<![CDATA[The Drapers Guild - De Blah Blah Blague]]>Fri, 28 Aug 2026 01:45:30 -0400Weebly<![CDATA[Emily Dickinson is Somewhere Else]]>Fri, 24 Oct 2025 19:37:44 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/emily-dickinson-is-somewhere-else            Fellow Emily Dickinson devotees, you must get yourself a copy of “The Letters of Emily Dickinson”.
 
          Dickinson is America's greatest poet. (That is if, like me, you're an Apollonian. If your taste runs to the Dionysian, then it's Walt Whitman.) But Dickinson was more than a virtuoso of language, which is what every poet aspires to. She lived poetry. A sentence that is meaningless and pretentious, but I can't think of a better.
 
          You've probably read a few letters written by great poets. Keats' letters are famous.  Before the Dickinson, “The Letters of  Seamus Heaney” was the last big “Letters of” to come rolling over the middlebrow horizon.
 
          Poets communicating with other individuals express themselves in prose, whether they are talking, writing a letter or text messaging.  
          Yes, certainly, the letter-writing poet’s interior world, where his or her poetry is gestating, does break out, but always in prose.
          Exuberant over an idea, for example...
 
              I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read — I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School — and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that school and its hornbook. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? (Keats, letter)
 
                                                          ...or enraged about trivialities: 
 
               In the last two days I have written thirty-two letters … all of them a weight that was lying on my mind even as the accursed envelopes lay week by week on my desk. The trouble is, I have about thirty-two more to write: I could ignore them but if I do the sense of worthlessness and hauntedness grows in me … fuck it, I’m going to get rid of them before I board the plane on Thursday. (Heaney, letter)
 
          An extended metaphor from Keats, a plaintive howl from Heaney, but the passages are nevertheless in prose. No rearranging of them on the page can make them into poetry.
           Nothing wrong in that; it’s absolutely right, as a matter of fact. We live in a reality in which prose is the most straightforward and unambiguous form in which one person can communicate with another. We may take welcome excursions into the world of poetry, where even syntax can turn out to be expressionistic, but fortunately (or unfortunately) we live in the reality of prose.
 
          Emily Dickinson did not. Her reality was not what we call “real.” She only made reluctant excursions into the world of prose.
 
          Dickinson's “Letters”: Let’s go to a random page. Today is October 25th, the 299th day of the year. What will I find on page 299?
          It is yet another letter to her most frequent correspondent, her sister-in-law, Kate Anthon.
 
Katie—
          Last year at this time I did not miss you, but positions shifted, until I hold your black in strong hallowed remembrance, and trust my colors are to you tints slightly beloved. You cease indeed to talk, which is a custom prevalent among things parted and torn, but shall I class this, dear, among elect exceptions, and bear you just as usual unto the kind Lord?
          We dignify our Faith, when we can cross the ocean with it, though most prefer ships—
          How do you do this year? I remember you as fires begin, and evenings open at Austin's, without the Maid in black, Katie, without the Maid in black.
          Those were unnatural evenings,
          Bliss is unnatural—
          How many years, I wonder, will sow the moss upon them, before we bind again, a little altered it may be, elder a little it will be, and yet the same as suns, which shine, between our lives and loss, and violets, not last years, but having the Mother's eyes.-- Do you find plenty of food at home? Famine is unpleasant—It is too late for "Frogs," or which pleases me better, dear -- not quite early enough! The pools were full of you for a brief period, but that brief period blew away, leaving me with many stems, and but a few foliage! Gentlemen here have a way of plucking the tops of trees, and putting the fields in their cellars annually, which in point of taste is excerable, and would they please omit I should have fine vegetation & foliage all the year round, and never a winter month. Insanity to the sane seems so unnecessary -- but I am only one, and they are "four and forty," which little affair of numbers leaves me impotent. Aside from this dear Katie, inducements to visit Amherst are as they were. -- I am pleasantly located in the deep sea, but love will row you out if her hands are strong, and don't wait till I land, for I'm going ashore on the other side -- Emilie.
 
