE:  A better -- and lengthier-- obit from The Ottawa Citizen can be found here.

 

     UPPERDATE:  Zelda asked why Layton is so rarely taught in universities these days, and though in the comments I gave her a bit of a glib-shrug of a response, the answer is likely rooted in one of those "Oh-Gawd-shut-the-fark-up" lines of victimization.  From today's Hamilton Spectator's obit on Layton comes this putrid explanation from University of Toronto's Magdalene Redekop for why she opted not to teach Layton in her course on Canadian love poetry: "I decided that I simply couldn't tolerate teaching it, that it made my stomach turn, it was so sexist.  He was a profoundly sexist man, and relentlessly so."  Redekop, however, is quick to add her own holier-than-thou qualification:  "But for me as a feminist... to concede the poems of his that are fantastic is something."  Something for her, or something for him, pray tell? 

 

Regularly And Guiltily

      So 2006 has arrived, and with it a few changes for this blog, including a slightly different design, and a half-hearted decision to be at least slightly more vigilant about its maintenance.   I also, with some hesitation, decided that I'd see if there was a way I could make this blasted blog do something for me, so I surrendered to the temptation to allow Google to provide advertising links on the sidebar.   I suspect it'll be 2060 before those ads begin paying off, but I confess to being curious to see if there's an ounce of profit to be made.   So, kind readers, follow Google's links-- effusively, if you please, and click me to riches beyond my vague and limited imagination.  

      New Year's and Christmas have come and gone, Christmas as usual the languid fruition of a few weeks of frenzy, and New Year's Eve the typical gallivanting among alcohol-vending establishments.   Now I can return to being my shirty, cynical self, divested at long last of the niceties, and most of the imbibements, compulsory for the season.   Work awaits, naggingly: with my kids' exams marked, I now have to trudge through their forty-odd essays and, more laboriously, through Pride and Prejudice, which begins with one of the most pretentious and heavy-handed sentences in English literature ("It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife"), and so calls to mind the delicious homophony of the word "ostentatious."   Jane Austen, I'd continue to contend, is a pleasure like prostitution, better suited for those willing to pay for it, regularly and guiltily.

      Several of you out there, I know, are waiting for me to return calls or emails, and I promise to do so sooner or later.   In the interim, Happy New Year, everyone, and may this one be a damned sight better than the last one.

The Divergence Of The Twain, or Another Smart Alec Entry

         Jamesir Bensonmum [Alec Guinness]: She murdered herself in her sleep, sir.
         Dick Charleston [David Niven]: You mean suicide?
         Jamesir Bensonmum: Oh no, it was murder, all right. Mrs. Twain HATED herself.

      With this blog's previous entry being called "Alec Guinness' Basement," and Philip Seymour Hoffman continuing to gather raves for his performance in Capote, I found myself today thinking about that delightful old chestnut, Murder By Death.   The movie, now almost thirty years old, was penned by Neil Simon, and it was a spoof of those drawing-room mysteries typical of the pre-WW2 period.   The premise: five famous detectives are invited to a spooky old mansion for a meal and, they soon discover, an evening of murder and mayhem, hosted by the ever-eccentric Lionel Twain, played by a feyer-than-fey Truman Capote. As you might expect from a Simon script, the movie is less satire than pastiche, but it's also a movie whose fingerprints I keep seeing in most forms of contemporary comedy from Airplane! to Family Guy, fingerprints arguably more pronounced than those of, say, Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles.   Bring your encyclopedic memory for cultural references in with you, but leave the rest of your brain at the door: that's the movie's injunction as it seats you and prepares you for the gaudiness to come. When James Coco, in his take on Hercule Poirot, insists-- half-indignant, half-victimized-- declares "I'm not a Frenchie, I'm a BELGIE!", you know exactly what you're in for.   Noel Coward this isn't.

      The strength of the movie, though, was and remains its cast: Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, David Niven, Maggie Smith, Elsa Lanchester, Nancy Walker, and at the centre of it all, Alec Guinness as the blind butler Bensonmum, the greeter of the various detectives and their escorts. Guinness is especially fun to watch, first in his drollery, then in his silly miscommunications with the deaf-and-dumb maid played by Walker; and eventually comes the real treat, a miniature tour-de-force of silliness that culminates with Guinness proving that he can outfey the already overly-fey Capote, and doing so seamlessly. It's a flight of minor genius made slightly more ironic by the fact that the film he followed this with was Star Wars, as if this was one last incarnation of his Ealing days before he was forever pigeonholed as Obi-Wan Kenobi. There are even a few seconds of accidental footage in which it seems Peter Sellers is caught admiring his onetime mentor's performance, savouring the simultaneous campiness and wryness of it all. It's a shame that IMDB's quotes page does not include Guinness' final scene in its entirety; but suffice it to say that there's nothing quite so weird as hearing Guinness utter the words "That's what you think, big boy."

