The Coming of the Toads

A Notebook – Since 2007

Tag: Mark Twain

  • The Humorous Short Sketch

    The easiest piece to write is sarcasm. The difference between sarcasm and satire is that satire has a point, while sarcasm has none, except maybe to offend, at worst, or rib, at best. Sarcasm is a backbite often confused with humor. “It’s not funny,” the bitten one says, the sarcastic one curling up smiling like Uriah Heep in his sorry ways, heaping more free helpings upon his plate to stowaway for future use.

    Irony can be used as a tool to tickle or torture, its mixture of satire with sarcasm effective as a rhetorical device, intended at bottom to persuade, of what, exactly, the audience might remain unaware, this too funny: A muse meant nothing by it. What was meant or not its placement lost can only confuse.

    Hemingway utilizes irony in his book “The Sun Also Rises”:

    “Show irony and pity.”
    I started out of the room with the tackle-bag, the nets and the rod-case.
    “Hey! Come back!”
    I put my head in the door.
    “Aren’t you going to show a little irony and pity?”
    I thumbed my nose.
    “That’s not irony.” (102)

    Later, Bill and Jake replace irony with utility, but it’s the same idea:

    “Let us rejoice in our blessings. Let us utilize the fowls of the air. Let us utilize the product of the vine. Will you utilize a little, brother?”
    “After you, brother.” (109)

    Irony is explained by Charlie in Steve Martin’s film “Roxanne,” in the scene where he’s walking with Roxanne back to her place to help her regain entry after she’s locked herself out. Charley pretends not to understand why Roxanne turns down his offer of a coat on such a cold night. She explains she was being ironic, and Charley says he didn’t understand that because they don’t use irony in the town anymore. He was the last one to use it, and he gave it up because people were staring at him. Irony often means the opposite of what’s said. It can be confusing. Martin’s film is a rewrite of “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the 1897 play (which takes place in 1640 France) by Edmond Rostand. I only mention that now should any readers think I was unaware of Martin’s source. “Cyrano” was assigned reading in the 10th grade in the high school I attended. It’s theme is panache, which I doubt I understood in the 10th grade. Not sure I understand it now, ten decades later. More irony there than I care to pursue further at this point.

    The so-called dry sense of humor is favored by the higher class comic, whose main focus is to keep out of the pit, where things get wet and muddy. In that sense, the dry humorist is aristocratic, surrounded by the minion followers who protect his repressed emotions with gratuitous likes and guarded comments. The noir detective sometimes makes use of the dry sense of humor, though hardly an aristocrat, but he often finds himself in service to society’s higher-ups. A dry wit seems to suit a hard boiled attitude, and the Dick has many followers, among them many cynics.

    The facetious humor accountant will often make fun of himself, pretending, for example, to be stupid – but that’s to show actually his superiority to his target. He will be droll, flirting around with what’s considered serious or not, with what is serious or not. Tongue-in-cheek provides a vivid cartoon illustration opportunity.

    Then there’s the wisecrack, the comment, usually shouted but as effectively whispered, croaked anonymously from the audience, which may have come to resent being pandered to, the speaker now a standing joke and nothing further said can mollify or sooth the hurt feelings of failure. But, after all, it was only a sketch. But when does sketch become sketchy? A standalone wisecrack probably won’t qualify as a sketch, more the property of the cartoon.

    Charles Dickens wrote sketches, though not necessarily with humorous intent. In his preface to “Sketches by Boz,” written long after the sketches were first published in newspapers and magazines, Dickens almost apologizes for their style or substance, in spite of their obvious popularity. He said the sketches were “sent into the world with all their imperfections (a good many) on their heads,” and that he’s “conscious of their often being extremely crude and ill-considered, and bearing obvious marks of haste and inexperience.” But again a Boz sketch purpose was not primarily humor. They were accompanied by drawings and were essentially goings on about his London parish at the time – the 1830s. The subtitle of the book collection reads “Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People.” And within the Dickens sketch anyone indeed could have, probably already did, see or observe the very thing Dickens was writing about. But to see it in print, Illustrated, no less, not as news, by which is meant an edited selection of events to emphasize a certain viewpoint (selection itself – among all the events of a day – being an editing process, and the birth of bias), but as the familiar and close and therefore noteworthy and comment worthy, where one saw oneself or someone one knew and understood but probably with not quite the same focus as found in the sketch. Or one saw a street or alley or place or person one knew about but only as some mystery yet to be solved, which the Boz sketch resolves. The Boz sketches often go indoors.