          That is poetry—almost all of it, from beginning to end. Occasionally, Dickinson drops into the prosaic—

           Aside from this dear Katie, inducements to visit Amherst are as they were.
 
a cordiality that could have been penned by one of Trollope’s ingenues, but then—
         
          I am pleasantly located in the deep sea,
          but love will row you out if her hands are strong,
          and don't wait till I land,
          for I'm going ashore on the other side
 
          Dickinson wrote her letters, as well as her poetry, standing tiptoe on the cusp between irrational and rational—a rare and marvelous place to be.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

]]><![CDATA[Notes on Byron's "Don Juan"]]>Wed, 10 Sep 2025 17:57:53 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/notes-on-byrons-don-juan“Don Juan” -  the book                                               Don Juan - the hero
Don Juan - the words                                                 “Don Juan” - the verbalization
 
1. “Don Juan” is unfinished.
          This must be a well-known fact, but it took me by surprise.  It must have landed in my information bin at some point, but never made its way onto the fabric of what I know.
          In one of his asides in “Don Juan”, Byron announces that his intention is to write 100 cantos. (“Don Juan” ends with Canto XVII.) It’s not clear whether Byron seriously planned to write 100 cantos or is just making use of a big fat number that fits the meter and his flippant pose.
         
My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin
          About what’s call’d success, or not succeeding:
Such thoughts are quite below the strain they have chosen;
          ’Tis a “great moral lesson” they are reading.
I thought, at setting off, about two dozen
          Cantos would do; but at Apollo’s pleading,
If that my Pegasus should not be founder’d,
I think to canter gently through a hundred.                                   (XII, 55)
 
          When “Don Juan” ends, Don Juan is still in his twenties.
 
2. “Don Juan” is three syllables—not “Don Hwán” as it would be in Spanish, but “Don Joó-an”.
          That bit of information, which I picked up thirty or forty years ago, flew right past my information bin and found its place in the weave of my knowledge, where the warp of linguistics meets the woof of Nineteenth Century Poetry.
          Byron makes the pronunciation clear in the poem’s first stanza:
 
I want a hero: an uncommon want,
          When every year and month sends forth a new one,
Till, after cloying the gazettes with cant,
          The age discovers he is not the true one;
Of such as these I should not care to vaunt,
          I'll therefore take our ancient friend Don Juan—
We all have seen him, in the pantomime,
Sent to the Devil somewhat ere his time.                                        (I, 1)
 
 
3. Don Juan is more like Candide than he is like Don Giovanni.
          Byron’s Don Juan is not a seducer; it is Don Juan’s personal qualities, starting with the fact that he is incredibly handsome, which are seductive.
          However, unlike Candide, Don Juan is not naive. (Naivety can be sexually attractive, but only briefly; soon it becomes annoying.)
          Don Juan, for all his glamorous good looks, is a gentleman through and through. His behavior is always exactly what is called for by the situation he finds himself in. He is as genial to the eunuch who is his keeper when he is the slave of a pasha as he is to the gentry gathered at an English country house when he is an envoy from Catherine the Great.
          (Byron, incidentally, is not as genial to the English gentry as his hero is, never losing an opportunity to poke fun at, satirize, or excoriate them.)
 
4. “Don Juan” is Shandyesque.
          Digressions about one thing or another on Byron’s mind make up at least half of “Don Juan”. They are usually, but not always, as good-humored as Sterne’s digressions.  
          Byron would have been unusual among 19th century writers if his work had not been affected by Sterne’s literary breakthrough in “Tristram Shandy”. The amiable attitude towards their readers typically assumed by 19th century Anglophone authors, from Austen to Carlyle—a willingness to pause the narrative for a chat, to share a felicity or vicissitude encountered while writing or, at a revelatory turn of plot or character, to take some time to opine on human nature or some more commonplace concern—is grounded in “Tristram Shandy”.
 
O Gold! Why call we misers miserable?
          Theirs is the pleasure that can never pall;
Theirs is the best bower anchor, the chain cable
          Which holds fast other pleasures great and small.  
Ye who but see the saving man at table,
          And scorn his temperate board, as none at all,
And wonder how the wealthy can be sparing,
Know not what visions spring from each cheeseparing.
 
Love or lust makes man sick, and wine much sicker;
          Ambition rends, and gaming gains a loss;
But making money, slowly first, then quicker,
          And adding still a little through each cross
(Which will come over things), beats love or liquor,
          The gamester’s counter, or the statesman’s dross.
O Gold! I still prefer thee unto paper,
Which makes bank credit like a bark of vapour.                          (XII, 3,4)
                                                                            
 
5. “Don Juan” is a work of improvisation.
         
