The History of Literature

Never thought I'd run across the phrase "She was going to turn me into an owl one time" in an Elmore Leonard novel, but I did... twice! The second time, it's "gonna" instead of "going to," the kind of distinction you notice only if you've wasted a good portion of your life cataloging every time a book has an owl in it. Anyway, after I read that (in KILLSHOT), I got in bed and came by coincidence to the part of THE ODYSSEY where the guys get turned into pigs. That's the history of literature for you, from THE ODYSSEY to Elmore Leonard: people getting turned into owls or pigs. What else have I been reading lately? Some Jack Kerouac journals that McNeil gave me for my birthday. He (Kerouac, not McNeil) is struggling to finish writing his novel THE TOWN AND THE CITY... which made me recall one of Dr. Theresa's former bosses, who told me that her favorite Kerouac novel was THE TOWN AND THE CITY, so I marched right down to Square Books and bought a paperback of it and stuck it on a shelf and never read it. Well, after reading some of those journal entries, I took THE TOWN AND THE CITY off the shelf, opened it, and the receipt fell out... May 27, 2013. And the pages of the book had turned brown with age! Look. That's not necessary. Once, when Dr. Theresa was still just an undergrad, we went to her Latin teacher's house, where fruit punch was served! And her Latin teacher brought out a book from the 15th century for us to pass around, and the pages were as white as snow! So my guess is that the people at Harcourt were like, "What are we going to do with this cheap paper we have lying around? Let's give it to the beatniks, they like that kind of crap." Related: there's a blurb from Johnny Depp on the back cover - ?! - in which the word "Kerouac" is misspelled... with two c's! "Yeah, I saw it. The beatniks won't care." (See also: the cheap glue used by Scribner.)

Sixteen Cucumbers

Mom came to town for a visit. I brought her to the genealogy room at the public library - a strange, dark little room. I can't believe I never "blogged" about that room before. But now I remember: I thought it was good enough to put into one of my failed novels. So I jotted some notes about it in a special jotting book which is now at the bottom of a pile of some other special jotting books, never to be seen again. We poked around the genealogy room and found a thin volume of reminiscences from a man whose name I believe was Glover Moore (?). When Glover was a lad, he and his sister Alice had a pet pig who enjoyed rolling over to have its belly scratched with corncobs several times a day. The pig's tail had two curls in it but sometimes it would run and the curls would straighten out. As it ran, it would say, "U-r-r-gh! U-r-r-gh!" I believe that was the spelling. Anyway, they ate it. The family ate it. I am sorry to tell you. And I was sorry to read it. The pig was "loyal to the end," wrote Glover Moore. And I closed the book and said to my mother, "Glover Moore and his magic pig/ Scratched it with corncobs/ ... 'til it got big." And Mom replied, "I've seen pigs caught and heard them squeal/ Getting ready for the great big meal." And I looked at her across the table and she said with a touch of sadness, "It's true." We also found something called the SNIPES FAMILY COOKBOOK, which included a facsimile of a long letter dated 1899, from Pearl Snipes of Benevolence, Georgia, to her beau Oscar Morrison. Pearl tells Oscar how she received his previous letter while she was at dinner and couldn't eat another bite. Sister teased her about the contents of Oscar's letter, so Pearl ran and shut herself in the other room. The family stood at the door and tried to get her to tell what was in the letter, but she wouldn't reveal a word. She is relieved to have it confirmed that Oscar hasn't been sporting about with another woman. She asks Oscar to give everyone her love and "keep a double portion for yourself." Mom said, "She was forward, wasn't she?" I said, defending Pearl Snipes, "She was his intended!" The letter was signed, "Your devoted intended." I think I have most of that correct. You can't remove the books from the genealogy room, so you have to stuff all the details into your head. Neither Mom nor I had thought to bring pen or paper. I will add that Pearl Snipes placed charmingly arbitrary phrases in quotation marks, kind of like Mattie in TRUE GRIT. The cookbook had a recipe that called for sixteen cucumbers and water with "enough salt to float an egg." There was also a recipe for "Bohemian Coffee Cake," which Mom wanted to copy for Dr. Theresa, having determined with one of Mom's favored genealogy websites that Dr. Theresa is, in part, of Bohemian descent. I said that the coffee cake probably wasn't ACTUALLY Bohemian (there was a recipe for "Martha Washington Cake" with cherry Jell-O, and I don't think Martha Washington ate that) plus there were many stern warnings posted, as I have already noted, about removing materials from the room. As we were leaving the library, whom should we encounter but Carla, who used to work at Square Books, but has recently become a librarian, long a fond wish of hers. Carla showed us her "staff picks" selection, which included my first book. How nice! I know she had lost all hope of ever seeing me at the library. I ran into Carla at the City Grocery Bar and she upbraided me for not being the faithful library patron I had sworn myself to be. She had never seen me there. So it was a sincere "staff pick," I think, with no thought I would ever hear of it. She put me on the shelf with THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, one of my favorite books, and QUEEN OF EARTH, a good movie (pictured). So I felt all right. And I was like, "Hey, Mom, look at that!" Carla told us that the genealogy room is an entity entirely separate from the public library, though housed in the same building - hence the many prohibitions. It has always been empty, in my experience, and running on the honor system, I suppose. There are a number of butterscotch-colored molded plastic chairs stacked up high and teetering in there, and some boxy, dead-looking computers. And Dennis the Menace panels in acrylic stands on the tables, for reasons that elude me. The Snipes family is mightily represented in several thick binders, though as far as I can tell they have no connection whatsoever to Oxford. There is so much Snipes material scattered around that I briefly wondered (though knowing full well the contrary truth) whether the Snipeses were some undiscovered inspiration for the Snopeses.

