Neither Nor

Believe it or not, this Polly Adler bio mentions GREEN ACRES. Why wouldn't you believe it? You've never heard of Polly Adler and you've never heard of GREEN ACRES. And yet, for that very reason, it is true that you are capable of neither believing the above revelation nor disbelieving it, any more than you could believe or disbelieve a phrase like "Ikdflakdhfadkfjahdkfjh? Hlkjdkfh 'oifjskfj' sjhdfkjh!" The allusion to which I refer does perfectly illustrate what I have come to call (just now) "the GREEN ACRES problem," for the biographer can think of no better way to describe the show than as a "lowbrow classic," making sure, as part of an ongoing, if possibly unconscious, conspiracy among our nation's higher institutions to never, never let GREEN ACRES receive praise without some sort of distancing qualification, even though I have proven (for example, with my famous "GREEN ACRES or Ionesco?" quiz, which, though rejected for publication by McSweeney's, remains a legitimate brain puzzler, a fact that should be highly instructive) that there is no shame, no "guilty pleasure" aspect to GREEN ACRES that need give the conscientious egghead reason to hide appreciation of it under a bushel of equivocation, to paraphrase Matthew 5:15. If viewing this on your laptop, Laura Lippman, please "click" on the label "GREEN ACRES" below for more reflections along the same line. The mobile version of the "blog" is sadly lacking in such illuminating extras.

Alien Corpuscles

Hi, Sara! (I think Sara is reading the "blog" now. And just the other day I received a thoughtful note from the very nice fellow who used to book me for readings at the Metairie Library, which [the email] indicated in passing that he has been keeping up with the "blog." For a long time, McNeil and I have assumed that he [McNeil] was the only one still reading it, but if Sara is really onboard, that instantly triples my numbers.) ANYHOW! Sara, you will be interested to learn that I once wondered here whether Deadman, a superhero who can cram his soul into other people's bodies, would be able to possess Superman, who is not in essence a human person, but rather a freaky alien from a distant world. Well! One of these old comic books that Tom gave me answers the question, as Deadman does slip, without seeming difficulty, into Superman's skin. It also addresses my biggest concern - in life! - in a satisfyingly direct manner, as something turns out to be a little off with the possession, leading Deadman to conclude that Superman's "alien corpuscles" (his phrase, not mine) are to blame. This is off the subject, if there is one, but on the next page, someone engages in the hopeless task of trying to take out Superman with a wrecking ball. Superman says (and please note, Sara, dialogue in comic books is written in all caps, or was, when I was but a youthful, towheaded imp) "YOU'RE A REAL 'SWINGER,' WHOEVER YOU ARE... SO HAVE A 'BALL!'" Then he smashes the guy with his own wrecking ball, the ultimate insult. Who does he think he is with a crack like that, Arnold Schwarzenegger? Ha ha ha! Oh, Superman! (Almost the title of a Laurie Anderson song.) All right. Also in this issue, Deadman is addressed by three giant owls, who say things like "EVEN IN THE COLD HOUSE OF DEATH, YOU ARE STILL A BOILING CAULDRON!" But this is a WORLD'S FINEST comic, and I have already catalogued that publication according to its owl usage, so further cataloguing in the form of this "post" is just a little icing on the cake, and not strictly necessary. Familiarize yourself with these rules, Sara! (I close by adding that the gigantic nature of the owls is nothing more than a trick of forced perspective. When carefully considered, they appear to be regular owls, excepting their ability to talk to ghosts.)