I don’t know that there may be much ability
          Shown in this sort of desultory rhyme;
But there’s a conversational facility,
          Which may round off an hour upon a time.
Of this I’m sure at least, there’s no servility
          In mine irregularity of chime,
Which rings what’s uppermost of new or hoary,
Just as I feel the “Improvvisatore.”                                                (XV, 20)
                                                                            
          It might seem odd at first, to think of a work of 2,000 stanzas of ottava rima (ABABABCC) as improvisation. But the rigors of the form actually provide the framework which improvisation requires.
           (E. g.: Improvisation exercise: Write a stanza in ottava rima which includes the line, “The General Boon [sic], back-woodsman of Kentucky”.)
 
Of all men, saving Sylla the man-slayer,
          Who passes for in life and death most lucky,
Of the great names which in our faces stare,
          The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky,
Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere;
          For killing nothing but a bear or buck, he
Enjoy’d the lonely, vigorous, harmless days
Of his old age in wilds of deepest maze.                                       (VIII, 61)
                                                                            
 
          Jokey rhyming like Kentucky...buck, he, which proliferates throughout “Don Juan”, is usually found in improvisational humor.  
 
 
 
 

]]><![CDATA[There is No Literature]]>Mon, 04 Aug 2025 20:17:06 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/there-is-no-literature 
       With a few exceptions, the underlying subject of novels of the last decade, of the novels that win prizes and get read by book clubs, is a perceived social inequity—past, present or future.
       Literature always reflects the concerns of the readers of its time. Today that commitment is to social reform; it was political reform in the 1930’s.*
       What is different today is that the distinction between writers and readers has broken down. Thanks to a general concurrence in the reliability of two banal clichés
                                art is self-expression
                                anyone can be a writer
there is no 21st century literature. There is just 21st century writing.
       It’s interesting that although readers still can be moved by the beauty of an artwork or by a few bars of music, they have become oblivious to the beauties—just as breathtaking—of well-crafted writing. Yes, a reader can be moved, moved indeed, by a piece of writing—by the ideas, the images, the beliefs it expresses. How it is written is judged for efficacy, then dismissed. (Readers—who all know how to put one word after another—assume they are just as competent as the authors.) The words, the phrasing, the structure are only a medium—something you could actually brew up at home—for expressing the affirmation of themselves and of their view of the world that readers crave.
       It’s too bad this has happened—the eclipse of literature—at a time when people are obsessed with the injustice of life. If the fixation du jour were—oh, let’s say consciousness—The New York and London Reviews would be just as interesting as they were last century.


* [riff]       The greatness of the 19th century novel was based on the writers’ and readers’ shared worries about a complex social structure which, in that scientific age, didn’t make sense. The Athenian audience came to the Theater of Dionysis to share profound emotions with the Immortals. The hectic Roman ruling classes escaped into pastorale. And what about the Troubadours and their anemic idealization of eros? (No one knows where that came from.) The aestheticism of Wilde and friends, despite its ars gratia artis pretensions, was committed to drawing attention to human idiosyncrasies. It was the Elizabethans who internalized the doctrine of art for art’s sake, with results that remain unsurpassed.
 
 
]]><![CDATA[Falling in Love Again]]>Wed, 05 Jun 2024 19:58:26 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/falling-in-love-againPicture
        I am an Apollonian, one of those whom, in 1946, Auden warned Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa against, “who read the bible for its prose.” Generally, it is form*, not content, that gives me the greatest pleasure  (or displeasure) when I read. Occasionally I can get carried away by an intriguing plot, a sympathetic character or a clever idea that hadn’t occurred to me, in which case the importance of form, as long as it is competent, diminishes.
         Sometimes—most often when I’m reading short fiction—I feel as if I am present, that I am there with the author while her or she is writing the story and making important (to me, at least) formal decisions about what, at that moment, I am reading. It’s almost as if I were looking over his or her shoulder, kibitzing while he or she writes.
          “Very nice,” I’ll say (sometimes even aloud) or “Oh, no, that just doesn’t work.”
 
