The 'Mice' joke
JoeBlake
'_Mice_ by Gordon Comstock; a sneaky little foolscap octavo...Of the 13
BFs who had reviewed it...not one had seen the none too subtle joke of
that title.'
I never have either, and reading past discussions I see it's also
bugged at least two other people here.
Just for the hell of it I ran 'mice' through some online translators
into Ancient Greek and Latin, thinking it might be a pun in one of them.
In Greek 'mys' means either 'muscle' or 'mussel' depending on which
dodgy translator you use. Does Gordon Comstock see himself as a small
mollusk?
The nearest I could come in Latin was 'miceo', meaning 'to bleat' (of a
he-goat). Hmm. I suppose it's pronounced 'meeseo', but maybe Orwell
pronounced 'mice' like that cartoon cat who went, 'I hate meeses to
pieces.'
On the other hand, maybe it's meant to be the plural for muse?
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MN1st
>From _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_:
>
>'_Mice_ by Gordon Comstock; a sneaky little foolscap octavo...Of the 13
>BFs who had reviewed it...not one had seen the none too subtle joke of
>that title.'
>
>I never have either, and reading past discussions I see it's also
>bugged at least two other people here.
>
>Just for the hell of it I ran 'mice' through some online translators
>into Ancient Greek and Latin, thinking it might be a pun in one of them.
>In Greek 'mys' means either 'muscle' or 'mussel' depending on which
>dodgy translator you use. Does Gordon Comstock see himself as a small
>mollusk?
>
>The nearest I could come in Latin was 'miceo', meaning 'to bleat' (of a
>he-goat). Hmm. I suppose it's pronounced 'meeseo', but maybe Orwell
>pronounced 'mice' like that cartoon cat who went, 'I hate meeses to
>pieces.'
>
>On the other hand, maybe it's meant to be the plural for muse?
I've read the book several times & have never got the joke either. Maybe it's
more subtle than Orwell thought? I'm not sure what the Wigan Pier joke is about
either.
JoeBlake
> I'm not sure what the Wigan Pier
> joke is about either.
Wigan is my home town and I'm not quite sure about it myself.
GO fanatics may be interested to know that a pub named The Moon under
Water has recently opened in Wigan. (For non-fanatics, this was the
name of a mythical perfect pub in an essay Orwell wrote). Although
indistinguishable from any other corporate chain-bar, it features
photos of the man himself and purports to model itself on the ideal
hostelry of the essay. Needless to say, it violates Orwell's precepts
on the perfect pub in every possible way. The first thing to confront
you is a huge sign saying 'No Children'. There is no smoking at the bar
and there are no glasses with handles. Moreover, close-circuit TV
cameras are pointed at you as you walk in the door and as you wait to
be served. Overall the place can only be described as Orwellian.
This is my last message as I must now, this minute, return my computer
to its rightful owner. Again, thanks to all for some very interesting
discussions.
Tom Deveson
>GO fanatics may be interested to know that a pub named The Moon under
>Water has recently opened in Wigan. (For non-fanatics, this was the
>name of a mythical perfect pub in an essay Orwell wrote). Although
>indistinguishable from any other corporate chain-bar, it features
>photos of the man himself and purports to model itself on the ideal
>hostelry of the essay. Needless to say, it violates Orwell's precepts
>on the perfect pub in every possible way. The first thing to confront
>you is a huge sign saying 'No Children'. There is no smoking at the bar
>and there are no glasses with handles. Moreover, close-circuit TV
>cameras are pointed at you as you walk in the door and as you wait to
>be served. Overall the place can only be described as Orwellian.
In John Thompson's book *Orwell's London* (1984) there's a rather
melancholy picture of a pub garden, at the Canonbury Tavern in (not
surprisingly) Canonbury in north London. It's accompanied by a bit from
George Woodcock's book, describing how families would sit on summer
evenings and children shout on the swings. "Orwell liked to go there
occasionally, always keeping a weather eye open so that he might avoid
the embarrassment of running into one of the little group of Stalinist
writers who lived in the district. But he did not appear to know any of
the working men who frequented the pub and he certainly seemed out of
place among them, a rather frayed sahib wearing shabby clothes with all
the insouciance an old Etonian displays on such occasions."
The pub is described as a possible model for The Moon Under Water, but
the picture sadly shows the rusted skeleton of the children's swing.
>This is my last message as I must now, this minute, return my computer
>to its rightful owner. Again, thanks to all for some very interesting
>discussions.
This is very sad. Please get back here soon.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Patrick Briody
now, Wigan in the thirites was
an appalling, dirty little town, and a "pier" is about the last thing it
would have had. It's simply a contradiction
in terms - like "Dublin Ski-resort" or "Callifornian culture".
Yuro
JoeBlake wrote in message <000b8d9b...@usw-ex0102-009.remarq.com>...
Martha Bridegam
>
> I think the Wigan Pier joke is plain enough. What ever it might look like
> now, Wigan in the thirites was
> an appalling, dirty little town, and a "pier" is about the last thing it
> would have had. It's simply a contradiction
> in terms - like "Dublin Ski-resort" or "Callifornian culture".