    Mark Twain did much to popularize the humorous sketch as a newspaper feature. It was Twain’s intent to write humor, so we find embellishment and variations on the truth of things, exaggerations. Exaggeration, hyperbole in rhetorical diction, is a comedian’s tool, as is its counterpart, understatement, litotes, first cousin to euphemism. Here is a sample excerpt from a Twain sketch featuring an unexpected subject, titled “Speech on Accident Insurance“:

    “Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance line of business—especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest—as an advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care for politics—even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.”

    Insurance for accidents occurring to individuals riding a train was first introduced in England, and insurance as an industry grew expansively in the latter half of the 19th Century, but it wasn’t then nor is it now considered by many to be a subject of humor. Twain was able to find humor in just about any subject. Twain’s use of the word cripple in his context would not be acceptable today, and indeed humorists are inevitably at risk of their word choices landing as offences.

    It’s interesting, thinking now of insurance, how some things, like the old saying goes, never change, in spite of what Twain says below, from his visit to a barbershop:

    “All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a barber’s shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences in barbers’ shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I approached it from Main—a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one presided over by the best barber. It always happens so.” 

    If you want to write a humorous sketch, it might work best to start with something familiar, that any reader should recognize. Otherwise, you might too soon and too easily drift off into a piece redolent of surrealism, which is seldom very funny. If the easiest piece to write is sarcasm, it might be because the only skill required is mean-spiritedness, which probably comes from a deficiency of generosity. There’s also a tradition of vindictiveness associated with some humor, sublimated in the speeches at roasts that ridicule the honored guest. But writing humor is not easy. Not everyone is a wit. Nor wants to be a twit.

    References:

    “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway (1926). Quotes from 2022 Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition.

    Mark Twain Project Online. In discussing what is meant by a written sketch, the editor Edgar Branch, from the Introduction to “Early Tales and Sketches” Volume 1, has this to say:

    “The great preponderance of short items, however, are sketches—and these range from ambitious magazine articles several thousand words long to short, hundred-word trifles tossed off by the newspaperman during a working day. The sketches include comic letters to the editor, hoaxes, exaggerated accounts of the author’s personal activities, burlesques of many kinds, comic or satirical feuds with fellow journalists, ingeniously contrived self-advertisements, commentary in a light and personal vein, descriptive reporting, reminiscences of past pleasures and adventures, and so on—but neither this nor any other list can easily be exhaustive.” 

    “Sketches New and Old,” by Mark Twain, link to Gutenberg e-Book.

    “Sketches by Boz,” by Charles Dickens, link to Gutenberg e-Book.

    Long and Short Sketches

  • Eclipsed

    Under the weather, literally, in rain country, but I would have been unable to get too excited for the great eclipse of Spring 2024 under any kind of sky. Drive five hours and climb a mountain and smoke a joint for four minutes of totality? I don’t think so. I experienced the eclipse of February 26, 1979, living in what used to be called a mother-in-law house (MLH), what now would be called an Additional Dwelling Unit (ADU), on a bluff over a lake, under ship hull grey skies. I remember a shadow blowing quickly and soundlessly by the windows, its darkness thickening, and then it moved on, and so did I.

    Nick Paumgarten put up an interesting take of his recent eclipse experience in a Dispatch at The New Yorker site (9 April):

    “Watching the Eclipse from the Highest Mountain in Vermont: People cracked cans of beer and smoked cannabis and popped mushroom gummies and ate smoked-meat sandwiches as totality approached at fifteen hundred miles per hour.“

    We seem doomed to a craving for the spectacle, the big events: Superbowl, Burning Man, EGOT awards, Election Night. When what we want, or need, is to sit back and relax, but even to relax has become big business, and nothing will do without we get super relaxed, hyper-relaxed.