Pig Head Song

Okay now this weird French governess in this novel is singing "a quaint old Bretagne ballad, about a lady with a pig's head." Uh, here's some of it: "And she would sing like a funeral bell, with a ding-dong tune./ The pigs were afraid, and viewed her aloof;/ And women feared her and stood afar./ She could do without sleep for a year and a day;/ She could sleep like a corpse for a month or more./ No one knew how this lady fed -/ On acorns or on flesh." WHAT!

Sky Rabbit

"... I thought it was an owl trapped in there making all these spooked-out noises just like a ghost..." Rereading RIDES OF THE MIDWAY by Lee Durkee for my scary story class. And even though "it wasn't an owl at all" I am going to call RIDES OF THE MIDWAY a book with an owl in it, and put it on our big list of books with owls in them. Anyway, out at the fair a hypnotist makes a woman swoop "low over the stage... scour[ing] the earth for mice and rabbits." Now that doesn't mean she's an owl - it's not specified - but I'm saying she's an owl, because that's what owls do, they scour the earth. Hey did I ever tell you about the time Barry B. was driving all the way to New York City from Atlanta without stopping and we saw a rabbit fall out of the sky? Dr. Theresa and Caroline, who were dozing in the back of the van, didn't believe us. They said things like, "Oh sure, and I just saw a pig hitchhiking. He was standing on his hind legs and wearing a tie." But we know the truth. Hey as long as I've got you here why don't I tell you about a book WITHOUT an owl in it? Oh who am I kidding, it's five volumes, I'm sure there's an owl in it somewhere. Last night I was thumbing through THE ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS collected by Francis James Child and I came across one called "Child Owlet" and an owlet is a baby owl, right? Right? But it's just some guy's name, this guy's name is Child Owlet, and not even I can count him as an owl. He's torn apart by horses for a crime he didn't commit, if you must know.

Uttering Dismal Grunts

All right! More on the pig from GLINDA OF OZ: "Just then a pig came running into the room, uttering dismal grunts. It was made of solid gold, with joints at the bends of the legs and in the neck and jaws. The Golden Pig's eyes were rubies, and its teeth were polished ivory." All right that's my kind of pig all right. Except for the ivory, ivory's not cool man.