Maybe this had better go in the FAQ:
Complete Works, Item 2384, Vol. 16.
"Your Questions Answered": Wigan Pier
Broadcast 2 December 1943, apparently in the General Oversease Service
but not the UK <snipping editor's further dithering about evidence for
exact time & distribution of broadcast>
Colin Wills (compere): I am going to try some more of these trick
questions on somebody else in another programme. And now we've got time
for just one more question, asked by Sergeant Salt and Signalman McGrath
serving in India. They say: "How long is the Wigan Pier and what is the
Wigan Pier?" Well, if anybody ought to know, it should be George Orwell
who wrote a book called "The Road to Wigan Pier." And here's what he's
got to say on the subject.
Orwell: Well, I am afraid I must tell you that Wigan Pier doesn't
exist. I made a journey specially to see it in 1936, and I couldn't find
it. It did exist once, however, and to judge from the photographs it
must have been about twenty feet long.
Wigan is in the middle of the mining areas, and though it's a very
pleasant place in some ways its scenery is not its strong point. The
landscape is mostly slag-heaps, looking like the mountains of the moon,
and mud and soot and so forth. For some reason, though it's not worse
than fifty other places, Wigan has always been picked on as a symbol of
the ugliness of the industrial areas. At one time, on one of the little
muddy canals that run around the town, there used to be a tumble-down
wooden jetty; and by way of a joke somebody nicknamed this Wigan Pier.
The joke caught on locally, and then the music-hall comedians get [sic]
hold of it, and they are the ones who have succeeded in keeping Wigan
pier alive as a by-word, long afterthe place itself had been demolished.
Wills: And so Signalman Salt and Sergeant McGrath, if you meant to floor
the experts with a question about Wigan Pier, you'll have to try again
with something else! Now our time's up for this week but we'll be back
again on the air at the same time next week to answer some more of your
questions.
The editor, Peter Davison, adds helpfully re: the photographs Orwell
mentions, "See the illustration in __George Orwell: The Road to 1984__,
by Peter Lewis, 51, and the Englih Tourist Board leaflet on Wigan
(1988), which advertises a local exhibition, 'The Way We Were' (c. 1900)
in the 'Wigan Pier Heritage Centre,' Wallgate."
A different Davison footnote adds, "A refurbished warehouse with a
decorative railed walkway over the canal was prominently named 'The
Orwell Wigan Pier' in the 1980s. The complex houses a museum,
restaurants, a public house, and a pier from which barge trips on the
canal depart."
(Sounds like what they've done to/with Cannery Row down in Greg's
territory...)
/MAB
--
jo...@sirius.com
greg
Martha Bridegam wrote in message <382D2A1D...@sirius.com>...
<snipped definite FAQ-worthy item>
>A different Davison footnote adds, "A refurbished warehouse with a
>decorative railed walkway over the canal was prominently named 'The
>Orwell Wigan Pier' in the 1980s. The complex houses a museum,
>restaurants, a public house, and a pier from which barge trips on the
>canal depart."
>
>
>
>(Sounds like what they've done to/with Cannery Row down in Greg's
>territory...)
It does indeed sound exactly like it. They're turning Cannery Row into a
giant mall or something, and removing redwood 'fire hazards'. Am really
about 50 miles to the south of Monterey (and thankfully even further from
San Jose), but have visited a couple of times.
Patrick Briody
Thank you, Martha. I don't think I've ever been so comprehensively answered
in my life.
I remember reading somewhere that the Beeb had lost/destroyed all the old
tapes that
had Orwell's voice on it. We know what he said, but we'll never know how he
said it.
Pat Briody
Jonathan Mason
Could it be a reference to something that was topical in the '30s?
JoeBlake wrote:
>
> From _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_:
>
> '_Mice_ by Gordon Comstock; a sneaky little foolscap octavo...Of the 13
> BFs who had reviewed it...not one had seen the none too subtle joke of
> that title.'
>
> I never have either, and reading past discussions I see it's also
> bugged at least two other people here.
>
> Just for the hell of it I ran 'mice' through some online translators
> into Ancient Greek and Latin, thinking it might be a pun in one of them.
> In Greek 'mys' means either 'muscle' or 'mussel' depending on which
> dodgy translator you use. Does Gordon Comstock see himself as a small
> mollusk?
>
> The nearest I could come in Latin was 'miceo', meaning 'to bleat' (of a
> he-goat). Hmm. I suppose it's pronounced 'meeseo', but maybe Orwell
> pronounced 'mice' like that cartoon cat who went, 'I hate meeses to
> pieces.'
>
> On the other hand, maybe it's meant to be the plural for muse?
>
Martha Bridegam
>
> I have often wondered myself. "Three Blind Mice", "Of Mice and Men"?
> Could it be a reference to something that was topical in the '30s?
>
> JoeBlake wrote:
> >
> > From _Keep the Aspidistra Flying_:
> >
> > '_Mice_ by Gordon Comstock; a sneaky little foolscap octavo...Of the 13
> > BFs who had reviewed it...not one had seen the none too subtle joke of
> > that title.'
OK, two pretty farfetched theories:
-- Like mice, his poems are little unwelcome parasites -- which would
fit with the sneaky foolscap octavo business and the nearby observation
that the book has been "skied" on a high shelf as not saleable.