Doom and So On

I was chatting with Megan this morning through the medium of email about a Mark Rothko book I picked up at Square Books the other day. Its subject is the paintings he did on paper rather than canvas, and it features many vivid color-plate reproductions. Rothko is quoted in the introductory essay, of course, often saying the kind of stuff that Megan and I are partial to, as I am sure you will recall ("click" here) from the time we got all in a tizzy over something Bellini said about opera. I'll give you a couple of examples! 1. "I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on." 2. "If a thing is worth doing once, it is worth doing over and over again." End of examples. Moving on to other artistic matters, a lot of these old comic books that Tom Franklin brought over are horror comics, a genre I read a little bit of as a kid, but not too much, after a story in either HOUSE OF MYSTERY or HOUSE OF SECRETS (I think) about a guy who turned out to have goat legs shook me up pretty bad. Which brings up something I've noticed... these old comic books, and not just the horror ones, either, really do have an awful lot of the devil in them, just like the Sunday school teachers used to say! I was wrong to scoff! But I'm sure you've guessed what I'm getting at. So, I was reading this one THE WITCHING HOUR last night, and there's a story in it about "coffin inspectors," which I didn't know was a job. You can learn a lot from the old comic books that Tom Franklin gives you! The coffin inspectors are marching along in the first panel, singing a song that goes like this (and, once again, I quote): "OOHOOHHOOO OH, HO! OH, HO! WHEN THE MOON IS GIBBOUS AND THE OWL CRIES FOUL... THEN WE'LL DIG AND SHARE THE WEALTH OF THOSE WHO NO LONGER DRINK... THE RED, RED WINE... OF LIIIIIIIIIFE!!!" I can't say that's much of a song, but it does have an owl in it. Yes, there are eight I's in LIIIIIIIIFE, I counted them several times in the interest of accuracy. Oh, and I get it now, they're graverobbers. Why, there's no such thing as a coffin inspector after all! In my defense, Ace and Angela came over last night for a special screening of Dr. Theresa's favorite TV show, QUINCY, M. E., and afterward, tuckered out from all the Quincy enjoyment, I did no more than glance at the first panel (after reading a previous story in the same issue, which I had trouble following, about the devil attacking a Swiss town - it ended as abruptly as SIMON OF THE DESERT! [which also featured the devil]) just enough to notice the owl before succumbing to slumber with a Quincy-like smile on my cherubic face. In conclusion, I don't mean to brag, but TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED does have more owls in it, just as I predicted. If the numbers hold up, there should be an owl every 4.5 pages. One more thing. Goat legs (see above) make me think of a line that Dr. Theresa and I are always quoting to one another. It comes from one of those "true stories of the paranormal" shows. They were interviewing a couple of guys from Texas, I think, who saw a creature in the woods with "the head of a goat and the body of a jacked-up man." That's it. We say it a lot. Try it out at home! "The head of a goat and the body of a jacked-up man."

Guff

I've given the New York Times a lot of guff over the years for their stubbon refusal to understand anything at all about the sitcom GREEN ACRES. It is only fitting, then, that I acknowledge the review they printed today of the TV show EVIL, in which the reviewer makes what I have determined after careful examination to be a neutral-to-positive allusion to GREEN ACRES. But! In the selfsame review, Roger Miller's uniquely sophisticated body of work is labeled with the regrettable and belittling umbrella term "novelty songs." Oh, Gray Lady! Why must you give with one hand and take with the other?

My Secret

A lot of people ask me... and by "people," I mean hypothetical beings from an alternate universe... "Jack," their disembodied voices plead, "how do you decide what to read?" The answer is simple: the obituaries, of course! All of my ideas about everything come from obituaries. A New York Times obituary is how I came across an anthology called TECHNICIANS OF THE SACRED. On the first page of the actual text (a distinction I make because of the three - three! - prefaces) there is an owl. My instincts in this matter having been honed to the finest of points, I feel confident in saying there will be several more owls before I am done. In fact, screech-owls, as distinct from regular everyday owls, make an appearance on the same page, in the same poem from the Cahto people of northern California. It is, if I am reading it correctly, which I am not, a list of things that were not there before the beginning of time. "Owls were not they say." Turns out a lot of animals and things weren't around back then. "Then clouds were not they say. Fog was not they say. It didn't appear they say. Stars were not they say. It was very dark." The last line has an echo in the last line of a story in my second book, which (the coincidence) gave me a good feeling, though you might justiably object, if you existed, which you don't, "It was very dark? I bet a lot of people have written that sentence." Well, it works at the end of the story, or is intended to, in the same way that it provides a satisfying resting place for the poem. The sentence in my story goes, if I recall it correctly, "Pretty soon it was dark, and between the lit cities it was very dark." I remember it chiefly because I got a rejection from some very high-toned magazine (I can't remember which, but it was a big one), on the bottom of which the editor or reader grudgingly scrawled, "The last sentence was good." Ha ha! Which reminds me: the other day it dawned on me that all my books are out of print. Someone who should know (Richard Howorth) told me it's not true, but I admit to lingering doubts, even in the face of his unquestionable expertise as the former mayor of the town and, more significantly, the owner of Square Books. Anyway, before Richard gave me that comfort, the notion came to me to organize an event in which I read from my out of print books (all my books). I thought I could sell whatever copies I could scrounge up around the house at bargain basement prices. Then I realized we have just one copy of SWEET BANANAS, of which there were not that many copies to begin with. So I looked around the "internet" and found exactly one for sale, and I bought it. Now, I wondered with some anticipation what would be on the cover, because, as you would not recall even did you exist, each copy had a different cover, featuring the beginning sentence (or so, as we shall see) of each of the novel's 365 chapters. Well! I was delighted, despite all my failures as a writer, as enumerated in part above, to unwrap the package and discover by wild and statistically unlikely happenstance my favorite chapter of the book staring at me from the cover. (See above.) Yes, that's a whole chapter, just so you know what you're missing. I think it's Mary Miller's favorite, too. She mentioned it in ELECTRIC LITERATURE as one of her favorite sentences. It is churlish of me to note in the face of such generosity that it is two sentences.