      The rest of the cast is good to adequate, some (Falk, Niven, Smith) coming off better than others (Sellers, stuck parodying Charlie Chan as Fu Manchu), but there's a distinct pleasure that comes from watching such a collection of fine actors working with one another. That pleasure, though, led me to the disquieting realization that all but five of the thirteen stars of the film are now dead, with only Richard Narita, Eileen Brennan, James ("That'll do, Pig") Cromwell, Peter Falk, and the impossibly-luminous Maggie Smith remaining. Try as films might now to compile impressive casts (c.f., just about any Robert Altman film, including Gosford Park, or Kenneth Branagh's overripe Hamlet), they just don't seem to engender the same sense of larkishly serendipitous coordination. More to the point, though, I think there's no longer any extent to which watching "great casts" seems to connect us with brighter days of cinema. Somehow, now, we're in Norma Desmond's world in which the pictures got small, as bloated and as over-budget as they may be. Murder By Death connected us with the 30s, with Elsa Lanchester especially recalling that golden age in which she was the Bride of Frankenstein. The best we can do these days? A CGI-enhanced Christopher Lee appearing for a few minutes in a Peter Jackson or a George Lucas film-tome. The connections seem weaker, the continuity less valid and less comforting. God love her, but Maggie Smith only seems to take us so far back, though I can't entirely explain why. As Sidney Wang (Sellers) says, "Answer simple, but question very hard."

      I was lucky, in a way. I grew up in the eighties, when it was still common to see TV stations airing black-and-white films, if only as regular time-filler. I could see Warner Oland do Charlie Chan without having to hunt for the flicks, or pray they might get an odd airing on TVO. Since the 90s, though, you just don't see the old movies, and the old actors, unless they're attached to unique circumstances, like watching It's A Wonderful Life a hundred-billion-gazillion times come Christmas season. We lose the references, we lose the faces and the history, we lose the konwledge that allows us to observe ironies and play, just as most of the people commenting on Murder By Death on IMDB could only see Alec Guinness as a Jedi sage, and not, for example, as the man who once played eight different roles in the same movie (Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1948) at a time when this was a genuine tour-de-force.

      We lose perspective as much as we do history, but we lose too much more. There is no actor these days of whom I can think that even vaguely reminds me of David Niven, that particular figure of class and ease; try as Ewan McGregor has, he could not do in three films what Alec Guinness did in half of one; and I cannot find it anything but ironic that only Peter Falk could ape Bogart without simply becoming an aper of him. Perhaps I look back with a discolouring sense of nostalgia, and perhaps I privilege the past, but strange, isn't it, how even reflecting just a little on a small little film, a small guffaw in time with no social purpose whatsoever, can make one haw on where we are going and where we have been. In the meantime, go find Murder By Death, if you can find it, and enjoy the silliness. Somehow, I'm sure it'll do you good.

Alec Guinness' Basement

      It seems my latest entry caused (undue) some concern among a few of my readers.   Have no worries, and let me restate matters, perhaps more clearly: the ole Doc is just trying to find something better for himself, something that will pay better and may actually (Heaven forfend!) proffer some form of advancement.   My only immediate way to enable such possibilities within the academic world is to finish the blasted dissertation which has now become an albatross on my neck.   Given, though, that writing even a small entry for this blog has become as painstaking as passing a stone, my prospects for completing an entire dissertation are as likely as my chances for living in eternal connubiality with mine own private seraglio.   (The difference between the two is that one would rejoice at being done with the former.)   So I'm trying to extricate myself from this "Situation Hopeless But Not Serious" scenario.   There's only so long one can live in Alec Guinness' basement.

      As for other stuff, I keep thinking I should be able to write something here that is more profound (and surely more than whinge)-- about, well, anything. There's an election in the offing; there's no end of silliness and stupidity screaming for attention; and there's surely enough literature out there upon which I could summon some sort of commentary, insightful or not.   I find, though, I'm becoming more and more interior as time goes by-- for good or for ill, but comforted slightly by the surety that silence is a virtue inadequately appreciated.   Or maybe I've grown tired of proving Mark Twain right, especially after doing so with Wilford-Brimley-like regularity.   Something tells me I should insert a Quaker Oats logo at right.

      The winter break has now arrived for the academic year, and with it a dhowload of grading.   To that, add the lavish lunacy that is the holiday season, about which the less said the better. (Shopping remains to my mind an activity best accomplished with a machete and a broken bottle of Cutty Sark.)   Ah, December: you bump and grind away, like a crack whore with a credit card to pay....

      [Hey, where in the Hell did that couplet come from? Damn and blast, damn and blast!    And worse, I just dangled a preposition!   I'm imploding from within like CIA information!}

      Oh, yet another Christmas, and its particular bliss.... In the immortal words of Father Mulcahy, "Jocularity! Jocularity!" 'Tis sometimes the best way to keep one's sanity: irregularly, even in Alec Guinness' basement.

He Do The Police In Different Voices

      In the final throes of marking, the Doc has Winamp spinning (?!?) random tunes in the background, and he finds himself singing along in all the wrong ways.   The song?   De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.   The oh-so-relevant lines?   "When their eloquence escapes me, / their logic ties me up and rapes me...."   De do do do, de DA DA DA.

      Jeronimo's gone mad-- and Sloppy-- agine.   Shantih, shantih, shantih....

The Doors of Reception

      In case any of you missed the video of President Shrub at his press conference in Beijing yesterday, let's simply say that checking it out is NOT optional.   Evidently, the President went to the Midvale School for the Gifted.