-- "Mice" is a diminutive for "rats," as in "Oh, rats!"
That first theory kind of goes with Orwell's much-later observation that
writers are like swallows in the eaves, tolerated but not encouraged.
/MAB
ROBBIE
As always, a good point.
Martha Bridegam <jo...@sirius.com> wrote in message
news:3838AAD8...@sirius.com...
Jonathan Mason
interpretation obvious, though it may indeed have been what Orwell had
in mind.
Martha Bridegam
>
> The 13 reviewers could hardly have been expected to find this
> interpretation obvious, though it may indeed have been what Orwell had
> in mind.
>
Are there any mouse-related (pre-computer) technical terms in the
printing or publishing business? Especially wrt sneaky foolscap octavos?
(Joe, any idea?)
To be really abstruse, I read recently that Whitman's title, "Leaves of
Grass," referred to printers' use of the word "grass" to mean bits of
personal-hobby printing done for fun between paying jobs. Is there any
chance Orwell would have known this?
/MAB
JoeBlake
'To Cranham sanatorium to visit George Orwell. Told me he was going
to marry Sonia Brownell. I asked, 'How did you persuade the prettiest
girl in literary London to marry you when, as William Empson points
out, you have stinky breath and a ridiculous Dick Van Dyke cockney
accent?' (Dick Van Dyke is a nauseating child actor I encountered in
Hollywood.) 'Easy,' he replied smugly, 'I promised to explain the Mice
joke from Aspidistra.' 'You crafty devil,' I exclaimed. 'What is the
explanation of the Mice joke?' 'Shalln't tell,' he said even more
smugly. So I sat on his chest until he relented. Once he had explained
it to me, the Mice joke struck me as the funniest thing I had ever
heard. I laughed for fully an hour until a huge beefy matron came in
and slapped me, believing me to be hysterical. Just then Nancy Mitford
turned up with a crowd of people and a party atmosphere developed. We
all started drinking medical alcohol. At the height of the festivities
I smuggled a priest in and had George unwittingly converted to
Catholicism. George was completely insensible by this point and I lay
beneath him working his jaw and making the appropriate responses. He
was most annoyed when he found out...'
'Woke up this morning with a splitting headache and had completely
forgotten the Mice joke...'
Damn!
Tom Deveson
>'_Mice_ by Gordon Comstock; a sneaky little foolscap octavo...Of the 13
BFs who had reviewed it...not one had seen the none too subtle joke of
that title.'
Another possibility:
In Horace's *Ars Poetica* comes the line *Parturient montes, nascetur
ridiculus mus* which means "The mountains will go into labour and will
give birth to -- a ridiculous mouse."
This is in a section where Horace is talking of the difficulties for a
poet of being original. Translation: "...A theme that is familiar can be
made your own as long as you do not waste your time on a hackneyed
treatment....do not in imitating another writer plunge yourself into
difficulties from which shame, or the rules you have laid down for
yourself, prevent you from extricating yourself...What will emerge that
can live up to your extravagant promise? The mountains will go into
labour...etc"
There are several friendly refs to Horace in Orwell's letters and
writing (thanks for info, Martha) so this *might* be a relevant meaning,
bearing in mind Gordon's poetic self-disgust. It wd presumably also
please him that the moneyed young beasts from Cambridge didn't recognise
a fairly well-worn classical allusion. The book-title wd refer to
Gordon's sense that his poems are merely portentous miscarriages of his
muse.
Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang gives several meanings -- "a
raised bruise", "a black eye" and "a penis" --- all of which seem to
call for a too-great degree of metaphorical ingenuity.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
JoeBlake
I think you've got something there. I reckon that must be it. I can die
happy now.
I suppose John Carey would find Horace allusions elitist.
Alan Allport
news:09920fb9...@usw-ex0102-015.remarq.com...
> A tantalizing extract from the Evelyn Waugh diaries:
Voice Over : This man is George Orwell... writer of jokes. In a few moments,
he win have written the funniest joke in the world... and, as a consequence,
he will die ... laughing.
(GO stops writing, pauses to look at what he has written... a smile slowly
spreads across his face, turning very, very slowly to uncontrolled
hysterical laughter... he staggers to his feet and reels across room
helpless with mounting mirth and eventually collapses and dies on the
floor.)
Voice Over: It was obvious that this joke was lethal... no one could read it
and live ...
(George's mother (Eric Idle in drag) enters. She sees him dead, she gives a
little cry of horror and bends over his body, weeping. Brokenly she notices
the piece of paper in his hand and picks it up and reads it between her
sobs. Immediately she breaks out into hysterical laughter, leaps three feet
into the air, and falls down dead without more ado. Cut to news type shot of
commentator standing in front of the house.)
Commentator: This morning, shortly after eleven o'clock, comedy struck this
little house in Sussex. Sudden ...violent ... comedy. Police have sealed off
the area, and Scotland Yard's crack inspector is with me now.
Inspector: I shall enter the house and attempt to remove the joke.
(About now an upstairs window in the house is fiung open and a doctor, rears
his head out, hysterical with laughter, and dies hanging over the window
sill. The commentator and the inspector look up and then continue as if they
are used to such sights.)