          For some months I’ve kept a book of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories (“Stories”, Vintage Classics, 1991) beside the chair where I go to sit and have a cigarette after dinner.
          I’ve read Mansfield’s stories on and off for many years. some of them more than once. This particular edition, which I have been going through at random, includes more stories than other Mansfield collections I’ve read. I’m not sure whether it’s a “Complete Stories”, but it has stories in it which I have not seen elsewhere. And I can understand how the editor/curators of other collections, wanting to present Mansfield at her best, might have felt that some weren’t up to snuff’s pristine standards.
         Less than perfect short stories can still be wonderful—as wonderful as perfect stories. And unlike perfect stories, they allow the author-at-work to show through. Even if the writing seems effortless, which is the most basic requirement of any piece of prose, the reader of a less than perfect story--this reader, anyway—can tell when an author is fumbling a bit, or being overambitious, or trying to say more than the prose can carry, or straining for originality, etc., etc., or has abandoned any hope of making its parts into a unified whole.
          In the light of the stories of Mansfield’s that were new to me, as I read those and re-read others, I began to sense Mansfield as a person—not the person of the biographies and Wikipedia (all that stuff happened long before I met her), but Mansfield as the person writing what I am reading.
          For some reason (not worth speculating about) I have become emotionally involved with Katherine Mansfield, the craftswomen as, a century ago, she created the story I'm reading. When she succeeds, I am proud of her; when she doesn't, I'm understanding; I admire what she was attempting to do.
 
          In her story, “Je ne parle pas Français”, Mansfield attempts to break through the boundaries of fiction set by Literature. (She was hardly the only author attempting this at the time.) She fails. (In my humble opinion, she fails because the tale itself isn't strong enough for a breakthrough.)
          It was while reading “Je ne parle pas Français” for the first time that I realized that I was no longer just an affectionate kibitzer leaning over Katherine Mansfield’s shoulder.
          I had fallen in love.
 
          How did I know?
          (1) I felt it, right here in my heart (a couple of inches above my physiological heart): the place where we always feel love.
          (2)  Usually, when I finish reading a story by a short story writer whose work I know pretty well (Chekhov, Saroyan, Kipling, Welty come to mind at this moment) I find myself comparing it with other stories by that writer and giving it a ranking. It is only a passing thought, accompanied by the awareness that it is complete nonsense and that I will probably change my mind the next time I read the story. I finished “Je ne parle pas Français” without experiencing that unfortunate critical tic, which has plagued me since college.

         Katherine Mansfield—not who she was (1888-1929), but who she is now, as I sit in the evening and read her—is my darling, my beloved. Whatever she writes is beautiful. It sometimes may be not so well-crafted, it sometimes may not even particularly move me—it is beautiful because I love her.
 
          That being said—I urge any of the happy few (half-a-dozen? I should be so lucky) who happen to have gotten me this far, to read “The Fly”, available here on the Katherine Mansfield Society’s admirable website. It’s just four pages and I promise you, you have never read anything like it.
 

]]><![CDATA[Bulletin from the Heart of Darkness: "No Man is an Island" is Not a Poem by John Donne]]>Fri, 17 May 2024 00:23:06 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/notes-from-the-heart-of-darkness-the-horror            “The horror!” I cry as we round another bend in the river that runs through the heart of darkness. I’ve bellowed it so often that no one pays attention. Nevertheless, what else is it but a horror, and a very great horror indeed, to see John Donne struggling in the relentless grip of the brambles of google that line the shore and to watch as he is crushed, twisted and transformed, before my very eyes, into Billy Collins?
 
          I recently discovered that two intelligent, well-educated adult acquaintances of mine (both with doctorates), believed that “No Man is an Island” is a poem by John Donne. 
          Shocked, I googled NO MAN IS AN ISLAND DONNE.  Six of the first ten website links, starting with allpoetry.com, and including the tenth, Mensa for Kids, displayed and discussed this “poem” by "John Donne."
 
        NO MAN IS AN ISLAND

        No man is an island,
        Entire of itself;
        Every man is a piece of the continent,
        A part of the main.
 
        If a clod be washed away by the sea,
        Europe is the less,
        As well as if a promontory were:
        As well as if a manor of thy friend's
        Or of thine own were.
 