Cases For Rigid Training and the Depp To Pleasure

      Just a hint of an update, folks, as I remain so far behind in my marking-- to be returned Tuesday-- that I'll no doubt be losing much sleep in the next while.   Strange it is, he mutters to himself and sounding like a perturbed Yoda: I used to be relatively energetic when it came to marking, but now I find it's a task all-but-destined to prove an exercise in instructional futility.   At least in recent years it has proven to be, and I fear I'm becoming sufficiently cynical to surrender to that old temptation of educators, simply slopping grades down with only the barest of commentary.   Van the Man's "Why Must I Always Explain?" should probably become my theme song, especially with that lyrical masterpiece "My Humps" being oh-so-certainly out of the question.   (Give me a brown-eyed girl over a bunch of black-eyed peas anyday.)

      Alas, there's not much new to report, save some family stuff I won't discuss here.   My Canuckistani readers might want to check out this ridiculous list of Canada's 100 most important books, a list which would be risible if it was not so infuriating. (Alligator Pie makes the list, but St. Urbain's Horseman does not; Beautiful Losers gets the shaft while Howie Meeker's book on hockey mysteriously stickhandles its way to significance.   Proof positive that Canadians should never be allowed to judge their own works of-- ahem-- "National Literature.")   Similarly, I see the newest chance to see Johnny Depp chew (and eschew) scenery is on its way to cinemas, but this time it's a biopic of the legenderary debaucherer John Wilmot, aka The Earl of Rochester.   Frankly, the previews have me worrying the film will just be Quills in England, and the thought of John Malkovich as Charles II provides with me enough doubt to sustain a Cartesian immortality, maybe the flick won't be so bad. Things can turn out better than I expect, right?   Right?   Oh.   Riiiiiiight....

      Ah, well, that's enough marginal optimism for now.   Any more would be as unnatural as Bushian oratory.   Back to reality, back to the grade-grind and its destructive nonsense.   And if anyone, ANYONE, ENNY-ENNY-ENNY-WUN, figures out the wordplay in my previous sentence, I'll cease to be such a cynical bastard.   For a day.   Maybe.   I'll do my best, anyway. Until later.

Ear's Pokin' At You, Kid

      Received this from the T.S. Eliot mailing list today, and it was too good not to share here:

So, why did Zeus and Hera have to ask Tiresias whether men or women enjoyed sex more? This is what one person submitted to Scott Adams who just published it in "Dilbert Newsletter 62.0:"

One of my co-workers (who is originally from Arkansas, just FYI) told me one day that he knew for a fact that sex feels better for women than it does for men. I asked, "How do you figure that?" His reply was (and I am not making this up!), "Because when you put your finger in your ear and wiggle it around, it feels better to your ear than it does to your finger."

Beware, gentlemen: repeat this, and you'll lose your fingeramajig as certainly as Tiresias did.

Lukn My Wrks Ye Myty& Dspar!

      As if students don't already write enough like e.e.cummings....

      (Somewhere, in the ether, Doctor Johnson is weeping into his orange peels. & so 2 bd.....)

The Drudge Report

      Ah, argh, it will be a familiar refrain by now: Sorry for not updating, things have been busy, I have essays, essays, everywhere, and haven't felt much at all like blogging lately....   I'm sure you're all spinning your eyes, understandably so. Worse, this entry isn't going to remedy anything.   Shrug.   I think I may be becoming the Dalai Lama of ambivalence, appropriately enough considering there's a whole Lhasa nuthin' goin' on.   Marking time, indeed.   Blehhhh.......

      But all goes well enough, I suppose, though grading student papers seems to take about five times as long as it used to take.   Yawn, I should probably try write something more substantial here, but work beckons-- natteringly and pointlessly, like a Sex and the City teleplay, but not quite so insufferably.   I should to it.   Until, well, whenever I can be bothered to add more here.

Sunday, Ruddy Sunday, or The Old, Grey Jer, He Ain't What He Used To Be

We warmed the glass slightly at a candle, filled it a third high, swirled the wine round, nursed it in our hands, held it to the light, breathed it, sipped it, filled our mouths with it, and rolled it over the tongue, ringing it on the palate like a coin on a counter, titlted our heads back and let it trickle down the throat....

...

'Ought we to be drunk every night?' Sebastian asked one morning.
'Yes, I think so.'
'I think so too.'
      --- from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited

      After Goodness-Only-Knows how many consecutive hours of answering emails and commenting on essay drafts and so on and so forth-- and my back now as brutally buggered as Ned Beatty's butt in Deliverance-- I can finally utter those five little words I've been aching to say for days: "Wolf Blass, take me away!"  

      Right?   I think so too.   And I'm shiraz hell not coming back until my Bacchus better. Power grapez, my friends, power grapes.

Waiting For Godet

      Sorry, folks, not much of an update here, as I have too much to do in the way of preparing for this week's classes, but I found this quiz and had to post it here.   My result is only partially surprising.

What Religion Do You Fit In With? You fit in with: Agnosticism Your ideals mostly resemble those of an Agnostic. You are fairly ambivalent towards any religion or spiritual connection. You lead a very busy life and find that religion and spirituality are unnecessary to your life. 0% scientific. 20% reason-oriented.

A bit ironic I should find this after last week, when I was prompted to describe myself not as Agnostic but as an Ennuist. Boredom, the PoMo logos: In the beginning was the Meh (Jer 1:1).   Ah, enlightenment, don't know what it is....