Inspector: I shall be aided by the sound of sombre music, played on
gramophone records, and also by the chanting of laments by the men of Q
Division ... (Inspector points to a grouo of dour looking policemen standing
nearby) The atmosphere thus created should protect me in the eventuality of
me reading the joke. He gives a signal. The group of policemen start
groaning and chanting biblical laments. The Dead March is heard. The
inspector squares his shoulders and bravely starts walking into the house.
Commentator: There goes a brave man. Whether he comes out alive or not, this
will surely be remembered as one of the most courageous and gallant acts in
police history.
(The inspector suddenly appears at the door, helpless with laughter, holding
the joke aloft. He collapses and dies. Cut to film of army vans driving
along dark roads.)
Voice Over: It was not long before the Army became interested in the
military potential of the Killer Joke. Under top security, the joke
washurried to a meeting of Allied Commanders at the Ministry of War.
(Cut to door at Ham House: Soldier on guard comes to attention as dispatch
rider hurries in carrying armoured box. (Notice on door: 'Conference. No
Admittance'.) Dispatch nider rushes in. A door opens for him and closes
behind him. We hear a mighty roar of laughter... . series of doomphs as the
commanders hit the floor or table. Soldier outside does not move a muscle.)
(Cut to a pillbox on the Salisbury Plain. Track in to slit to see
moustachioed top brass peering anxiously out.)
Voice Over: Top brass were impressed. Tests on Salisbury Plain confirmed the
joke's devastating effectiveness at a range of up to fifty yards.
(Cut to shot looking out of slit in pillbox. Camera zooms through slit to
distance where a solitary figure is standing on the windswept plain. He is a
bespectacled, weedy lance-corporal (Terry Jones) looking cold and miserable.
Pan across to fifty yards away where two helmeted soldiers are at their
positions beside a blackboard on an easel covered with a cloth. Cut in to
corporal's face- registening complete lack of comprehension as well as
stupidily. Man on top of pillbox waves flag. The soldiers reveal the joke to
the corporal. He peers at it, thinks about its meaning, sniggers, and dies.
Two watching generals are very impressed.)
Generals: Fantastic.
Cut to a Colonel talking to camera.
Colonel: All through the winter of '43 we had translators working, in
joke-proof conditions, to try and produce a German version of the joke. They
worked on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the
joke and spent several weeks in hospital· But apart from that things went
pretty quickly, and we soon had the joke by January, in a form which our
troops couldn't understand but which the Germans could.
(Cut to a trench in the Ardennes· Members of the joke brigade are crouched
holding pieces of paper with the joke on them.)
Voice Over: So, on July 8th, I944, the joke was first told to the enemy in
the Ardennes...
Commanding NCO: Tell the ... joke.
Joke Brigade: (together) Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
(Pan out of the British trench across war-torn landscape and come to rest
where presumably the German trench is. There is a pause and then a group of
Germans rear up in hysterics.)
Voice Over: It was a fantastic success. Over sixty thousand times as
powerful as Britain's great pre-war joke ...Cut to a film of Chamberlain
brandishing the 'Peace in our time' bit of paper ... and one which Hider
just couldn't match.
Film of Hitler rally. Hitler speaks; subtitles are superimposed.
SUBTITLE: 'MY DOG'S GOT NO NOSE'
A young soldier responds:
SUBTITLE: HOW DOES HE SMELL?
Hitler speaks:
SUBTITLE: AWFUL'
Voice Over: In action it was deadly.
(Cut to a small squad with rifles making their way through forest. Suddenly
one of them sees something and gives signal at which they all dive for
cover. From the cover of a tree he reads out joke.)
Corporal: Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! .. Beiherhund das
Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
(Sniper falls laughing out of tree.)
Joke Brigade: (charging) Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
(They chant the joke. Germans are put to fight laughing, some dropping to
ground.)
Voice Over: The German casualties were appalling.
(Cut to a German hospital and a ward full of casualties still laughing
hysterically.
Cut to Nazi interrogation room. An officer from the joke bngade has a light
shining in his face. A Gestapo officer is interrogating him; another stands
behind him.)
Nazi: Vott is the big joke?
Officer: I can only give you name, rank, and why did the chicken cross the
road?
Nazi: That's not funny! (slaps him) I vant to know the joke.
Officer: All right. How do you make a Nazi cross?
Nazi: (momentarily fooled) I don't know ... how do you make a Nazi cross?
Officer: Tread on his corns. (does so; the Nazi hops in pain)
Nazi: Gott in Hiramell That's not funny! (mimes cuffing him while the other
Nazi claps his hands to provide the sound effct) Now if you don't tell me
the joke, I shall hit you properly.
Officer: I can stand physical pain, you know.
Nazi: Ah ... you're no fun. All right, Otto.
(Otto starts tickling the officer who starts laughing,)
Officer: Oh no - anything but that please no, all fight I'll tell you.
(They stop tickling him)
Nazi: Quick Otto. The typewriter.
(Otto goes to the typewriter and they wait expeaantly. The officer produces
piece of paper out of his breast pocket and reads.)