    Inevitably, the great hyper-experience is followed by a come-down. Paumgarten concludes, having made the trek from New York to Vermont to experience the eclipse:

    “That night, the highway south, back to the cities, was jammed. People reported that it took more than six hours to get out of Vermont. Others posted screenshots of the flight paths of private jets leaving local airports. Everyone had time to reconsider what was worth it, and what was not, and perhaps to weigh keeping those considerations to themselves.“

    I remember another eclipse, this one experienced vicariously via Mark Twain, which might help explain our fascinations and superstitions. This eclipse is from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Hank, Twain’s time traveler, finding himself at odds with Merlin, is about to be burned at the stake when he leverages his knowing, having been there, in the future, of the coming eclipse to control the King and his minions:

    “I have reflected, Sir King. For a lesson, I will let this darkness proceed, and spread night in the world; but whether I blot out the sun for good, or restore it, shall rest with you. These are the terms, to wit: You shall remain king over all your dominions, and receive all the glories and honors that belong to the kingship; but you shall appoint me your perpetual minister and executive, and give me for my services one per cent of such actual increase of revenue over and above its present amount as I may succeed in creating for the state. If I can’t live on that, I sha’n’t ask anybody to give me a lift. Is it satisfactory?”

    ‘There was a prodigious roar of applause, and out of the midst of it the king’s voice rose, saying:’

    “Away with his bonds, and set him free! and do him homage, high and low, rich and poor, for he is become the king’s right hand, is clothed with power and authority, and his seat is upon the highest step of the throne! Now sweep away this creeping night, and bring the light and cheer again, that all the world may bless thee.”

    If the next big event doesn’t eclipse its predecessor, it’s a bust.

  • Notes on Percival Everett’s “James”

    In Percival Everett’s “James,” we read Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” overdubbed with newly invented first person narration by Twain’s character Jim, who becomes the protagonist, changing his name to James – “Just James,” he introduces himself at the end, when asked what his last name is. Or maybe, in Everett’s telling, James is his last name, and his first name is Just.

    Huck becomes a secondary main character, a deuteragonist. “James” is not the first book to take a foil character from another book and reverse foils. Mark Twain did it himself when Huck, who first appears in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” becomes the narrator of his own story. The full title of Huck’s work is “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade).”

    The antagonist remains the same as in the Mark Twain book James comes from: slavery in the US mid 19th Century – or more specifically, slave traders or sellers, owners, and others benefiting or attempting to leverage for some advantage from the arrangement. In one of many ironic ideas in “James,” James and his friend Norman come up with a plan: sell James, James escapes, sell James again, repeat again and again as they move north – the idea first suggested to James by the Duke of Duke and Dauphin infame, here presented as far more evil than in Twain. They are brought nearby, and the slapstick is not funny. The early chapters of Everett’s book more closely follow Twain’s narrative than the later chapters, where we find new adventures of James and his reflections on what’s happening to him, why, and what can he possibly do about it as the book spirals into fantastical end chase scenes.

    But Everett might have left James without a surname to underscore the existential adventure James embarks upon when he decides to leave his wife and child when he hears of his owner’s intent to sell him downriver; if sold he fears he’ll be separated from his family never to see his wife or child again. But to be without a surname is to be free from predispositions, assumptions, or any kind of argument about who you are or might be, where you come from or where you might be going. Language is a primary theme of “James,” as is writing and reading, and to give names to people, places, things, is to establish their reality, particularly if named via writing:

    “My name is James. I wish I could tell my story with a sense of history as much as industry. I was sold when I was born and then sold again. My mother’s mother was from someplace on the continent of Africa, I had been told or perhaps simply assumed. I cannot claim to any knowledge of that world or those people, whether my people were kings or beggars. I admire those who, at five years of age, like Venture Smith, can remember the clans of their ancestors, their names and the movements of their families through the wrinkles, trenches and chasms of the slave trade. I can tell you that I am a man who is cognizant of his world, a man who has a family, who loves a family, who has been torn from his family, a man who can read and write, a man who will not let his story be self-related, but self-written.