      POST-SCRIPT:   I'm rather distubringly reminded that there was a time when some people-- buckle up your seat belts, people, hilarious turbulence is coming-- regularly described me as a mystic.   Yes, a mystic.   Oy vey.   Ah, the shame, the humiliation.   I was so much dumber then, I'm smarter than that now....

Hey, Where Did He Go (Days When The Rains Came)

      I can almost hear the Van Morrison refrain: Do you remember when / we used to blog?   Sha la la lalalala....   Oh, my brown-paged URL....

      Yes, blogging really has not been a priority lately.   Priority?   Natch, not even a passing interest.   Even this entry, I confess, is rooted more in sating concern than in writing for any sort of intellectual or communicative purpose.   So very little seems to generate anything more than a shrugging response from me that maintaining even a kind of facile pose of interest borders on pointlessness.   I hardly care that in that last sentence I mixed enough metaphors to warrant puréeing just for consistency.   I'm developing the same passion for writing that one assumes Julia Child had for bioethics and the history of cardboard.   Well, writing and just about everything else.   Is it possible to raise being blas&ecute; to an art form?   Methinks I am a prophet uninspir'd....   (Call it seeing through a glass, Gauntly.)  

      Anyway, a few brief notes on things. There's a piece from the Aussie paper The Age to which I'd turn your attention, because it makes an argument I'd make if I didn't feel I'd already made it over and over again; give it a gander.   Also, I understand there's a massive project to render the classics of the ages through contemporary eyes, a project I'd think more of it did not decide to Atwoodize Homer.   (That sound you're hearing in the background is the Not-So-Good Doctor stabbing himself repeatedly in the brain with a corkscrew.)   Check out the Grope and Flail's review of the preliminary editions here while I lament the predictability of it all (and collect the bloody remnants of my mind from my keyboard and attempt to stuff them back inside my cranium).  

      There's also a very funny review of the HBO series Weeds on the CBC's website that's worth a read, particularly for its hilarious opening paragraph.   Weeds, for those of you that have not seen it yet, is one of the better shows on the air right now, thanks to solid writing and more especially the wonderful Mary-Louise Parker, one of the best actresses working in the States right now.   Sexy, charming, and gifted with some of the most expressive eyes in Hollywood, she's one of the few actresses who can mingle daftness with caginess in perfect proportion, which makes her perfectly unpredictable, distinctly mannered without being manneristic.   She also has a slightly flaky air about her that makes her endearing-- in part, I confess, because she reminds me of the kinds of quirky femininity for which I've all-too-many times been, and remain, a sucker, damn it.   (Yeah, I know, I know, that's why I'm always getting myself in trouble....   Insert shrugging, grumbling and eye-rolling here.)   Anyway, give Weeds a viewing if you haven't yet already: it's what Desperate Housewives could be if it hadn't opted toward pretense and lurid contrivance.   Oh, and if it wasn't so manifestly stupid.

      In other matters, last week's classes on Lycidas went as well as I could have expected, though I am going to try to steal another half-week for it.   This will half-delay the planned Marvell (the Mower poems), which in turn will half-delay the beginning of Adam Bede, which I have not taught in a very long time.   That I will have to reread Eliot will no doubt please Zelda, who-- by the way!-- is about, with her hubby (the Had Matter??), to celebrate her first wedding anniversary tomorrow.   This blog would note that this normally means all signs of post-nuptial cuteness must cease, else incurring much-deserved mockery, so the true stuff of marriage (misery, dissatisfaction, china-hurling fury) can finally begin.   But as this blog is feeling uncharacteristically generous, it'll let their terrible cuteness continue unridiculed until it becomes truly unbearable.   Happy anniversary, you two, and many happy returns.

      With that, I'll finally end this entry, thinking with some temptation that writing all this may mean I can go another several days without having guiltily to write anything here.   Pehaps, perhaps?   Perchance to dream.

This Is Just To Say

      No, no-- I am not going to indulge in a pastiche of Williams' famous poem, tempted as I might be to do so.   No, this is just a short entry to allay (pre-emptively) some of the concerns about the Not-So-Good Doctor's apparent return to oblivion-- or obliviousness, whichever seems more appropriate.   The Doc's innate lethargy, combined with the frustration dealing with allergies, is making even the simple task of blogging inordinately difficult, to say nothing of trying.   When I'm not sneezing, I'm rubbing my eyes with a ferocity more appropriate to a recently-wisened Oedipus.   I guess it goes without saying that-- insert anticipatory groan here-- the Jocasta's on me.

      Anyway, today the Doc ventures up to Tokyoronto where he will, among other things, attempt to teach John Milton's Lycidas for the first time.   My charges, I suspect, will be suitably intimidated by the poem, and I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever gets accomplished today will only be an initial step into the deep.   I can my students echoes already mourning.   Wish me-- or, more appropriately, them-- luck.

      Now, off to earn my minor pittance.   Until later. Cheers and best, everyone.

Break, Break, Break

      (Points to those of you that understand the title's origin.)

