Coleman Cox Hates You and Other Observations

At a recent trip to a thrift store, I came across Straight Talk from Coleman Cox, a 1928 collection of the "witty sayings" of a Coolidge era sales manager.

Though advertising itself as containing "more than nine hundred thoughts," it really just contains nine hundred variations on "You deserve to be poor" and "get back in the kitchen, woman!" 

I'm exaggerating a bit.  Some of his thoughts are just basic observations that he thinks are funny for some unfathomable reason.  Consider the very first entry in the book:

 A lot of jokes don't age well because the references become obscure, or sensibilities change, but this joke fails wholly on its merits, and the scope of that failure is undiminished over nearly a century.  It also fails as a useful, or even interesting, observation.  Some business partners don't get along!  

I want to provide a full unedited page to give you a good sense of how little this man has to say, and how proud he seems to be of saying it.

My first inclination would be to describe Cox as the poor man's H. L. Mencken, but Cox hates the poor.

His firm belief that wordplay makes wisdom is so unshakeable, that he doesn't even try to make sense half the time.  When he says "Traffic officers and not employers are the ones who caution young men against speeding up and trying to go ahead of every one," who is he complaining about?  Is he reprimanding the employers?  Does he think the young men should behave this way in business?  And what the hell is his problem in the last entry on the page?  Is he complaining about employees being busy?  Does he distrust the phrase "busy as a bee?"  I really can't suss out what he's trying to convey here. If you're wondering how this got past an editor, you might be shocked to find out there wasn't one.

Coleman's success as a writer came though self-publishing small booklets that he would sell to business owners, who would then distribute them to their employees.  As the blurb on the back of the hardcover puts it "Great executives have distributed millions of Mr. Cox's booklets of advice because they realized these friendly suggestions would help their employees work better and live better."

    

Fun stuff!

If you're wondering, does Coleman Cox have anecdotes that only a man completely lacking in imagination could find profound, then you're in luck!

I've found that people who greatly overestimate their own intelligence or perceptiveness tend to drastically underestimate the same qualities in others.  Does he believe that the meaning is so cleverly conveyed that the reader must go back to grasp it?  Does he believe repeating this common idea about perseverance will so rock his audience that they must pause and read it again once the shock has worn off?  Perhaps I'm being mean here.  After all, he's acknowledging that people who get thrown down can come back stronger, so maybe that's a sign of empathy?

Well, fuck you too, Coleman.  And in case anyone noticing the dialect in the above was wondering, yes, there are racist entries, but they're gross in a way that's not funny or interesting, so I'm not excerpting them here.  His misogyny gets personally revealing though.

The first question that comes to my mind is why is Cox going to these cabarets he finds so murder-inducing.  I'm also not sure who he's planning on murdering in this scenario.

There's something fascinating in a person who is so lacking in self-awareness and empathy.  Everything bad that happens to people is their own damn fault, and how dare my employees cause me to lose money.  

This book is, at its heart, marginalia from the side of the roaring twenties generally omitted when discussing American literature.  When we talk about the 1920s, the focus is almost exclusively on the authors of Lost Generation, Algonquin Round Table, or of those who shared similar cultural values.  But the flipside of the jazz and luxury was the gross exploitation that succeeded the Progressive Era, and the broad adoption of social darwinism and laissez faire by industry and government in this decade.  It's likely that the number of Americans who read Coleman Cox in 1928 is significantly larger than of those who read Ernest Hemingway or Dorothy Parker, despite his now complete obscurity.

Well, he has no one to blame but himself.

Hey, Hey, LBJ, How Much Did You Chafe Today?

Every now and then, it's nice to remember that president's are still people, who have the same problems as the rest of us.  And, the persistent use of secret recordings in the Oval Office from FDR up through the Nixon administration, gives us the ability to hear some of the more mundane difficulties that presidents face.  Such as finding a pair of pants with enough room to "let your nuts hang."  LBJ's call to his tailor is scandalous in a different sense than most secret white house recordings.

How to Visit a Museum as a Tourist

First, arrive early.  This won't help avoid the crowds, but at least you'll be out in time for happy hour.  I arrived at the British Museum about twenty minutes before the majority of its exhibits opened, declined buying a £5 map, a £3 bottle of water, a £12 Rosetta stone tea cozy, and the London Bridge and made my way towards the entrance to the Egyptian Treasures exhibit.  Just in time to join the ranks of an elementary school class and a tour group of elderly Frenchmen, along with the myriad others like myself.  And at last the docents withdrew, the doors swung wide, and we swept through the threshold and into a gallery of human achievement.  Before me, encased in a glass cube, stood the black mass of the Rosetta stone.  The Rosetta Stone.  That artifact which opened the dark crypt of Egyptian mystery, that cipher to all the sphinx's riddles, that great translator of the ancients...   
I stood in awe... and directly in front of someone's camera.  