Four Cans of Brains

Here is my favorite statement so far in GLINDA OF OZ: "My poor wife had four cans of brains and became a remarkable witch, but alas! that was before those terrible enemies, the Skeezers, transformed her into a Golden Pig."

Try to See Things From the Point of View of the Enchanted Pig's Father

Also, Diarmuid's father killed the sorcerer's son - in fact gave him "a mighty, powerful, strong squeeze of his two knees [! - ed.] so that he slew him upon the spot, and becast him under the feet of the staghounds" - BEFORE the sorcerer changed his son into a cropped green pig charged with killing Diarmuid in return, so I guess you can see why the sorcerer was upset and just remember kids, there are two sides to every story, okay?

Then the Wild Boar Rose and Stood, and Rushed Out by the Open Door

I have been looking into this subject of the possibly magical pig because I have nothing else to do with my life. In my recent "post" I called it a "regular boar" but I wasn't too happy with the "link" to the story (a site that gives you ideas for Irish baby names) and just look at this crazy old text I found on the "internet" now. According to it, the pig killed 30 warriors one morning. That's pretty good for a pig! So maybe it had some magic going on after all. Plus Diarmuid was under a spell that said his life would be just exactly as long as the pig's (I think. I sort of skimmed that part). So he could not kill the pig, see? Or he'd die himself. But - SPOILER ALERT! - he did. He killed the pig and the pig killed him, all thanks to the magic spell. If they had left one another alone, I guess they'd both be okay. And isn't that a valuable lesson for all of us? Oh, and dig this: "Then came the steward again with a magic wand of sorcery, and struck his son with that wand so that he made of him a cropped green pig, having neither ears or tail, and he said, 'I conjure thee that thou have the same length of life as Diarmuid O’Duibne, and that it be by thee that he shall fall at last.' Then the wild boar rose and stood, and rushed out by the open door. When Angus heard those spells laid upon thee, he conjured thee never to hunt a swine; and that wild boar is the wild boar of Benn Gulban, and it is not meet for thee to await him upon this hill." (That's from the text "linked" to above.) So it was a pig with no ears and no tail and it used to be a guy, but he got changed into a pig by his evil magical dad. So I'm leaning toward magic again pretty heavily. Yes, I feel safe in saying it was a magic pig. And green! That's some pig, all right. Pictured (above), Charles Nelson Reilly (with friend) as the sorcerer, let's say.

Boaring

I guess it was just a regular boar that "slew Diarmuid," not a magical "evil pig" as I led you to believe yesterday. Yeats sure made it seem like a magic pig. Or do I just think that because it was next to a story about a "faery pig" that chased some guys down the road and disappeared? A real man would go back and look it up. But I am glad to have brought up the subject of boars. I notice that a long time ago I tempted you with a fascinating story about a man killing a boar with a volume of Aristotle. But the "link" no longer works! And you have probably been very upset about that, loving boars and Aristotle as you do. So I will find a new "link" to the story. And please don't forget the phosphorescent boars of the Harz mountains. They haven't forgotten you.

The Magic Animals About Which I Was Helpless to Inform You

I didn't "blog" on Friday or Saturday because I didn't "feel like it." Yet on Sunday and most of today, my "internet" did not work! So I was not ABLE to "blog"! It just goes to show you what Mark Twain said about "blogging" was true: the man who won't do it has no advantage over the man who can't. Such a backlog! For example, McNeil recalls the "alcohol" coda to the children's taunt we have been discussing... but in the version his daughters practiced it was the gentleman in the "K-I-S-S-I-N-G" equation who was spotted drinking, not the baby, as recent variants apparently would have it. Nor was I able to rush to you with information about the "evil pig" I read about in Yeats, a magical animal which "slew Diarmuid" - whoever that is! - "where Ben Bulben mixes with the sea wind" - wherever that is!