        Any man's death diminishes me,
        Because I am involved in mankind.
        And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
        It tolls for thee.

        That is not a poem by John Donne. It is an anonymous simple-minded versification of a paragraph in a work of prose by Donne: Meditation XVII, from his book “Devotions” ("Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, and severall steps in my Sicknes", 1624). The book is a series of twenty-three Meditations, each accompanied by an Expostulation and Prayer.
 
      In 1621, Donne was appointed Dean of St. Paul’s by King James I. 
In those days, on Sunday mornings Londoners would go to hear sermons by fashionable preachers (Donne was one) for very much the same reason that a similar agglomeration of people today go to classical music concerts—in hopes of hearing a virtuosic and uplifting performance.
      Donne’s ”Devotions” are written in the same spirit as his sermons. (Donne’s sermons have been collected into fourteen volumes by The Oxford University Press. Numerous one-volume collections also are available.)  The Meditations in Donne’s “Devotions” are not personal meditations, like Marcus Aurelius’; their intent is to convey to readers various aspects of Christian faith.

      Here is the magnificent work of prose from which those namby-pamby verses found everywhere on the web were abstracted.
 
        MEDITATION XVII
 
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him.  And perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.  The church is catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she does, belongs to all.  When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too, and ingraffed into that body, whereof I am a member.  And when she buries a man, that action concerns me; all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another; as therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come; so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness.
 
There was a contention as far as a suit (in which, piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring first that rose earliest.  If we understand aright the dignity of this bell, that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours, by rising early, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.  The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.  Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises?  But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings?  But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?
 
No man is an island,  entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were;  any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
 
Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors.  Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.  No man hath afflicion enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.  If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels.  Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.  Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.
 
          The poetry of John Donne is something else entirely. With
striking metaphors, vibrant language, wit and intelligence, in poems
that make many of Shakespeare’s sonnets look pallid, Donne’s poetry–his secular poetry, at least–apotheosizes carnal love (otherwise known
as “sex”).       
          Donne was Dean of St. Paul’s, yes; but Donne also was the
Bard of Eros.
 
          I’ve learned to take most of the horrors of this heart of darkness, the 21st century, in stride. If viewed from the right angle, you can find enough comedy in them to offset your exasperation. But some things...
 
          Maybe it’s just me–you know what? I think it is just me– nevertheless, I am shocked that there are educated people, “well-read” middle-brows like myself, who consider themselves and are considered by others more-or-less conversant with Western Culture and English literature, who believe that the great metaphysical poet, John Donne, could have written this insipid piece of free verse:
 
        No man is an island,
        Entire of itself; etc. etc.
 
          Even more shocking is realizing that they lack the rudimentary familiarity with English poetry and the changes it has gone through since Chaucer to be able to know right off the bat that a poem in free verse, without rhyme or a consistent metrical pattern, could not have come from the pen of any English poet of the 17th century.
 
         Here are two poems by Donne. I hope they will make you smile with pleasure, and smile especially broadly if this is your first time reading them.
 
 
WOMAN'S CONSTANCY
 
Now thou has loved me one whole day,
Tomorrow when you leav’st, what wilt thou say?
Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?
            Or say that now
We are not just those persons which we were?
Or, that oaths made in reverential fear
Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?
Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,
So lovers’ contracts, images of those,
Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?
            Or, your own end to justify,
For having purposed change and falsehood, you
Can have no way but falsehood to be true?
Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could
            Dispute and conquer, if I would,
            Which I abstain to do,
For by tomorrow, I may think so too.
 
 
ELEGY XX: TO HIS MISTRESS GOING TO BED
 
Come, madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labor, I in labor lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown, going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th' hill's shadow steals.
Off with that wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow:
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love's hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's angels used to be
Received by men; thou, Angel, bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's Paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite:
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
 
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America! my new-found-land,
My kingdom, safest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blest am I in this discovering of thee!
To enter in these bonds is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
 
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls, cast in men's views,
That when a fools' eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
For lay-men, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see revealed. Then, since that I may know,
As liberally as to a midwife, show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance due to innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first; why than,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?
 