    With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.”

    Percival Everett, “James,” Doubleday, 2024, p. 93 (italics in original).

    What does James mean by “self-related,” and what does it mean to be “self-written“? And how do the two terms differ? He doesn’t mention self-published, or any kind of publishing, and how he might have to rewrite, edit, embellish his story to get it published. But he seems to feel it is published as soon as he writes it down. Self-written. “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” begins differently. We’re six paragraphs in before we learn Huck’s name, which we get indirectly, from the Widow Douglas. Huck begins by telling us we don’t know about him unless we’ve read “Tom Sawyer,” which contains some lies, Huck says, which doesn’t matter, everyone lies, he says. James presumably will not lie, not to his reader.

    To be a writer is to make choices, to string together those choices. The above quote, from page 93 of “James,” is a rewrite of an earlier draft:

    Then I wrote my first words. I wanted to be certain that they were mine and not some I had read from a book in the judge’s library. I wrote:

    “I am called Jim. I have yet to choose a name.
    In the religious preachings of my white captors I am a victim of the Curse of Ham. The white so-called masters cannot embrace their cruelty and greed, but must look to that lying Dominican friar for religious justification. But I will not let this condition define me. I will not let myself, my mind, drown in fear and outrage. I will be outraged as a matter of course. But my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.”

    p. 55.

    Huck is not much given to such reflections in his book. That’s not why he writes. Maybe he’s too young yet. Why does he write? He simply jumps in and rambles on, telling of things as they happen, his eye for detail and ear for dialog both as acute as an owl’s. He doesn’t recognize or reveal his indebtedness to his creator, but he does mention him:

    “That book [Tom Sawyer] was made by Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly.”

    Huck has no need to lie to his reader. He’s enough to relate without lying.

    James’s use of the term self-related could be a reference to the autobiography of Venture Smith, mentioned above in the quote from “James” page 93. Smith’s self-account begins as follows:

    “The following account of the life of VENTURE, is a relation of simple facts, in which nothing is in substance to what he relates himself. Many other interesting and curious passages of his life might have been inserted, but on account of the bulk to which they must necessarily have swelled this narrative, they were omitted. If any should suspect the truth of what is here related, they are referred to people now living who are acquainted with most of the facts mentioned in this narrative.

    The reader is here presented with an account, not of a renowned politician or warrior, but of an untutored African slave, brought into this Christian country at eight years of age, wholly destitute of all education but what he received in common with other domesticated animals, enjoying no advantages that could lead him to suppose himself superior to the beasts, his fellow servants. And if he shall enjoy no other advantage from perusing this narrative, he may experience those sensations of shame and indignation, that will prove him to be not wholly destitute of every noble and generous feeling.

    The subject of the following pages, had he received only a common education, might have been a man of high respectability and usefulness; and had his education been suited to his genius, he might have been an ornament and an honor to human nature. It may perhaps, not be unpleasing to see the efforts of a great mind wholly uncultivated, enfeebled and depressed by slavery, and struggling under every disadvantage. The reader may here see a Franklin and a Washington, in a state of nature, or rather, in a state of slavery. Destitute as he is of all education, he still exhibits striking traces of native ingenuity and good sense.

    This narrative exhibits a pattern of honesty, prudence, and industry, to people of his own colour; and perhaps some white people would not find themselves degraded by imitating such an example.

    The following account is published in compliance with the earnest desire of the subject of it, and likewise a number of respectable persons who are acquainted with him.”

    The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, a Native of Africa, But Resident above Sixty Years in the United States of America, Related by Himself, by Venture Smith.

    That is not like the book Percival Everett is helping James to write. In any case, self-related might also refer to concepts or ideas of the self discussed by Kierkegaard. Percival Everett gives his reader homework assignments. James in dream reveries has discussions with Voltaire and Locke. Does the common reader simply gloss over these references? Google them? Do they provide argument for James’s own conclusions and rebuttals regarding economics, ethics, slavery? Are they meant to explain the behavior of Judge Thatcher, who presumably has read these same writers (James gets the books from the judge’s library)?