How I Read Now

I take my membership in the 2-person book club very seriously, as will be confirmed when I tell you that I moved JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS into a secondary position so that I could more faithfully engage with the biography of Polly Adler. Look her up! I don't have time for your lazy ways. Having finished that Marilynne Robinson book, I now read JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS for 10 minutes a day, 5 minutes at a time, while I wait to take my blood pressure. I make it through an average of four pages a day, a pace to which the book makes itself strangely amenable. I first noticed while reading THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN that Thomas Mann is very interested in time - its reality and its narrative uses and representation. That's a great oversimplication. To keep going in the same simplistic direction, the only direction I know, Mann is interested in how an hour can pass like molasses, while a decade can disappear in a blink. It is for that reason, I assume, that my readings of his mammoth text, though brief and greatly separated, feel as if they are taking place in a single unending and languorous haze. It may further interest you to know that I believe I was pronouncing "Thomas Mann" correctly for most of my life, and then, recently, I started thinking I was doing it wrong, so I started pronouncing it a new way, but now, whenever I say it out loud, someone says, "Who?" and I say "Thomas Mann" and they say "Oh..." Then they look at me like that one emoji with a straight line for a mouth. (See also, the time a smart-alecky undergrad corrected my pronunciation of "whilst" in front of the whole class, even though I was saying it right and he turned out to be nothing but an ill-informed little and, as I recall it, wealthy jerk with enviable golden locks. On the other hand, what is this bitterness? I am sure he turned out to be a very nice young man and he did demonstrate considerable ability in the classroom. His single flaw, now that I really contemplate it, was his unwarranted confidence about how to pronounce "whilst." There are worse crimes! God bless you, the handsome and polished pebble in my shoe! See also, then, the time I mispronounced the name of Ashton Kutcher, and was justifiably laughed out of the classroom and made to hang my head in dirty shame.) Oh! But what I came here to say is that though (as I have reiterated countlessly) I am under no obligation to tell you about more than one owl in a book, and I have already told you about two owls in JOSEPH AND HIS BROTHERS, old Potiphar was just sitting in his special room where he sits as the sun goes down, and behind his head as he sits in a silent, noble fashion, there is artwork representing owls, falcons, and ducks, I believe in that order, but the book is all the way downstairs, under my blood pressure machine, so I guess we'll never know.