]]><![CDATA[A misprint on page 248 of the Penguin edition of Compton-Burnett's "Parents and Children"]]>Fri, 03 Nov 2023 18:26:57 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/a-misprint-on-page-248-of-the-penguin-edition-of-compton-burnetts-parents-and-children         There is a compositor’s error in the Penguin edition of Ivy Compton-Burnett’s “Parents and Children” which is duplicated in Google Books. A line of text on page 248 is repeated and substituted for a missing line of text.
          I had a tough time finding the missing line. Hopefully, search engines will find this post and other readers who noticed the error will not have as much trouble as I.
 
Ivy Compton-Burnett: “Parents and Children”
Penguin edition, p. 248:
           Nevill detached himself from Regan, as if this would aid his father’s view.
            Nevill detached himself from Regan, as if this would aid his arms and laughed and whimpered alternately...
 
Correct text:
          Nevill detached himself from Regan, as if this would aid his father’s view.
          Fulbert came forward and picked him up, and he sat in his arms and laughed and whimpered alternately...
 
           

]]><![CDATA[A Pop-Hegelian Re-examination of the Brawley Initiative]]>Sat, 30 Sep 2023 18:52:46 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/a-pop-hegelian-re-examination-of-the-brawley-initiative
Picture
          The historical importance of Tawana Brawley can hardly be underestimated (even though it usually is).
          Single-handedly, with none of the tools we now take for granted and without the hope, available now to one and all, of marshaling a worldwide cohort, Brawley overturned the dominion of binary reality.
          Once hemmed in by The True and The False, humankind has emerged into a glorious, multifaceted New Reality, and it’s time we all take a moment to say,
          Thank you, Tawana Brawley.
             Thank you for suffering isolation, humiliation and abuse in order to lead us out of a reality that was a prison into the New Reality which we have made into a comfortable home.”
          And now, a quiet "thank you" to Al Sharpton.
          Thank you, Reverend Sharpton for that final, heartrending swansong of the Age of Chivalry (“How could I abandon a young girl?”), for your eloquent expression of the unconditional devotion owed by any worthy knight (m.) to any damsel in distress (f.), even one who was bringing down the Temple of Right and Wrong about our ears.
        And Hail!
        Hail... but not Farewell.
        Reverend Al Sharpton's hologram may be viewed in the Museum of Classical Reality app (PayPal accepted).


                                                                                                            Need Help?     
]]><![CDATA[An E-Mail Conversation]]>Wed, 09 Aug 2023 17:46:43 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/an-e-mail-conversation 
          An e-mail correspondence between Samuel Reifler, the revered judge of the Drapers Guild Short Story Contest, and Library of America Customer Service.
         (As a matter of fairness, since Library of America Customer Service has not had the same opportunity, we rejected Mr. Reifler’s request to tweak the text of his e-mails, not even to the extent of correcting the grievous misspelling of an author’s name. --- D. Z.)  

 
         SENT: July 29, 2023 4:12 PM
         FROM: Samuel Reifler
         TO: LOA Customer Service  
         SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
       
         Dear Library of America,
       
         Quite some years ago, I e-mailed you asking if and when you were planning to publish any of William Saroyan's works. I received a swift reply (now lost in the ether) that said you were considering soon putting out a book of Saroyan's short stories.
        Nothing.
        It beggars belief that a non-profit publisher calling itself "The Library of America," with the compendious catalogue you have amassed, continues to neglect such a quintessentially American author. (Perhaps you are encountering copyright problems, in which case, my apologies for fuming at you like this.)
         I am in the midst of reading "Love, Here is My Hat". The quality of these stories—at least in terms of your mandate—is something other than the measure of how "good" (or "bad") they are. The atmosphere of the writing in these early Saroyan stories is the same as that disconcerting redolence - loose-limbed, unabashed, informal, coy and sincere at the same time - that lets a gathering of Europeans, or of literati of any stripe, know that a grinning American has just ambled into the room.
        Think Lincoln's backwoodsman persona, think not Mark Twain, but "the American" as characterized by Twain. Saroyan—at least early Saroyan—is the real deal. What's the problem?
       
         Yours,
         Samuel Reifler
      
                                      ~

         SENT: July 31, 2023 4:12 PM
         FROM: LOA Customer Service  
         TO: Samuel Reifler
         SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
      
         Dear Mr. Reifler:
       
       Thank you for your inquiry. We have a Saroyan project in development, but we need to get significant pre-publication funding to proceed, which has not yet been forthcoming.
        If you know of any devotees of his with deep pockets, do send them our way!
       