    “Kierkegaard does not think of the human self predominantly as a kind of metaphysical substance, but rather more like an achievement, a goal to strive for. To be sure, humans are substances of a sort; they exist in the world, as do physical objects. However, what is distinctive about human selves is that the self must become what it is to become, human selves playing an active role in the process by which they come to define themselves.”

    Soren Kierkegaard. 2. Kierkegaard’s Analysis of Human Existence: Despair, Social Critique, and Anxiety. Retrieved 7 Apr 24. Lippitt, John and C. Stephen Evans, “Søren Kierkegaard”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2023/entries/kierkegaard/&gt;.

    Language is the great theme of Percival Everett’s book. It’s about writing, what to write about and how. It’s about how people talk, often adopting or adapting a style they might think is suitable to their audience – or what they think their audience might want to hear. Language is marketing. Even when talking to ourselves, we might often feel like we’re selling something, or being sold something. The rhetorical flourishes in “James” both stir the emotions and logically persuade; and who can argue with James’s first hand ethos reliable and credible experience? James is a statement, a claim, to which there can be no rebuttal. His backing is impervious. Percival seems to want to write (as James does) something of both human affairs (history) and economic activity (industry). When James kidnaps Judge Thatcher, the judge asks James three times over the course of several pages, “Why are you talking like that?” – referencing James speaking out of the expected slave-speak language and instead using the judge’s own language. The judge can’t get over it, can’t understand, is utterly confused by James’s ability to speak out of (what the judge believes to be) character. James’s rhetorical skills mean, for one thing, the judge’s view of James has been and remains wrong. The foundation of his excuse for slavery is undermined, and he caves in on himself, though he keeps acting like a judge. In terms of the dual language scenario Everett has created, the judge might just as well be suddenly talking to an alien. He is talking to an alien.

    While language is the great theme of “James,” the pencil is the great symbol. James at one point thinks he’ll adopt the last name of FABER, it being stamped on the stub he’s using:

    “I studied the small stick that had cost so much. I had no way of knowing whether Young George’s beating had stopped short of his death. I knew I owed it to him to write something important. The pencil lead was soft and made a dark mark. I resolved to use it with a light touch to have it last as long as possible. Stamped on it was the name FABER. Perhaps that would be my last name. James Faber. That didn’t sound too bad.”

    p. 102.

    Did Percival Everett consider putting the name THOREAU on the pencil, after Henry David Thoreau’s father’s pencil making company, where Henry worked a good part of his life? The pencil appears again and again during James’s journey, almost always at a cost incommensurate with its size and weight and feel. If symbol, what does the pencil stand for? If you’re going to write, as James wants to, you need an implement, and paper, which James also acquires though not quite at the same cost as the pencil. The pencil is a tool. We would probably discard without thinking twice a pencil already whittled down to the stub size of the one James holds on to almost to the end. The feel of the pencil in his pocket gives him comfort, he says. Later, he notes the pencil has “survived.” Others have not.

    But note how quickly James seems to move from the sacrifice of Young George for the pencil to thinking some more about choosing his name. James has the ego of a writer. Huck had a story to tell, but he had no aspirations of becoming a writer. Ironically, Huck has no use for books, in Twain or in Everett. Can books make you good? Is reading sublime? Is James a good man or a good character or both or neither, or does that matter? He wants out of his birth predicament. What he wants is not arcane: he wants to live in peace and independence and freedom with his family. Notably not included in Everett’s version is the scene in “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” where Jim scolds his daughter for leaving a door open, asks her to close it, and when she ignores him, he hits her, only to discover she can’t hear. She didn’t hear him telling her to close the door. Twain’s Jim feels the remorse of pathos, and we feel it too as he recalls the event to Huck. Would a similar scene, if included in “James,” come before or after the “Papa, Papa, Papa,” that comes at the end of Everett’s chase? Writers make choices because they have choices. That’s the reason James wants to become a writer. Slavery can’t prevent James from writing.