      I should apologize to those of you that have been worrying about the Not-So-Good Doc, but I would also like to assure everyone that I am adequate and alive but just otherwise blasé about blogging or emailing. Occasionally I intrude, and I go silent; this is just me. This should also be nothing new to my regular readers, the Doc being as miserable and cantankerous as he is prone to be, and so silence is the better part of discretion. The Dawk, after all, is no Harold Pinter. His only art of silence is genuine silence. It compensates, he hopes, for the times he rambles like Al Gore at a press conference.

      With that, I should take the opportunity to note the passing of Wayne Booth, one of the few guys in Lit Crit still worth reading. Sad we lost him.

      Especially when there are guys when just can't get rid of. Especially, especially, when it makes the Doctor dangle a preposition in such a way. We will continue to blame Burgess Meredith for such stuff, just because we can't. Grumpy Old Bastards have to stick together. Especially in spirit.

Pure Genius

      Thanks to RK-- who alerted me over a pint on Tuesday to a CNN story on Ray Charles literally behind my head-- I finally figured out what the hub-bub was about: not just a collection of duets with musical lesser lights, but a 7 CD and 1 DVD boxed-set of the complete Atlantic recordings.   In a word: Awesome.....   In two: FUCKING Awesome.

      Amero-ethnomusicoligsts, however, have just-- pardon the phrase-- creamed their jeans, respectively and collectively, and probably cumulatively.

Children of the Corn

      Oddly enough, I stumbled upon this article just as Stewie Griffin claimed he had "half a pack of Rolaids in his diaper."   

The Presidential Seal

      When (sigh) a rubber stamp just isn't enough....  

      This blog's favourite bit: "We'd like to tell him how respected he is in China, so we can boost his confidence and help his career."   Ah, the (er) milk of human kindness....

The Weapon of Mass Seduction

      American writers, it seems, have seen the enemy, and it is Thomas Browne.   And Samuel Johnson.   And Evelyn Waugh. And Thomas Carlyle. And John Dryden.   And, in fact, any writer availed to devices of nuance.

      Gee, I wonder why....

      (Now rewrite that first paragraph with semicolons, and you tell me which works better, the hamfisted thumping of the periods, or the subtle twisting of the semicolons.)

Beating Around The Bush

Kinda says it all, doesn't it?

Observation

      Consider it a wisdom:   If you know what a polymath is, you probably think you are one. (And, of course, you would probably be wrong.   Savour the humbling irony.)

Ligers, Not Daughters?

      It's not often I read a book review that makes me say to myself, "Damn, I HAVE to pick that book up!"   Consider this one of those instances.  

      (I can't wait: I can already hear the more pious and smug femipundits mewing like Goneril.   Hee hee!)

I Guess He Had Her At "Get Out"

      No word, however, if he'll deplete her.

U2, Rufé?

      It was only about a dozen years ago it seemed everyone and his aunt Millie was lining up to pay tribute to Leonard Cohen, but here we go again-- this time with the assistance not only of U2, Rufus Wainwright, and Nick Cave, but also (wait for it) Mel Gibson.   A wonder they didn't name the film Graveheart.  

Glib Service

      The feteing of Nabokov's Lolita -- on the occasion of its fiftieth year, as regular readers here should be aware-- continues today with a piece in the NYT that unfortunately seems more pap than meat.   The article's tendency towards glibness I find bothersome, to say nothing of misleading. Take, for example, this rather smug characterization of Nabokov's first genuine supporter, Graham Greene:

Only at the end of the year did Graham Greene, in London, relieve "Lolita" of her obscurity. Greene was not always good to little girls; he had lost a lawsuit for having proferred a few remarks about Shirley Temple and her "dimpled depravity."

"Not always good to little girls."   Oy vey....   The reductionism here makes it sound as if Greene had written about Temple as some kind of real life Humbert Humbert, when, in fact, he criticized 20th Century Fox for deliberately marketing Temple (in GG's words) with "a certain adroit coquetry which appealed to middle-aged men."   It's also worth observing that in most critical circles, GG's observations are now accepted as accurate-- and, to an extent, astutely prophetic.   (One shudders to think what hay Greene would have made from the Olsen Twins.)   It is, however, this sort of deliberately flip characterization that sends me right up with wall -- especially when it's easily remedied with a little prudent editing and intelligent research.   But-- gronk!-- nay, nary, and natch, it's easier and more provocative to suggest that Greene was luridly objectifying "little girls."   Frankly, this is one of the weaker pieces on Lolita I've seen this year, and it makes me wonder if we've learned anything at all from that book and how we approach issues of desire and objectification.   I suspect that if either Nabokov or Greene were still around, they'd read this article with mildly-profane expressions of indignance.   Actually, Greene would probably have laughed-- loudly and heartily-- at such priggish earnestness.   Perhaps best we should react the same way.

Gnothi Se

      And Brian wonders why people think he's a malignant tumour in Canadian history.

      (Who knew someone could surpass Trudeau's arrogance?   There is, however, a difference: Trudeau had A REASON for being arrogant.   Brian Mul-Brigadoon-ey?   Methinks he's trying to be the Canuckistani Reagan, his sins forgot, that he might be marshalled for greatness.   Gawd, gawd, gawd, let him go the way of Arthur Meighen.)

      Riddle me this Batmans:   How many people will do anything more than shrug when Mulroney (Gawd forbid) shuffles off this mortal coil?   If you guess more than ten, you must be using the same mathematical skills that governed Canada's finance ministry for so long.