Officer: Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das
Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
(Otto at the typewriter explodes with laughter and dies.)
Nazi: Ach! Zat iss not funny!
(Nazi burts into laughter and dies. A German guard bursts in with machine
gun, The British officer leaps on the table.)
Officer: (lightning speed) Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja!
.. Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
(The guard reels back and collapses laughing. British officer makes his
escape. Cut to a film of German scientists working in laboratories.)
Voice Over: But at Peenemunde in the Autumn of '44, the Germans were working
on a joke of their own.
(A German general is seated at an imposing desk. Behind him stands Otto,
labelled 'A Different Gestapo Officer'. Bespectacled German scientist/joke
writer enters room. He clean his throat and reads from card.)
German Joker: Die ist ein Kinnerhunder und zwei Mackel über und der bitte
schön ist den Wunderhaus sprechensie. 'Nein' sprecht der Herren 'Ist aufern
borger mit zveitingen'.
He finishes and looks hopeful.
Otto: We let you know.
(He shoots him.
Film of German sdentists.)
Voice Over: But by December their joke was ready, and Hitler gave the order
for the German V-Joke to be broadcast in English.
(Cut to 1940's wartime radio set with couple anxiously listening to it.)
Radio: (crackly German voice) Der ver zwei peanuts, valking down der
strasse, and von vas... assaulted! peanut. Ho-ho-ho-ho.
(Radio bunts into 'Deutschland Über Alles'. The couple look at each other
and then in blank amazement at the radio. Cut to modern BBC 2 interview. The
commentator in a woodland glade.)
Commentator (Eric Idle): In 1945 Peace broke out. It was the end of the
Joke. Joke warfare was banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention,
and in I950 the last remaining copy of the joke was laid to rest here in the
Berkshire countryside, never to be told again.
(He walks away revealing a monument on which is written: 'To the unknown
Joke'. Camera pulls away slowly through idyllic setting. Patriotic music
reaches crescendo.)
c/o Alan (with thanks and apologies to Monty Python).
JoeBlake
> A real extract from the Waugh *Letters* has EW writing to GO in
> hospital
> in Scotland in June 1948, and recommending to him ---*The Swoop or
> How
> Clarence Saved England* by PG Wodehouse [as recommended by Alan
> here the
> other day]. It's in connection with Orwell's Wodehouse essay, and
> EW
> hopes it can be incorporated into any future revision of that
> piece.
The Code of the Woosters, or whichever one it is that features Roderick
Spode and his Black Shorts, should also have been incorporated of
course.
> There is also a later letter written in 1949. in which Waugh takes
> issue
> over *Nineteen Eighty-Four*
I seem to remember reading in a biography of Waugh that I don't have
with me that someone told him he'd missed the point to 1984 wrt the
stuff you quoted and he later came to appreciate it even more. But my
memory stinks.
> The tone of both letters [there's also another brief one about
> *Animal
> Farm* calling it an "ingenious & delightful allegory"] is
> engagingly
> friendly and free from waspishness.
Rare for Waugh by that point. When I first read about EW & GO admiring
and liking each other I thought, "Lordy, what a surprise," and then a
few seconds later, "No, of _course_ they'd get on."
Tom Deveson
> A tantalizing extract from the Evelyn Waugh diaries:
A real extract from the Waugh *Letters* has EW writing to GO in hospital
in Scotland in June 1948, and recommending to him ---*The Swoop or How
Clarence Saved England* by PG Wodehouse [as recommended by Alan here the
other day]. It's in connection with Orwell's Wodehouse essay, and EW
hopes it can be incorporated into any future revision of that piece.
There is also a later letter written in 1949. in which Waugh takes issue
over *Nineteen Eighty-Four* because Orwell's "metaphysics are wrong. You
deny the soul's existence (at least Winston does) and can only contrast
matter with reason & will. It is now apparent that matter can control
reason and will in certain conditions. So you are left with nothing but
matter....Winston's rebellion was false. His 'Brotherhood' (whether real
or imaginary) was simply another gang like the Party. And it was false,
to me, that the form of revolt should simply be fucking in the style of
Lady Chatterley -- finding reality through a sort of mystical union with
the Proles in the sexual act....The Brotherhood which can confound the
Party is one of love -- not adultery in Berkshire, still less throwing
vitriol in children's faces. And men who love a crucified God need never
think of torture as all-powerful.
"You see how much your book excited me, that I risk preaching a sermon.
I do not want to annoy you...."
The tone of both letters [there's also another brief one about *Animal
Farm* calling it an "ingenious & delightful allegory"] is engagingly
friendly and free from waspishness.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Mark Milazzo
Tom,
I'm pretty new to Orwell's essays but rapidly gaining an appreciation.
What was "Orwell's Wodehouse essay. . ?" I mean obviously it's an
essay about P. G. Wodehouse, but to what effect? And where was it
published?
Marco
Martha Bridegam
>
> .....Once he had explained
> it to me, the Mice joke struck me as the funniest thing I had ever
> heard. I laughed for fully an hour until a huge beefy matron came in
> and slapped me, believing me to be hysterical. Just then Nancy Mitford
> turned up with a crowd of people and a party atmosphere developed. We
> all started drinking medical alcohol. At the height of the festivities
> I smuggled a priest in and had George unwittingly converted to
LOL. Welcome back, Joe.