    “James” is full of sarcasm, wit, irony, satire – but it’s not humor as Twain wrote humor. For example, at the end of “James,” Graham, the evil owner of a slave breeding plantation, upon being rousted out of his house to find his cornfield ablaze and his slaves in revolt and escaping, his overseer dead on the ground, James’s gun in his face, says, “What in tarnation?” Really? Tarnation? Isn’t that a clown’s word, an alteration, euphemism, for damnation? Is tarnation what Graham would have said? But it was a word used circa 1850’s, as indicated by Google’s Ngram analysis:

    Use over time for: tarnation

    And, note, tarnation is making a resurgence.

    Or does Percival have Graham say tarnation to mock him before James shoots and kills him? Is its use in “James” intended as humor? Graham has no idea, as Judge Thatcher did not, not clue one, of what’s happening. Tarnation, indeed.

    I stepped in front of him.
    “Who the hell are you?”
    I pointed my pistol at him. “I am the angel of death, come to offer sweet justice in the night,” I said. “I am a sign. I am your future. I am James.” I pulled back the hammer on my pistol.
    “What in tarnation?” He cocked his weapon.

    p. 302.

    Maybe it’s farce? A pun? It’s a mixture. Depends on how you hear it, not necessarily on how it’s said – not necessarily the same as how it’s said. But James (the word, Biblical) means supplanter. While James professes no interest in the God of his oppressors, he clearly knows the Bible.

  • An Economy of One’s Own

    In the first chapter of Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Thoreau distills life to economic necessities, rhetorically presenting four, “Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel,” that “few, if any” men or women, further qualified, “in this climate,” for it gets cold in Concord, “ever attempt to do without” (10). Thoreau’s values, quickly made clear and rid of all impurities, are concentrated in two ideas: simplicity and wisdom. The two taken together make for deliberate living, rather than random, fateful, casual acceptance of one’s time, place, situation, predicament. They are necessities, too, because only through simplicity and wisdom will we find we are able to “entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success” (10).

    He’s a mile from any neighbor, not including the mostly Irish railroad workers who live in shanties about. He addresses his argument to his “townsmen,” but he’s particularly interested in “poor students,” for whom he has an obvious and heartfelt affinity. His neighbors, though, apparently wonder what he’s up to, and why, and how he’s making do; such is his rhetorical situation, though the contemporary reader may get the feeling, now and then, that if Thoreau were talking today, he might have an obnoxious, self-promoting Facebook page, full of photos of his living alone near the pond, or a blog, perhaps here, at WordPress. We are not so enamored by Thoreau that we wish to nominate him for sainthood, nor would he accept the nomination, anyway, but to at least one thing he appears to be true, and that is to himself, no small achievement, impossible, in fact, Thoreau might argue, if we have gone beyond food to a gluttony of junk yet are still hungry, raised so high our roofbeams we cannot hope to touch our own ceiling, filled our closets with clothes we don’t even remember we own yet proclaim we’ve nothing to wear, and indentured ourselves to our fuel of choice and its profitable engine, the automobile. But while these things are simple tests Thoreau gives us, the critical questions are these: “Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?” (8).

    Why should we read Thoreau today? Consider that his miracle might be found in his book, that we are able to look through his eyes at his world. And, so? Well, what does he see? “The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing [sic], it is very likely to be my good behavior.” He is, in a way, like Twain’s Huck, who doesn’t want to go to the good place, for the situation there is problematic for one who doesn’t buy into the values he was born into. Yet Thoreau insists “we may safely trust a good deal more than we do” (9), but first he sententiously strips away the outer bark of our dressed for success self, the source, incidentally, of many of our anxieties: “We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do…determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it…denying the possibility of change” (9). Yet we should be cautious of approaching Walden as some sort of self-help book, any kind of New Age panacea, “for the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence” (10). We can’t develop our way out of our existential condition; we may begin by devaluing what has been built up around us a fortress of assumptions. Yet we still might find some ideas in Walden to help “solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically” (13).