There's A First Time For Everything....

      Bestill my quaking heart, I can't believe it: Is it possible? Is it in fact possible that Dalton McSquinty has finally-- at long last and after enough fumbling idiocy to embarrass even a fourteen-year old boy-- done something RIGHT?   Hark, hark!   Summon the heralds!   Summon the hautboys!  

      Who knew the chuckleheaded, imbecilic, dissembling panderer had it in him?   Then again, as his facesake has said, "We all go a little mad sometimes."

Puhleeze, Academy II: Trackin' Braining

      Saturday's Guardian features an intriguing excerpt from Elaine Showalter's new book Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents, the title of which seems only a pair of dicritical marks away from something worthy of John Cleese.   (Note the Freudian suggestion in the title, too.)   The article's a good read, and it makes me look forward to getting my mitts on a copy of Showalter's full text, although I should say-- assuring some of you, perhaps disappointing others-- that the Not-So-Good Doctor has never once felt the desire to write about his experiences at his own Eyesore U.   If he did, however, it'd probably have to be titled How To Succeed In Listlessness Without Really Trying.   Twaddlemarch, I fear, would be just a bit too on the nose.

Caveat Lector!

      Obedient (to a point) to the wisdom of the ancients, the Not-So-Good Doc -- recently consigned, kicking and screaming, to being 2⁵-- was left scratching his beard, somewhere between stupefication and diabolical temptation, when rereading through Apostolos Athanassakis' translation of Hesiod's Works and Days yesternoon.   Pray, dear readers, what-- oh what!-- should the Doctor do, faced as he is with an injunction from a man much, much wiser than he?   Question classical teaching?   'Twould be hubris, wouldn't it?   What impudence!   What certain folly!   But, but, but....

The right time to bring a wife to your home
is when you are only a few years younger than thirty,
or just a few years older.   This is the time for marriage.
Five years past puberty makes a woman a suitable bride.
Marry a virgin so you can teach her right from wrong.
Choose from among the girls who live near you and check
every detail, so that your bride will not be the neighborhood joke.
Nothing is better for man than a good wife,
and no horror matches a bad one, a glutton
who reclines to eat and needs no fire to roast
even a stalwart man and age him before his time.

(Too late.)   Ah, what the hell, why am I even thinking about this?   Obedience is not an option, after all.   Finding a virgin in this day and age is a task from which even Sisyphus would shrink.  

      As the Romans would say, "Caveat lector." And caveat lecher, too.   Now be vewwy, vewwy quiet: it's virgin hunting season.  

      UPDATE:   Curiousity made me look up the etymology of the word "lecher." Suffice it to say, the origins are interesting:

c.1175, from O.Fr. lecheor "one living a life of debauchery," esp. "one given to sexual indulgence," lit. "licker," agent noun from lechier "to lick, to live in debauchery or gluttony," from Frank. *likkon, from P.Gmc. *likkojan "to lick" (see lick). Noun lech "strong desire" is a 1796 back-formation.

"The priests had excellent cause to forbid us lechery: this injunction, by reserving to them acquaintance with and absolution for these private sins, gave them an incredible ascendancy over women, and opened up to them a career of lubricity whose scope knew no limits." [Marquis de Sade]

Oh, the marvellous world of tongues....

(And We Can Almost Smell) Your TV Sheets....

      About this, all this blog is going to say: at least they won't have Clay Aiken and Angela Lansbury singing "Those Were The Days...."   Or Larry King doing "Thank You For Being A Friend."  

      Let us just count our tender mercies they haven't asked Ellen to "dance" to Hugo Montenegro's Greatest Hits.

      (And if you don't get the above references, you really are too young for this blog, Gosh darn ya.)

Popular Culture

      From today's Shmecktator:

By hanging on to No. 1 [in the U.S., with "We Belong Together"], [Mariah] Carey's total weeks at No. 1 is now 75.   If Carey remains in the top spot for five more weeks, she will surpass Elvis Presley's 79 weeks at the top and pull ahead as the act with the most weeks at No. 1 in U.S. chart history.

*** shudder***   It's enough to make one begin quoting Revelations.        

Stuff That Bloggers The Mind

      As many of you know, I considered dumping the increasingly problematic Enetation for handling the comments around here.   On this subject, I've hummed and hawed with Hamlet-like uncertainty.   No more.   Yesterday, I did the initial work of setting up a blog for my Film and Lit class this year, and within ten minutes of the first (trial) post there, two comments had been left, entirely Spam and boding badly for how easily things could become a giant pain in the Doc's barely-existent arse.   So, that blog, I've determined, will only allow comments from invited members (i.e., my students), something I'm not about to do with this more public site.   So, Enetation it shall remain, bumps and grinds and stalls and all.   The last thing I want to be doing is deleting ads for Cialis and Hold'Em Poker every half hour. Besides, I'm sure none of you want the Not-So-Good Doc any grumpier than he usually is.   Right?   Right.

      It's nearly 9am and the Doc is listening to Robbie Robertson's Storyville, an album now eerily sad given what has happened in New Orleans.   Apparently, the Feds in the US have shipped down 25,000 body bags, which is a haunting statistic: usually they send more than twice as many body bags as they expect to need, generally, as they say, to err on the side of caution.   Which means the Feds are (implicitly) expecting at least 10,000 dead.   Ten thousand.  At least.   And even that probable underestimation would make the death toll thrice that of September 11th.   Staggering.