That Horace explanation sounds exactly right, given the sly way Orwell
assumes (or pretends to assume) that his readers will get a similar
reference in one of the extracts I dug up for Mr. Deveson/Carey last
week:
In his essay, "Funny, But not Vulgar," December 1944 (p. 283 in Vol. III
of CEJL), Orwell quotes from Charles Stuart Calverley's "Ode to
Tobacco," then comments,
"Calverley is not afraid, it will be seen, to put a tax on his reader's
attention and to drag in a recondite Latin allusion." He doesn't bother
to describe what that allusion might be.
Peter Davison (Mr. Deveson's other alter ego) has this to say in a
footnote: "Calverley refers to Horace, __Odes__, III, i.40: 'Post
equitem sedet atra Cura' (Black Care sits on the horesman's pillion).
The ode contrasts the risks and dangers of those who would exchange the
peacefulness of the poet's secluded valley for wealth, which brings only
cares with it. In his 'Ode to Beer' Calverley quotes a line in Latin:
'Dulce est disipere in loco' (in the proper place it is
sweet to set aside one's learning) (__Odes__, IV, xii.28). Such
references must have taxed the readers of __Leader Magazine__, and
Orwell may have been indulging in a little leg-pulling. (Orwell scored
1,782 marks out of 2,000 for Latin in the examination for entry to the
Indian Imperial Police in 1922 -- his best paper; see 63.)..."
/MAB c/o that 187-page Complete Works index.
Tom Deveson
Mark Milazzo writes
>I'm pretty new to Orwell's essays but rapidly gaining an appreciation.
>What was "Orwell's Wodehouse essay. . ?" I mean obviously it's an
>essay about P. G. Wodehouse, but to what effect? And where was it
>published?
It's an essay called *In Defence of PG Wodehouse*. It was written early
in 1945, and came out originally in something called *Windmill* in July
1945, but was then reprinted in a number of collections of Orwell's
essays (Critical Essays 1946, Collected Essays 1961 etc.)
It's most easily available now, I think, in the Collected Essays,
Journalism and Letters, which is a four-volume compilation which came
out thirty years ago, and has quite often been reprinted since in
paperback. That's the *CEJL* often referred to in this discussion group.
There's a much more recent, much vaster and sadly much more expensive
collection of O's entire writings, and in these pages we usually rely on
Martha for access to it, who good-naturedly acts as unpaid and highly
efficient and painstaking librarian to our curiosity.
The Wodehouse essay was written when PGW was under severe attack in
Britain for having made broadcasts during the war on German radio. The
broadcasts had been done when W was in Berlin in 1941, having been
interned by the Germans in 1940 when in France. He had been particularly
vigorously denounced by Bill Connor ('Cassandra' of the Daily Mirror) in
a broadcast which accused him of being a quisling and virtual pro-Nazi.
Orwell's essay is partly a defence of W on the grounds that his mental
world has never developed beyond the years before WW1, and therefore
simply doesn't take in what Nazism is. Orwell sees Wodehouse as
unpolitical, innocent (in several senses) and incapable of the conscious
disloyalty involved in treachery. He summarises the overall tone and
effect of Wodehouse's work as expressing nothing like the anti-
Englishness some commentators had found in it -- the mocking of the
English is amicable and full of "old-fashioned harmless snobbishness."
He also attacks the "morally disgusting" search for traitors which was
gathering strength as the war came to its close --Orwell had been
particularly revolted by the "punishment of the guilty by the guilty"
which had happened after the liberation of France -- and wrote his piece
to support a decision to allow "the wretched Wodehouse" to "remain
mentally in the Edwardian age" rather than to seek him out and punish
him.
Orwell reminds the reader of the appeasers of 1938 and the Communists of
1940 who were prepared to accommodate with the Nazis: "there are other
culprits who are nearer home and better worth chasing."
The whole essay is certainly worth looking up if you can get hold of it.
The story has rumbled on for 50+ years and continues to do so.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Alan Allport
news:2e00yIADbOP4Ewm$@devesons.demon.co.uk...
> It's most easily available now, I think, in the Collected Essays,
> Journalism and Letters...
Sadly, still something of a contradiction in terms. Unless Amazon are being
unusually dense, the series as whole continues to be out-of-print (although
oddly they offer to send you Vol. 4 within 24 hours).
> There's a much more recent, much vaster and sadly much more expensive
> collection of O's entire writings, and in these pages we usually rely on
> Martha for access to it, who good-naturedly acts as unpaid and highly
> efficient and painstaking librarian to our curiosity.
Her addiction to gluepots comes in handy too.
In my sojourn to Amazon I spotted something that I may be misinterpreting,
but which if correct is a great boon; come January 2001 they are offering
_Nineteen Eighty Four_ *as* Volume 9 of the Complete Works. Might this mean
that from that point onwards the volumes will be available individually, a
somewhat more affordable option for those of us without several hundred
bucks/quid to throw down in one lump? Probably not, but worth checking out
as the date gets closer.
Alan.
Mark Milazzo
Thanks for hat information. I'll attempt to find a copy.