Important

By now you are intimately familiar with my new habit of reading old comic books at the close of each busy day. Among the most recent delivery from Tom Franklin was nestled one about Zatanna, the superhero who is also a magician. As you can see in the illustration above, there was an allusion to Phyllis Diller in the old Zatanna comic book. This is important information that I need to relay to McNeil right away. As he is, for all practical purposes, the only person still reading the "blog," I believe that my mission has already been accomplished. But I am going to check in with him privately as well, because I also need to tell him about a double entendre accidentally (?) made by the Flash in the same comic. It is too saucy to be printed here on the "blog." Now, I am sure you will never forget the time I found an owl in an Alan Moore Swamp Thing comic book. And I know you feel as strongly as I do about the time I found out Jan Potocki thought he was a werewolf. (You know, you can "click" on all these "links" to refresh your memory of these matters.) The latter incident caused me, somewhat indirectly, to purchase a copy of Potocki's novel THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA from Square Books. I could almost swear I already had a copy of it at some remote time in the past, but that mystery is forever shrouded in the mists of my mellow golden yesterdays. Anyhow! This paperback of THE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN SARAGOSSA features as its cover the very same Goya etching lovingly reproduced in Swamp Thing, bestowing the presence of its own scary owl upon the later work. Whether there is an owl in the text of Potocki's novel, I have not yet had an opportunity to ascertain. However, my happiness remains unmuted, as the coincidence allows me to inform you that one of the old comic books I read last night in bed happened to be a pre-Moore Swamp Thing, in which some punk-rock vampires used hollowed-out pinball machines as coffins. One punk-rock vampire explained the uncanny similarities between being in a mosh pit and his existence as one of the bloodthirsty undead, a monologue that put me in mind of the fear of beatniks exhibited in pop art of an even earlier era.

Look

I gave updates on this story on social media, back before I quit it like the biggest hero this world has ever seen. Somehow, though, I never mentioned it here, in the lonely spot that no one ever visits. But around 10 years ago, my dad started to spend most weekends building a car from scratch, a car that came from his own brain. I'm not sure I'm getting this across. Like, first there was nothing. Then there's a bolt or a screw or a spark plug, and eventually there's a whole engine, and then, bit by bit, there's a car around it. He just decided to make a car, and he made a car. And now (see above) it's almost finished! Furthermore, he's going to race it, an idea I can't say my mom is too thrilled about. I mean, I'm 60, so, if you think about it, you'll come to the conclusion that my parents are older than me.

The Owl of Conceit

I called it! When the 2-person book club began reading this biography of Polly Adler by Debby Applegate, I said to myself, "Jack," I said, "If this book has an owl in it at all, it will be a so-called 'night owl.'" And what do you know? Applegate gives us "night owls lingered over a bowl of matzoh ball soup." Right again, Pendarvis! You're a genius. But that's not all. After I put down Polly Adler, I picked up my nightly tonic, an old comic book. Of course you recall how Tom Franklin brought me some old comic books in the hospital, and some more old comic books when I got home, and soon I was buying my own old comic books like a deranged fiend. But what you didn't know is that Tom brought me even more old comics books after that! He's like a golden goose that keeps laying old comic books and I promise never to open him up to see how it works, as in the old fairy tale. That story taught me a lesson! Anyhow, I was reading an old comic book from Tom's most recent delivery, a story about a character of whom, like El Diablo and The Shroud before him, I had never heard. And this lively fellow's name was The Viking Prince. So this here Viking Prince meets a princess, and this here princess says, "I WILL NEVER MARRY THIS -- THIS -- OWL OF CONCEIT!" So I shut my old comic book and lay there thinking my wise thoughts. And I thought and thought, and the thought came to me that the hilarious idea of an owl of conceit reminded me of a book I read at least a few times as a teenager, a book called THE PLATYPUS OF DOOM AND OTHER NIHILISTS, and I lay there trying to remember any of the contents, of which only a salacious detail or two came back to me. I still have my copy! As you can see in the photo above, it resides on the drugstore-style paperback spinner I have right here in my home office where I type these mesmerizing words that appear before your wondering eyes like magic. Okay, now I must move on to a spoiler for one of the stupid word puzzles in the New York Times. I know people are serious about their stupid New York Times word puzzles, so if you get up every morning and do a stupid New York Times word game puzzle (not the crossword) like some kind of glasses-wearing egghead, I advise you to stop reading now. All right! Here we go. Have you stopped reading? Ha ha! You don't exist! And if you did, you wouldn't have read this far anyway. So, one of the producers of a secret project I can't tell you about got me going on this particular stupid New York Times word game puzzle thing. So, you must recall that I spent the night tossing and turning and thinking about the platypus. Not something that comes to mind often! Not to my mind. This morning, I get up and do my stupid New York Times puzzle word game puzzle game puzzle thing. And one of the answers is... TRADEMARKS OF A PLATYPUS. In conclusion, I leafed through my old copy of PLATYPUS OF DOOM and there is a cigarette ad in the middle of it. That's how it used to be! I don't think my grandfather owned a book without a cigarette ad in the middle.