M*A*S*H-terpiece Theatre?

      Not quite sure what to make of this, but it figures that Altman-- so famous for his fondness for improvisation-- should choose an unfinished play for his debut at the Old Vic.   Scripts, scripts? We don't need no stinkin' scripts!

      (As for Kevin Spacey as Richard II: let us simply hope he doesn't play the poet-king as a K-PAX-ian outsider.   The name "Verbal Cant" comes to mind.)

All He Did Was Keep The Beat (In Bad Company), or, God Save The Queen

      Maybe we don't need another hero, but, dammit, sometimes it's just nice to have another one around.  

Whip Van Wrinkle

      For the record, the five men in question had CONDITIONER in their hands.   Really.   Really really.  

      (As for the two ladies, one hopes they didn't end up having a Carrie moment.)

The Vancouver Canucks

      To tell you the truth, this blog isn't sure if it should be proud of this story, or galled by the context that informs it.   Key quote: "We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere." Yup, 'cuz the "fabulous, fabulous guys" were standing on guard for thee. Or, perhaps, floating.

Little Hams, Who Made Ye?

      It has been a while since I annoyed people with cat pictures, so I think you're all due.

      Here's Trouble, looking studious, on one of his favourite perches, the breakfast nook, which allows him a clear view of whatever is being made in the kitchen, and whatever is happening in the back room. The telephone you may be able to discern in the foreground is his favourite pillow, which affords him the opportunity to doze off on his self-appointed sentry duties. Trouble's been with me for over 10 years now, and I suspect he's about 14 now. He remains in remarkably good health, and perpetually a Character: gruff, cantankerous, independent, he always seems to be an inch and a half short of giving a damn. Every now and again, though, you can espy the kitten, the little boy, still inside the cat, as in this picture: he can still be transfixed by things he has known forever, which I find unendingly sweet. Old age-- though he bears no physical signs of such-- has demured him a bit, so now he's rather a gentle grump, with the sternest glare I've ever seen on a cat. But that's what I like so much about this pic: it seems, to this admittedly partial observer, to reveal both his intensity and that little glimmer of kittenish wonderment. It's all, as they say, in his eyes. Ah, Trouble, my boy....

      ... and here's Jenny, doing what Jenny does best, save for eating and shitting. As you can see, precious little disturbs Jenny when in sleep mode, not even a cap falling of the top of the futon. Quite the opposite in fact: the cap becomes another thing to nestle in, as if it were a blanket. And, naturally, that cat has to have control of the TV remote, which means I regularly don't have the heart to change channels when Jenny drifts off like an old man listening to a baseball game on the radio. Jenny has now been around here for ten months or so, and almost all of the indicators of being an adopted stray have disappeared: the bêtes-noires are gone, so too the inclinations to dart for the door. The only remnant: the clamorous excitement anytime food might, just maybe maybe might, be available. It's always in contrast with that ruckus that Jenny's periods of repose are so endearing, even if I think Jenny gets more use out of my futon than I do. Oh, to have the stressful life of a cat....

Yesterday's trip to Pork Spew was good but exhausting. The first trip to campus, where the frosh display their na^iuml;veté obliviously and even a bit proudly, is invariably An Experience. Older farts like me, nursing their beers, in the meantime stifle our chuckles and our temptations to mutter things equivalent to "Oh, they're like this now...." Their giddy adventurousness will pass soon enough, and they'll end up like the rest of us, as stale as yesterday's coffee.

BTW, I found myself IDed at one of the main pubs on campus, which is hilarious on its own. The manager then came along, put his hand on my shoulder and said to the 19-if-she's-a-day bartender-in-training, "I don't think there's a way he could be confused for less than 25, don't ya think?" Ah, backhanded compliments, the ways of the tavernal world....

Between The Sheets, or Inter-Cover Brother

      Following this blog's recent post on things I learned from the movies, it seemed only fitting to supply a similar post on the various things I've learned from my readings over the years-enough-to-beggar-counting.   Unfortunately, this list probably won't be as accessible as the movie one, but-- damn it-- this blog never promised to appeal to lowest common denominators, even if it frequently does. (Sn*rk.)   And with no further ado, What I Learned From Literature:

• Embrace 69-ing, because the way up and the way down are the same thing.    (Herakleitos)
  
• There's a reason that reading Margaret Atwood causes one to twitch like Herbert Lom in a Pink Panther movie.   (Atwood, "You Fit Into Me")
  
• It was Dostoevsky that invented the Axe Effect.   (Crime and Punishment)
  
• I feel discomfort, therefore I am.   (How reassuring....)   (Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case)
  
• When the going gets tough, the tough get naked.   (King Lear)
  
• Fiddle-dee-dee, tomorrow is another day....    (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")
  
• Never, ever, in your otherwise-useless life will people of all stripes be interested in you than when you have a silly metal band wrapped around your finger.   (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings)
  
• Be careful with your relations, and keep your kids away from the Medea.   (Euripides)
  
• Always keep a hanky handy.   (Othello)
  
• Or, on second thought, maybe not.   (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
  
• Thank heaven for little girls.   (Dante, The Commedia)
  
• Or, on second thought, maybe not.   (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
  
• Just because something smells like fish doesn't mean you should chase after it.   (Thomas Gray, "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat....")
  