         LOA Customer Service
 
                                        ~

          SENT: August 5, 2023 4:12 PM
          FROM: Samuel Reifler
         TO: LOA Customer Service  
         SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
     
         Dear LOA Customer Service,
     
         I had no idea that's how it works!
         I assume you've tried the William Saroyan Society. https://williamsaroyansociety.org
         And, just a matter of curiosity: How much pre-publication funding would you need to put out a Library of America "Samuel Reifler, Selected Fiction 1963-2023", 250-300 pages?
     
       Yours,
       Samuel Reifler

                                                 ~
 
          SENT: August 7, 2023 4:12 PM
          FROM: LOA Customer Service  
          TO: Samuel Reifler
          SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
 
       We don't publish series volumes of fewer than 700 pages, unfortunately. 1000 pages is our median.

                                      ~

         SENT: August 7, 2023 4:12 PM
         FROM: Samuel Reifler
         TO: LOA Customer Service  
         SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
      
          Dear LOA Customer Service,
 
       Thanks for the info. I think I could fill up 700 pages. So, how much pre-publication funding would you need to put out a Library of America "Samuel Reifler, Selected Fiction 1963-2023", 700 pages?

                                                     ~

          SENT: August 7, 2023 8:27 PM
          FROM: LOA Customer Service  
         TO: Samuel Reifler
         SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
 
         Well, we'd have to consider the importance of the work, the other writers influenced by it, the market for it, whether other editions are still in print, rights considerations, etc.
         We don't do pay-for-play, in other words.
 
                                                      ~

          SENT: August 8, 2023 5:12 PM
          FROM: Samuel Reifler
         TO: LOA Customer Service  
         SUBJECT: W. Saroyan
 
         Dear LOA Customer service,
 
          I hate to break it to you, but it was a joke. To tell the truth, I thought you’d get it right away. 
          Samuel Reifler in the Library of America? Are you kidding?
          Well, yes.
          Still, that’s not to say that I understand why, with the criteria you list below [i. e., above - D. Z.], you continue to neglect William Saroyan, who is the subject of at least a dozen published biographies and appraisals, whose style (“Saroyanesque” is a word) has influenced numerous writers (Thornton Wilder, Jack Kerouac, Gene Shephard, et. al.) and whose 40+ books, countless short stories in periodicals, 20 plays (one won a Pulitzer), and screenplays (one won a Film Academy Screenwriting Award)  had an audience exponentially greater than the combined audiences of Adrienne Kennedy, Nancy Hale and Charles Portis, relatively unimportant in American literature compared to Saroyan and, unlike Saroyan, having had little or no influence on American culture, whom you did not neglect.
          I don’t get it.
          Uh... wait a minute. Is there a Charles Portis Foundation or some other deep pocket that helped put out the Portis Collected Works?
          Say it isn’t so.
          And even if it is so, as from your e-mail it does seem to be... the works of William Saroyan are of such a stature that they should not require paid patronage before being included in the Library of America’s catalogue.
          I bet those crazy Armenians out in Fresno would have shelled out if it had been for a book in the Library of Armenia.
          But, despite the William Saroyan Society, Saroyan was a quintessentially American writer—in style, in outlook; even his attitude—sentimental, nostalgic—toward the Armenian diaspora, which was the subject of some of his most popular books, was quintessentially American.
          Anyway, thanks for the fun-filled e-mail exchange.
 
Yours truly,
Sam Reifler
 
 