The Belt of Dorian McNeil

McNeil has been following all the recent developments about my new belt with great interest. He was reminded, in fact, of certain details about his own belt, which I quote here in part: "I have this belt I wear every day. I bought it in Toronto in October 2004. It shows no signs of wearing out before the fall, so I feel comfortable saying it will last 20 years... On the inside of the belt, if that's what you call it, there was a sticker with a maple leaf on it. I guess to let everyone know who took off my pants that my belt was made in Canada. That sticker only began to fade after about 15 years, and now has completely disappeared. But the belt still looks brand new. It's like a magic belt. Or maybe as I get older, my belt gets younger." Obviously, the title I bestowed on this "post" only works if the picture had stayed young while Dorian Gray got older... which is how pictures work in real life, which wouldn't have made old Oscar much of a story. But "The McNeil of Dorian Belt" didn't sound right.

Bible Belt

I have something else to say about that belt. So, it had a price tag on it, of course, and this price tag was the size and shape of a fortune cookie fortune. When I clipped off the price tag, I saw that it (the price tag, not the belt) had a Bible verse printed on the back of it! (See also, the bottle of water that had a Bible verse printed on it.) Now, the verse was a translation from what I took to be the New English Bible or such. That doesn't cut it around here! So I'm going to give it to you from the King James Version. As everyone knows, I'm a KJV stan. "Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye." What that has to do with the price of belts, I'm not sure. Well! As long as I have you here, McNeil read a book with an owl in it. I am sure you recall that McNeil has been going through his grandfather's old books. Before he found the owl, McNeil was primarily struck by the fact that the detective in the novel he is reading is, quote, "naked a whole lot in this book - just walking around in a dead guy's apartment talking to cops and reporters and whoever wanders in. Weird." The owl, he tells me, appears in the guise of a character who "grinned owlishly." Naturally, this put me in mind of the Travis McGee novel in which someone is said to be "smiling... like some kind of owl." Once again I find myself forced to state my belief that owls do not smile or grin. What else? Oh! McNeil has an idea for a comic book about a character he has created, Professor Moon Menace. I hesitate to reveal too much about Professor Moon Menace, but his name gives you a fair idea of some of his interests.

Lightly Fictionalized Belt

I thought you'd want to know that Dr. Theresa bought me a new belt! The last time I bought a belt was 2015, as I know because I bought it to wear to the Peabody Awards, for which reason that belt was lightly fictionalized in Chapters 67 and 312 of my novel SWEET BANANAS. How could anyone ever forget that belt and all the adventures we had together, considering how I immortalized it so much? Now I will tell you something really remarkable. As I was doing the necessary belt research for this "post," I discovered that in 2008, I had made a joke here about nominating my own reflections on the subject of belts for a Peabody Award. Little did I know then that a mere seven years later I'd be going to the real Peabody Awards wearing an actual belt. In other literary news, I was reading an old comic book last night, and a man traveled back in time, where he scared off a panther with his modern cigarette lighter. I don't think it would work, but that's not the point. I just want to say that there was a whole section in my cigarette lighter book (cleverly titled CIGARETTE LIGHTER) devoted to the common narrative ploy of people going back in time and scaring people or animals with their modern cigarette lighters. This old comic book might have supplied yet another example that no one would care about. But life is filled with such regrets! In conclusion, I am sure you recall my "blog" post from 2007, about the time I lost weight so Dr. Theresa (who was not even a Dr. at the time!) took a hammer and a nail and made me a fresh homemade belt hole from scratch. Well, I've lost weight again and this time she was able to buy me a new belt. But a part of me misses the olden times when Dr. Theresa spent her days and nights making new holes in old belts like a tireless magical elf.