This was a trend I became increasingly aware of throughout the day.  Crossing any open space meant dodging a grid of invisible line-of-sights, ducking and weaving from one hall to the another.  But this isn't going to be a screed against incessant amateur photography.  While preventing this behavior may seem like a good idea, it would be more trouble than it's worth. (Although attempts have been made by putting all paintings behind a thin sheet of glass, thus, no matter where you stand, some part of the picture will be in glare.)  Rather, we must ask why people are taking these photos.  The answer, obviously, is to share them, and prove to others that they were there.  Yet it won't be too long before they catch on and realize that nearly every item in the museum has been extensively photographed by professional photographers (books of these photographs available for £15 at the gift shop).  It is only a matter of time before the discerning museum goer will realize the futility of the picture-taking.  This is not good news, because for many people, this will eliminate the need to visit the museum at all!   

So what is the modern museum director to do?  How does one make a museum endlessly photogenic?  The answer lies in the question.  Make the museum itself worth photographing.  One could start by arranging the items not by region or epoch, but by complementary or shocking juxtapositions.  The Rosetta Stone next to an Enigma machine.  A sarcophagus in a room decorated by Warhol paintings.  The permutations are endless, and, with frequent changes in layout, would inspire repeat visits, and plenty of snapshots.

Lit Brick

I've recently come across an excellent webcomic by John S. Troutman called Lit Brick.  The premise, as stated in the first comic: "I'm gonna read the entire Norton Anthology of English Literature and draw comics about it."  It's a wonderful mix of archaic literature and modern pop culture.  For example, strip #2:

Included with each comic is a brief post about the source material.  The whole thing is pretty cool.  you should check it out.

ERB: Stephen King vs. Edgar Allan Poe

Last April, I posted Epic Rap Battles of History's Dr. Seuss vs. William Shakespeare.  Well, Nice Peter and Epic Lloyd have done it again, this time pitting Edgar Allan Poe against Stephen King:

1956: Don't Go Near the Water by William Brinkley

The Author:

           William Brinkley (1917-1993) was born in Custer City, Oklahoma.  Brinkley graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 1940 after which he worked for a couple years as a reporter for the Washington Post before becoming a commissioned officer in the US Navy, a position in which he dealt mostly with public relations.  After the war, Brinkley published his debut novel, Quicksand (1948) before going back to work at the Washington Post.  In 1951, Brinkley started working at Life Magazine, a position he retained until 1958.  In 1955 he published his only non-fiction work, a biography of a Slovakian nun titled The Deliverance of Sister Cecelia. 

            His best-selling work, Don’t Go Near the Water, was published in 1956.  He published six more novels between 1961 and his final novel, The Last Ship, in 1988.  In 1971, Brinkley moved to McAllen, Texas, where, in 1993, after a long bout of depression, he died from an overdose of barbiturates.

The Book:

Length: 373 Pages

Subject/Genre: Military/Humor

       Don't Go Near the Water focuses on a group of public relations officers stationed on the tropical Pacific island of Tulura during World War Two.  Structurally, the novel is episodic, each chapter dealing with a different problem and placing emphasis on different characters.  The 'episodes' range from the problems of an enlisted man dating a nurse (i.e., an officer), to blackmailing a self-absorbed war correspondent into building a schoolhouse for the island's children.  

         The novel's main character is Ensign Max Siegel, a burly Harvard grad who is the only one of the PR group to have learned to speak Tuluran.  The first episode of the novel deals with a very serious problem:  Edgar Rice Burroughs is coming to Tulura (NOTE: Burroughs actually volunteered to be, and served as, a war correspondent in WWII, despite being in his sixties at the time) and the PR people want to take some photos of Burroughs with the native Tulurans.  Unfortunately, the natives don't look native enough, so it's up to Siegel to convince them to dress like savages.  