]]><![CDATA[The Music Scene - This Year's Singers]]>Sun, 21 May 2023 18:01:39 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/the-music-scene-this-years-singers         Our singers are superb this year, perhaps as  compensation for the sorry lot of last year.
      At Graves’ Corner, this Spring, we have a strikingly inventive young singer whose exuberance seems fueled by a mischievous yen to break the rules. We have heard quite a few innovative singers in our time, but never one like this—whose style is nothing at all like that of the established avant-garde whose method is to infiltrate a song, then transform it from within.  
      We heard a fine example of this classic experimental technique last year (although not as often as we would have liked). It was not a catbird of ours, but one who performed in The East Woods and, unfortunately, did not think it necessary to burst into song just because we were taking our walk then and there. Also, on one of those infrequent occasions when we did have the privilege of hearing him, the experience was marred by the yapping of a hyperactive terrier in little red leather socks. The East Woods catbird had a strong, straightforward voice which he could make ring out if he wanted it to, and sang with so much confidence that you weren’t aware at first how far he was straying from accepted tropes.
       This year’s young devil-may-care rebel at Graves’ Corner is something else entirely: a prodigy of artistic license, he has made an important breakthrough which we expect will become a feature of cutting-edge performances in years to come.   
      He starts off with six, eight, maybe even ten repetitions—note for note—of the basic eight-note figure at the heart of all catbird song. It’s monotonous, but he doesn’t care; it’s as if he is saying, “I’m thinking. Don’t bother me.” Then suddenly he drops down into a series of muttering, contemplative riffs on fragments of classic tunes. Between one riff and the next he inserts an extended, suspenseful silence (is he still there?) that sometimes lasts longer than the music that preceded it. Each of these silences is relieved—just once or twice, no more—by the short raucous challenge which is the pro-forma intro to every catbird performance. No catbird, before our singer in Graves’ Corner, has included that primeval, toneless squawk as an element of his song.
      The music at Glider Grove this year is the antithesis of the experimentation going on in Graves’ Corner. The performer at the Grove, obviously a mature bird, has a clear, open voice which he personalizes with an understated echo effect. It is an interesting presentation which engages the listener’s attention enough for subtle moderations in his variations—a quarter-tone shift in a tremolo, an elusive syncopation—to have significant aesthetic impact. The overall effect at Glider Grove this year is one of eloquent melancholy.
      The singers of 2023 are head and shoulders above those of 2022, who were disappointing, to say the least. The one in Graves’ Corner always sounded like there were other places he’d rather be and better things for him to do. And at Glider Grove we were blessed with a songster who evidently had flunked Embellishment 101. In his hesitancy and confusion he sometimes gave up right in the middle of a song. But he’d start right over, and we gave him credit for that.
      For a while we thought we had a third singer, at Gazebo Point, but we soon realized it was our hapless friend from Glider Grove. He would follow us out there, perch on a dead cherry limb in the swamp and try once more to get it right.
 
 


]]><![CDATA[Ephemera - Unpublished Letters]]>Sun, 07 May 2023 18:57:55 GMThttps://www.drapersguild.com/de-blah-blah-blague/ephemera-unpublished-letters                                                                                                      To Emma Smith, April 2023
 

It is always a pleasure to read
        a well-written well-reasoned critique of
        a work with which one is
        not only
                familiar
        but which holds
a special place in one’s heart
 
                        Thank you for
                        your exe-
                        gesis on
                        Twelfth Night
 
                        As always
the pleasure to be found in
        a meaty
        formalist
        essay
        based on a close reading of something in the canon
is derived
not from acquiring
        a deeper understanding
        of the author’s intentions
                        Shakespeare would have
                        been as bemused by your analysis
                                of Twelfth Night
                        as by a discussion of
                        Hamlet’s Oedipus complex
but from the intricacies
        of the critic’s thought
        and the wide-ranging references
which weave them together
 
        It was a bit disappointing
                but hardly surprising
        to find that your intention
              like that of some of the foundational practitioners of  
              formalist criticism                       
        was to discover a connection
between a canonical work and
a currently fashionable point of view
        taken for granted as
dogma
        and therefore as
universally applicable
 
                Back then it was
        Marxism or
        psychoanalysis  
now it is
                and man oh man I am sorry
                        simply as a conservative
                        when it comes to the English language
                to have to seriously
                inscribe this word
Wokeism.
 
        Nevertheless
I must thank you again
not only for
        your lucid argumentation
but for
liberating from obscurity a compelling
Shakespearian passage upholding
the right of asylum
                        from Thomas More
 
If it was
        written by Shakespeare
                and let’s say it was
then
yes
        Shakespeare may indeed have had a
        passionate
        appreciation
                of that right
 
But if that is the case
he
        evidently
felt no need to
curb its expression
        no need
                for example
        to bury his enthusiasm
        in opaque allusions in
        Twelfth Night
        where it might be exhumed
                centuries later
        by an intrepid literary archeologist

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