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May 24, 2005
TT: Mailbag
To begin with, several readers caught me with my pants down when I claimed the other day, apropos of W.H. Auden, that Forewords and Afterwords was "the only essay collection Auden published in his lifetime." Not so, not so! It was preceded by The Dyer's Hand, which is actually on my bookshelf, whereas Forewords and Afterwords was stuck in the back of my closet. This was double-barreled dumbness: I somehow had it lodged in my mind that The Dyer's Hand was based on a series of lectures. (Wrong book--that's The Enchaféd Flood.) A million pardons for my memory lapse.Now, on to a couple of interesting pieces of correspondence:
- "Apropos of nothing, except that Auden always makes me think of Kultur, your line in the Proust questionnaire that your idea of--Hell? unhappiness? what was it?--was ‘Siegfried' made me laugh aloud, an achievement you share with your man Mencken, Amis and a very few others."
I'm honored. I myself rarely laugh out loud when reading, so rarely that I can actually remember some of the specific passages that have made me do so. I don't think that H.L. Mencken has ever done it for me, but I remember vividly that Kingsley Amis rang the bell on my first reading of Lucky Jim when his anti-hero ordered an "octuple whisky." I've also done it a couple of times when reading P.J. O'Rourke, and I went out of my way years ago to mention the fact in a New York Times Book Review piece (of which I no longer have a copy, alas).
Why is it that humor on the page, no matter how funny, tends not to provoke an audible response from the reader? Or am I and my correspondent exceptional in our tendency to keep our mirth to ourselves? It happens that I'm an unusually loud laugher in public--so much so that at least one performer who knows me in private life has spotted my hoot from the stage. (She said she found it reassuring.) Must people like me be part of a crowd in order to be sufficiently disinhibited to emit the peculiar noises known as laughter? I doubt it, since I also laugh out loud when watching TV alone.
Any and all explanations will be gratefully received.
- "Unsolicited advice to my favorite blogger: we know you're a very busy man and we understand you have to make room for other things more important (yes!) than the blog. But sometimes it seems as if your every other paragraph carries this message. Awright, awreddy!"
Touché and/or ouch! It's guilt speaking, of course: I find it almost impossible not to post without first explaining why I'm not going to be posting. Such is the merciless work ethic that rules my productive life. I keep saying that I'll try to take unexplained time off from the blog, and I keep not doing it. Looks like the time has come to give it another try. In any case, I appreciate the nudge.
Posted May 24, 2005 9:50 AM