     Reading Don't Go Near the Water is like watching an old sitcom that has aged remarkably well.  The humor is often predictable but generally sincere and the second to last chapter, focusing on everyone's reaction to the use of the nuclear bomb, is strangely touching, and perhaps presages Brinkley's post-nuclear-apocalyptic novel The Last Ship.  The humor is largely based on the absurdity of the PR division, the self-importance of its commanding officers, and the idiosyncrasies of the war correspondents.  From the novel:   

                                       

                 "[Siegel] foresaw the day when there would be one Public Relations officer 

                  for each combat man in the Navy, and the fleet commanded by the president 

                  of the Associated Press, with a six-star rank of Admiral-Admiral, who would 

                  decide on operations solely on the basis of their news value, with transmission 

                  ships occupied by nothing but correspondents, with no operation dispatches 

                  being permitted until the fleet was wiped out to provide a good news item." (p. 76)

In 1956, Don't Go Near the Water sold 165,000 copies, not including its book club sales.  The film rights were secured quickly, and a film adaptation starring Glenn Ford and Eva Gabor was released in 1957.

Don't Go Near the Water was reprinted in 2005, and TNT is apparently planning to release a made for TV version of Brinkley's The Last Ship next year.  

       I really like Don't Go Near the Water.  If you like humor, especially the type you'd find in good sitcoms, you should definitely give it a read.    

Bestsellers of 1956:

1. Don't Go Near the Water by William Brinkley

2. The Last Hurrah by Edwin O'Connor

3. Peyton Place  by Grace Metalious

4. Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis

5. Eloise by Kay Thompson

6. Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

7. A Certain Smile  by François Sagan

8. The Tribe That Lost Its Head by Nicholas Monsarrat

9. The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir 

10. Boon Island by Kenneth Roberts

Also published 1956:

James Baldwin - Giovanni's Room

Albert Camus - The Fall

Allen Ginsburg - Howl and Other Poems

Eugene O'Neill - Long Day's Journey into Night

Sources:

Brinkley, William. Don't Go Near the Water. New York: Random House, 1956. Print.

Burke, James Henry and Hackett, Alice Payne. 80 Years of Best Sellers: 1895-1975. New 

            York: R. R. Bowker Company, 1977. Print.

Interview with George Saunders

If you haven't got around to it yet, check out some work by George Saunders.  He's quickly become one of my favorite writers (In Persuasion Nation is my favorite collection of his so far).  Here's him doing a reading from his most recent collection:

SMBC Theatre - The Old Man and the Sea

Well, guys, it looks like no one really got this book.

Check out more videos and comics from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal on their website.

Judging More Books by Their Covers

Several months ago, I made a post about the particularly bizarre and awful book covers of Tutis Publishing.  If you thought that was the limit of the company's hilarious ineptitude, well, you know as little about Tutis as Tutis knows about literature.    
     
But literature isn't the only area in which Tutis Publishing is fantastically unknowledgeable.  They also have no understanding of history.  For example, Theodore Roosevelt's book about his experiences in the Spanish American War, The Rough Riders:

Fun Fact: Cuba used to be populated primarily by dwarves

Here, we see Teddy Roosevelt depicted as a pantsless Viking.  If you think that's anachronistic, you may be interested in how they depict Stephen Crane's Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage:   

Sparta was only fighting for City-State rights!  

I guess they got the "red" part right.  Still, it's surprising how many American history novels don't have anything on the cover relating to American history.  How would Europe feel if this happened to them?    

The Renaissance generally refers to a period between the 14th and 17th centuries in Europe.  I have a feeling that Tutis's cover design department (i.e. a hungover intern who speaks only in riddles) simply confused the words "renaissance" and "revolution."  But really, three down, and they haven't even managed to get on the right continent once.  Could it get any worse?

Holy crap!  Did anyone else know cyborgs fought in World War One!?!?   Based on the coloration, I think this actually takes place on Mars.  Not only did Tutis choose a random anachronistic image, but they set it on the wrong planet!  This makes sense, I guess.  If there's one thing they are as clueless about as literature and history, it's geography.  I'd like to introduce Tutis's new travel program, why not visit the marvelous deserts?

When you're done basking in the hot Illinois sun, why not visit New England's House of Parliament?

But now it's time to play our favorite game!  Tutis word-association!  Let's try to follow the reasoning behind each of these covers:     

A Stradivarius is a kind of violin. Violins and guitars have strings.  Sting sounds like green. A guitar with a green filter!

Airplanes!  Explosions!  Texas!!!!

I'm not sure if there's enough clarity of purpose for this to be racist.

Scarlet is red!

The real treasure is magic bicycles that can ride on water.

A hound is a dog.  Dogs are nice.