Marco
Tom Deveson
>That Horace explanation sounds exactly right, given the sly way Orwell
>assumes (or pretends to assume) that his readers will get a similar
>reference in one of the extracts I dug up for Mr. Deveson/Carey last
>week:
Further thoughts: the line did come to have a sort of proverbial status
among the classically-educated (it's in the *Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations* for instance -- the Horace, that is, not the Comstock) and
would have been the sort of allusion used by various exemplars of that
type. I can imagine, for example, a parliamentary exchange at the time
featuring something like "Is the Right Honourable gentleman aware that
for all the mountainous labours of his Department, the White Paper which
lies before us today is something of a sorry, indeed, ill-nourished
though no less perniciously deleterious mouse?"
I also recalled today, while on a bus going to Hackney, that the line
was used in classrooms (in mine, at any rate) in the days of compulsory
Latin as an example of a hexameter verse whose actual scansion is
counterpointed against the "normal" rules of prosody, thereby putting
the *mus* (=mouse) at the end in an expressively exposed position.
Maybe they were taught that at St-Cyp/Eton, where they spent a lot of
time writing Latin verses.
Tom?John?
--
Tom Deveson
Tom Deveson
>The Code of the Woosters, or whichever one it is that features Roderick
>Spode and his Black Shorts, should also have been incorporated of
>course.
"...'By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts
left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.'
'Footer bags, you mean?'
'Yes.'
'How perfectly foul.'
'Yes.'
'Bare knees?'
'Bare knees.'
'Golly!'..."
*The Code of the Woosters* Chapter 3
Undoubtedly the most memorable use of the term "footer bags" in world
literature.
>I seem to remember reading in a biography of Waugh that I don't have
>with me that someone told him he'd missed the point to 1984 wrt the
>stuff you quoted and he later came to appreciate it even more. But my
>memory stinks.
I can't find that in either Sykes' 1-volume or Stannard's 2-volume
lives, but they don't mention the exchange of letters either.
Interesting one to pursue.
>Rare for Waugh by that point. When I first read about EW & GO admiring
>and liking each other I thought, "Lordy, what a surprise," and then a
>few seconds later, "No, of _course_ they'd get on."
There's quite a long favourable review of *Critical Essays* that Waugh
did in *The Tablet* in 1946. Too long to quote right now more than a
tiny extract: "...It remains to say that Mr Orwell's writing is as
readable as his thought is lucid...Mr Orwell, when his theme requires
it, does not shirk the use of coarse language. There is nothing in his
writing that is inconsistent with high moral principles."
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Jonathan Mason
are available from Amazon UK, but not from Amazon US.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140187111/qid=943555443/sr=1-28/026-1203506-8938208
Try also
This is a searchable site with used books from 6000 booksellers
worldwide and you can get pretty much anything you want. There is even a
first edition of Coming Up For Air available for a few thousand bucks.
An excellent Xmas gift for the Orwellian who has everything!
Martha Bridegam
>
> Tom Deveson <a...@devesons.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:2e00yIADbOP4Ewm$@devesons.demon.co.uk...
>
> > It's most easily available now, I think, in the Collected Essays,
> > Journalism and Letters...
>
> Sadly, still something of a contradiction in terms. Unless Amazon are being
> unusually dense, the series as whole continues to be out-of-print (although
> oddly they offer to send you Vol. 4 within 24 hours).
Try http://www.powells.com/ -- they're offering the CEJL for $30, which
is less than I paid for mine. Besides which, Powell's is a real
(wonderful) bookstore in Portland, Oregon, as opposed to Amazon, which
is a mom-and-pop-destroying phantom.
>
> > There's a much more recent, much vaster and sadly much more expensive
> > collection of O's entire writings, and in these pages we usually rely on
> > Martha for access to it, who good-naturedly acts as unpaid and highly
> > efficient and painstaking librarian to our curiosity.
>
> Her addiction to gluepots comes in handy too.
The hell ya say.
/MAB
Alan Allport
> Try http://www.powells.com/ -- they're offering the CEJL for $30, which
> is less than I paid for mine. Besides which, Powell's is a real
> (wonderful) bookstore in Portland, Oregon, as opposed to Amazon, which
> is a mom-and-pop-destroying phantom.
You mean they sell books cheaper than mom-and-pop and have a bigger
selection? Then death to mom-and-pop, I say.
Alan.
Martha Bridegam
OK,ok, I'll bite.
(This reminds me of a vicious argument about Wal-Mart with my economist
cousin-in-law several years ago. It might even have been Thanksgiving,
I forget.)
Amazon doesn't carry strange political newspapers, zines, or
self-published poetry. Or anything out of print AFAIK. They don't let
you sit around reading things you don't plan on buying. They aren't next
door to a cafe. And it isn't raining outside because they don't have a
real physical location where it *could* be raining. They're a figment.
You can't browse in a figment.
/MAB
Alan Allport
news:383DF5...@coastside.net...
> Amazon doesn't carry strange political newspapers, zines, or
> self-published poetry. Or anything out of print AFAIK. They don't let
> you sit around reading things you don't plan on buying. They aren't next
> door to a cafe. And it isn't raining outside because they don't have a
> real physical location where it *could* be raining. They're a figment.