    But Walden is not for everyone, as Thoreau himself tells us, “but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them” (14). But Thoreau’s argument is not at all limited to the poor: “I have also in mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters” (14). When Thoreau talks of independence, or of self-dependence, he does not mean becoming financially independent, the term used to describe a modern value unattainable for most and unusable for the 1%, for when Thoreau speaks of independence, he means being independent from the trappings of wealth as well as independent of the notion that to live fully requires a surplus of necessaries. He means finding an economy, a life, of one’s own.

    Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. 1854. Boston: Beacon Press, July 15, 2004 [Introduction and Annotations by Bill McKibben].

    Related: The Way We Don’t Age Now: Unhappiness and Hunger in The Land of Plenty

  • The Bare Bodkin of the English Major

    “To be, or not to be; that is the bare bodkin,” says Mark Twain’s duke as he prepares to take down the house with an encore of Hamlet’s soliloquy. Where’s an English major when you need one? They were no doubt in short supply in the Mississippi Valley in the early nineteenth century, and their heyday from the late twentieth appears now to be in full wane. What can restore their numbers?

    To take the meds, or not to take the meds; that is another question. Before you answer, read Louis Menand’s recent review, “Head Case: Can psychiatry be a science?,” in the March 1 New Yorker:  “These complaints [confusion over what causes and cures depression] are not coming just from sociologists, English professors, and other troublemakers” (68). To be an English major or not to be an English major; whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to go broke reading or to take arms with others in self-incarceration in a corporate complex – but alas, those late twentieth century opportunities to cause trouble too are in full wane. What’s a poor boy to do?

    Work, for one: “…people on the West Coast work,” Kenneth Rexroth said. “Ginsberg when he came out here, as he said in interviews, was working as a market researcher, which is just a shit job. It’s like being a floorwalker in a dime store. I said, ‘Why don’t you work? How much are you making? Forty-five dollars? You can’t live on forty-five dollars in San Francisco. That’s not money. Why don’t you go to work, get a job?’ Ginsberg said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I said, ‘Ship out…’ You come back with more bread than you know what to do with!’ In the East people don’t think like that” (Meltzer, 1971, p. 12*).

    Some did, but many seem now to have forgotten this. A past issue of Reed College’s Reed Magazine, for example, contained an article by one of their English professors selling the English major; unfortunately, it was clear that the professor had never worked outside of academia, and had not much idea what one would do with one’s English major aside from finding shelter in academia – but that’s all over. Yet no mention in the article of Kafka’s time as a claim investigator for the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia (where he invented the hard-hat); of Ted Kooser’s stint at Lincoln Life; of Wallace Stevens’s career at The Hartford; of Tom Clancy maintaining his Life license even after he became a best-seller.

    “Questions like these [being and nothingness, as Sartre put it] are the reason we have literature and philosophy. No science will ever answer them” (Menand, p. 74). Yet as most of today’s Hucks head out for the territory of science and technology, leaving the books to turn to dust, some professors seem to be hunkering down; how do you like this solution: “…it [solving the crisis in the Humanities] means finding creative ways to make life instructively hard, for a few years, for the broadest range of talented people of all sorts and conditions whom we can educate and then employ productively and decently”? This non-profound non-market solution comes to us courtesy of Anthony T. Grafton of Princeton who seems to miss the working point that Rexroth talked about and proves Menand’s point of stubborn resistance.  In his New Republic critical reaction to The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in The American University (Menand, 2010), Grafton makes graduate school sound like joining the Jesuits; but who provides financial support for the Jesuits? For the young Ginsberg just starting out today, a job as a market researcher might be a sweet assignment.

    “Oh, God,” Hamlet says, “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space were it not that I have bad dreams.” No bad dreams, no harrowing questions, no need for the philosopher or the English major. But while the meds, according to Menand’s review, might help some with some of the bad dreams, the harrowing questions persist.

    *Meltzer, D. (1971). The San Francisco Poets. New York: Ballantine Books.