I can't really blame them for that last one though, because if there's one thing Tutis is as clueless about as literature and history and geography, it's animals.  There's nothing I can say about these next two:   

Goddamnit Tutis!  That's not a horse; that's a stack of poorly photoshopped books on a poorly photoshopped desk next to one of John Tenniel's illustrations from Alice in Wonderland on an entirely separate background.  That looks nothing like a horse!

I Apologize in Advance

The Birthday Party

            Poor old Mrs. Peters, I thought, smiling perfunctorily as I strapped on a ridiculous cone-shaped party hat and moved to the kitchen in the little suburban house.  These hats are basically festive dunce-caps.  I was always prone to epiphanies, so long as they were self-deprecating.  But poor old Mrs. Peters was wearing one of these stupid hats too, and I didn’t want to seem rude.  After all, it was her birthday. 

            Now, you may very well wonder why a fifty year old woman was throwing herself a birthday party.  That very question was one of the three that popped into my head after I received the invitation.  One of the others was:  Why invite me?  I didn’t know Mrs. Peters very well.  I later learned that Mrs. Peters invited all her neighbors.; I was just the only one to actually attend.  The low turnout was related to my other question:  Why throw a birthday party at noon on Super Bowl Sunday?  I have yet to get a definitive answer to this question.  But nevertheless, there I was, sitting across the table from Mrs. Peters, sipping from a glass of fresh lemonade, trying to overlook the thinly veiled sadness lining her face. 

            Mrs. Peters had no family, unless you count Mr. Fuzzykins, her hairless Siamese cat (which I don’t).  All skin and claws, Mr. Fuzzykins begged (i.e. scratched hashtags into my leg) for some of the cake on the table, a two-layer chocolate disk with a wholly irresponsible number of candles stuck in it.  “That’s a lovely cake,” I said.  Mrs. Peters began to sob.  This carried on for a few minutes, during which Mr. Fuzzykins chewed through my shoelaces in three places.  When Mrs. Peters calmed down, she explained:

            “I’m sorry.  I just remembered something from when I was a little girl.  My parents never had much, and I’d never get birthday presents.  But every year my mother would bake me a flourless cake.”

            “Those are very tough to make,” I said.

            “No, she just didn’t put in any flour.  It tasted awful, but I was always grateful for the thought.  When I was ten or so, my father got a better job, and I started getting real cakes for my birthday.  I just remembered, at my first real birthday party, there was a cake.  Small, nothing special, but to me it was the most beautiful cake in the world and a sign of the great things that were happening for our family.  I promised myself, when I grew up, I was going to have two beautiful cakes for all my birthdays.”    

            Mrs. Peters stood up, grabbed a plate from a cupboard and rummaged through a drawer, eventually emerging with a large knife.  She returned to the cake, removed the top level and put it on another plate.  She beamed proudly at the dishes.  “Now how about that?” she asked.

            “Mrs. Peters,” I sighed:

            “You can’t halve your cake and deem it two.”

The Post In Which I Get Pedantic About Spelling

As the title suggests, I'm here to talk about spelling.  There are a few particular words that I see misspelled all the time, even among the work of my fellow English majors.  Never fear; a random fellow on the internet is here!

Through / Threw

Through is a preposition, as in "Superman can see through walls."   Threw is the past tense of throw, as in "Superman threw several criminals into space before he remembered that humans can't breathe there."  It's understandable how the mistake would be made, especially since the pronunciation of "ough" is the point at which the English language has a mental breakdown.

Wander / Wonder

To wander is to roam aimlessly, as in "Superman wandered through the ruins of a moon colony."  This is not the same as wonder, which, when used as a verb, means to ponder or consider.  For example, "Superman wondered what happened to those nuclear missiles he diverted into space."  I usually see people spell 'wander' with an 'o,' and rarely see this mistake the other way around.  This is reasonable, because the 'a' in wander makes a sound usually associated with 'o's.  Here's a simple story to help you remember which is which:  Superman destroyed the TV satellite, so I missed the end of the game.  I wonder who won?

Past / Passed

Passed is the past tense of the verb pass.  Example:  "Superman passed by a wig shop that was being robbed; he didn't stop to help."  The past is that point in time before the present and even farther before the future.  Example:  "Superman has an unpleasant past with bald people."   This is an easy mistake to make, due to the similarity in pronunciation and, often, meaning.  If the word you're looking for is a verb, it's probably passed, if it's an adjective or a noun, it's probably past.

Gravity's Rainbow Original Comic Strip