> You can't browse in a figment.
There is so much wrong with the above that I hardly know where to begin. But
shucks, let's give it a whirl.
(i) You *can* browse. Barnes and Noble, for example, often prints the first
chapter of new books. I have made selections that way.
(ii) You *can* get out-of-print books. And some of services have on-line
auctions which have second-hand stock too.
(iii) The mom-and-pop bookstore you want to evoke in the above is a
figment - and a real figment, I mean, not just an existential snigger - for
the majority of people out there who don't live in metropolises or
university towns. Most places simply don't have the catchment area to
support a bookstore that isn't a chain outlet or a retirement hobby never
expected to make a profit. The homely little mom-and-pop battling the big
bad corporation is a middle class urbanite's conceit; sniping at Amazon
because it's declasse and won't serve as the backdrop for a Robert Doisneau
fantasy belittles the service these new on-line outlets are providing for
people who haven't access to good traditional bookstores. They're cheaper,
faster, and more comprehensive. If they don't serve hot and cold running
fringe poetry, I think most of us can live with that.
Alan.
greg
Alan Allport wrote in message <81l0fq$5id$1...@netnews.upenn.edu>...
<snipping>
>(iii) The mom-and-pop bookstore you want to evoke in the above is a
>figment - and a real figment, I mean, not just an existential snigger - for
>the majority of people out there who don't live in metropolises or
>university towns. Most places simply don't have the catchment area to
>support a bookstore that isn't a chain outlet or a retirement hobby never
>expected to make a profit. The homely little mom-and-pop battling the big
>bad corporation is a middle class urbanite's conceit; sniping at Amazon
>because it's declasse and won't serve as the backdrop for a Robert Doisneau
>fantasy belittles the service these new on-line outlets are providing for
>people who haven't access to good traditional bookstores.
I don't really want to butt in here, as my favorite posts to read are when
you two disagree in that special fundamental way, but I think that point
above is well made. I live in a little mountain town about 25 miles north of
the closest real town (my own fault obviously) and there aren't any mom &
pop books stores here. This isn't a unviersity town, there aren't
middle-class college kids with unbelievably large amounts of free time on
their hands to drink coffee and 'browse'. We have Targets and KMarts "this
isn't a library, ya know, gonna buy it or what?" here, but no obscure
political pamphlets outside of religious dingbats' broadsides; if I want
more of that stuff, I go to the Internet, as I would for finding
out-of-print books. If it's also how my parents would buy books, it's not my
fault.
Greg
JoeBlake
> If they don't serve hot and cold running fringe poetry, I think most
> of us can live with that...death to Mom and Pop...I am completely
evil > and I worship Clinton, Blair, Hitler and Satan...
It's hardly my place to butt in, either, but Alan, you have no soul,
and you might be better off in the Ayn Rand newsgroup. Your
grandchildren, who will be slaves, will speak in tones of shame of
Grandpa Allport, the Corporate Nazi, who betrayed mankind for cheap
books on the internet.
Gene Zitver
make this NG special, almost, unique, is that people usually behave civilly
to each other, even when they disagree. I don't have a problem with
disagreements and arguments here but, for the sake of maintaining this as a
place that we look forward to visiting, I hope we can keep them on the level
of ideas.
Gene
JoeBlake
I apologize. My tongue was in my cheek, not that that excuses it.
JoeBlake
> >I seem to remember reading in a biography of Waugh that I don't
> have
> >with me that someone told him he'd missed the point to 1984 wrt
> the
> >stuff you quoted and he later came to appreciate it even more.
> But my
> >memory stinks.
> I can't find that in either Sykes' 1-volume or Stannard's 2-volume
> lives, but they don't mention the exchange of letters either.
> Interesting one to pursue.
It was Sykes' bio I read. I must have got badly mixed up with
something, although I've definitely come across Waugh's views on 1984
as expressed in those letters somewhere before. Perhaps I was
remembering an imaginary argument I had with Waugh myself. Sorry.
Alan Allport
> It's hardly my place to butt in, either, but Alan, you have no soul.
Curses. Who have you been talking to?
Alan.
Tom Deveson
>Perhaps I was remembering an imaginary argument I had with Waugh
myself.
Know the feeling. I also have quite good imaginary rows with Auberon,
which I invariably win.
Sykes does suggest plausibly that Waugh's *Love Among the Ruins* with
its future-fantasy and perfected Socialist state partly derives from
*Nineteen Eighty-Four* as well as from Beerbohm's parody of HG Wells
(which is where we came in.)
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Martha Bridegam
Alan, if it's any comfort, that little daydream of literal, not digital,
book-browsing on a rainy day was only half derived from City Lights in
San Francisco. The other half was from a bookstore in a strip mall
towards the suburban edge of Louisville, KY. It has an awning and an
internal cafe. It's one of at least two stores, maybe three, under the
same ownership, but the ownership is still relatively small & local.
The place in Kentucky not only carried Christopher Hitchens' snotty book
on Mother Teresa, it didn't complain when I sat there and read the whole
thing without paying. A level of tolerance that Amazon cannot top.
/MAB