Saturday, July 26, 2014

SINATRA HIT BY EGGS

I still don't like this book about Sinatra. But I'm still reading it, so credit where credit is due. I just read the part where this kid named Alexander J. Dorogokupetz is sick of all the girls loving Sinatra so much, so he goes to a Sinatra concert and pelts him with raw eggs: "'I vowed to put an end to this monotony of two years of consecutive swooning,' Dorogokupetz said... 'I took aim and threw... it hit him... his mouth was open... I felt good.'" I don't know whether that last series of ellipses is from the original newspaper account or comes courtesy of the author. If that's the author's edit I have to acknowledge his skill. "I took aim and threw... it hit him... his mouth was open... I felt good." That's the best prose in the book so far! I thought I was reading Céline for a minute, and in fact throwing eggs at Frank Sinatra is something a Céline character would do. Maybe the credit goes to Alexander J. Dorogokupetz. The author also has the good instinct to quote the headline SINATRA HIT BY EGGS, which sounds like something from a Frank O'Hara poem... or at least has the punch of LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! from that one Frank O'Hara poem. "I took aim and threw... it hit him... his mouth was open... I felt good."