• Apparently, some women can masturbate and write at the same time.   (James Joyce, Ulysses)
  
• Pussy rubbing against a post is indeed a form of worship.   (Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno)
  
• Shock of shocks, life IS a stitch.   (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein)
  
• It's a villanelle world when your whistle blows, and still your kid will want a piece of your time.   (Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night")
  
• Some teachers will do anything to encourage their students.   (Mordecai Richler, Cocksure)
  
• Never, ever, screw around with your boss' daughter.   (The Tempest)
  
• They really do fuck you up, your Mum and Dad.   (Sophocles, Oedipus Rex)
  
• Even the brilliant need a shot in the arm now and again.   (Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes stories)
  
• Driving Miss Daisy isn't as innocuous as it sounds.   (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)
  
• Just because something-- or someone-- says "DRINK ME" doesn't mean that you should.   (Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland; see also Bram Stoker, Dracula)
  
• All in all, everything's just another brick in the wall.   (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado")
  
• The cruellest sentences with which one be punished are Faulkner's.   (Absalom, Absalom!)
  
• For God's sake, DON'T throw the baby out with the bathwater.   (George Eliot, Adam Bede)
  
• Sometimes the A just isn't worth it.   (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)
  
• Believe it or not, that burning sensation in your loins may mean you're going to Heaven.   (George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan)
  
• And, Leonard Coehn forgive me, don't go home with your pardon.   (William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman)
  
• Give a woman a little romance, and all she'll want is moor, moor, moor.   (Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights)
  
• Give a man a little romance, and all he'll want is More, More, More.   (Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons)
  
• If the pen is mightier than the sword, a hardcover copy of Clarissa is mightier than a bulldozer.
  
• All shall be Hell, and all manner of myself shall be Hell.   (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
  
• Some people have a lot more going on upstairs than you'd think.   (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)
  
• Financial worries will send you right around the bend.   (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman)
  
• Honey and Pooh: a combination even more magical than chocolate and peanut butter.   (A.A. Milne)
  
• Ladies, despite what they may tell you in Tijuana, taking the worm probably isn't a very good idea.   (Antony and Cleopatra)
  
• An ounce of Pound is a cure for invention.   (The Cantos)
  
• The world's first Surrealist was Henry Howard.   Tottle-ly.   (Yes, RK, I know, no one will get it....)
  
• You can't judge a book by its cover, or its title.   (E.M. Forster, Howards End; Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited; John Mortimer, Rumpole of the Bailey; William Golding, The Lord of the Flies; W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage)
  
• Every man thinks his bat is made of sacred wood-- until the big moment when he swings with it and misses.   Bernard Malamud, The Natural)
  
• All it takes is one snowballing incident to change your life forever.   (Robertson Davies, Fifth Business)
  
  and
  
  
• There's ALWAYS room for Tang.   (Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff)

Well, there we go. Now off the Pork Spew. Essay your own good folks.

New Orleans Was Sinking....

      ... and W didn't wanna swim, as now seems beyond debate (save for the devotedly and rabidly partisan Shrubbies).   Today's NYT features a particularly pointed indictment by Paul Krugman that encapsulates most of what wrong before Katrina struck, and what will continue to remain wrong until there's a new occupant of the Whitehouse. It's a shame, really, that the American population can't insist on a presidential recall in the same way that Californians could: such unfathomable, to say nothing of tragic, incompetence is beyond apology.   Frankly, I'd like to see the President and his cronies do a dozen or so swigs each of Biloxi tapwater before they make any more disingenuous claims of compassion for Katrina's victims.   One miserable evacuation deserves another, don't you think?

Magic Dealism

      "Falling in love... is basically a process where both sides feel they're getting a good deal."

      ....

      ....

      HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!    Oh stop, my sides are hurting.... [He wipes away the slight tear that has appeared in his eye.]   My, I needed a laugh like that.

Sensual Surrender and Formal Atrophy

      And now, ladies and gentlemen, your Bizarre Headline of the Day....

      (Bjork, the other, greasier, white meat....)

Frankly, My Dears....

      Okay, this is a result I had not expected (note the hilarious italicized section, which is, of course, my own emphasis):

Which Leading Man Are You?

Clark Gable You scored 23% Tough, 28% Roguish, 33% Friendly, and 14% Charming! You're a pretty interesting guy, all man but approachable and friendly. You like the lovely ladies, but you're also a real stand up guy with a true sense of honor and duty. You're respected by most men, although they probably wouldn't trust you alone with their girlfriends and even wives. Women find you intriguing, drawn to your playful sense of fun and true-blue core. You think most women are rather silly, but strong dames with smarts really turn you on, and you tend to marry them. Leading ladies include Claudette Colbert and Vivien Leigh, women who find you somewhat charming but a little dangerous.

I love the "roguish" assessment. Can I put that on my c.v.?   "And you tend to marry them," however, is a horrifying suggestion.

         Ladies, you might want to take the Leading Ladies Test.   If any of you end up with Claudette Colbert or Vivien Leigh, let me know....     (Then again, Gable did do The Misfits with Hollywood's favourite bicycle, so remember: there's lots of room for variety.)