"Some modern travellers still pretend to find Acephalous people in America."
Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopædia; or, an universal dictionary of arts and sciences, 1753
NEXT POST
A: 1,114 Q: How many words does Terry Eagleton write before he mentions the name of the author whose book he purports to review? I grouse because I care. I intended this post to be about the remarkable act of compression in the first paragraph. It's a thing of wonder, if you wonder about things like "How can I lucidly jam the History of Everything into a single paragraph?" Eagleton's answer: All literary works are anonymous, but some are more anonymous than others. It is in the nature of a piece of writing that it is able to stand free of its begetter, and can dispense with his or her physical presence. In this sense, writing is more like an adolescent than a toddler. I might pass you a note at a meeting, but a note is only a note if it can function in my absence. Writing, unlike speech, is meaning that has come adrift from its source. Some bits of writing—theatre tickets or notes to the milkman, for example—are more closely tied to their original contexts than Paradise Lost or War and Peace. Fiction (since it is imaginary) has no real-life original context at all, and hermeneutically speaking can therefore circulate a lot more freely than a shopping list or a bus ticket. Literary works are peculiarly portable. They can be lifted from one interpretative situation to another, and may change their meaning in the course of this migration. Waiting for Godot as performed in San Quentin prison is not quite the same play as Peter Hall’s first London production. We cannot simply put Auschwitz out of our minds while watching The Merchant of Venice. Writerly meaning does not always trump readerly meaning. Walter Benjamin believed that works of literature secreted certain meanings which might be released only in their afterlife, as they came to be read in as yet unforeseeable situations. He thought much the same about history in general. The past itself is alterable, since the future casts it in a new light. Whether John Milton belonged to a species which ended up destroying itself is up to us and our progeny. The future possibilities of Hamlet are part of the play’s meaning, even though they may never be realised. One of the finest English novels, Samuel Richardson’s 18th-century masterpiece Clarissa, became newly readable in the light of the 20th-century women’s movement. Disagree with him if you must—and most of the time, I must—but plaudit him when his prose demands admiration.PREVIOUS POST
Characters Discussed in My London Chapter Whose Names, in Aggregrate, Infantilize Me One-Eye, a wolf White Fang, a wolf-dog Buck, a dog-wolf Earnest Everhard, a porn star dead socialist revolutionary Big-Tooth, a hominid Lop-Ear, his companion Red-Eye, an atavism Ab, a man of the Age of Stone Uk, a paleolithic literalist Oan, an early Shakespearean hack Wax-moth, an agent of creeping socialism Long-Beard, the sole survivor of a capitalism Afraid-of-the-Dark, one of his three nephews Deer-Runner, another Yellow-Head, the last of them Fith-Fith, failed chief of Long-Beard's ruined tribe Three-Legs, inventor of agriculture Pig-Jaw, father of domestication Big-Fat, née Twisted-Lip, discoverer of God Crooked-Eyes, corn liquor magnate The Bug, first minister of propaganda Tiger-Face, chief of the jointed staff Long-Fang, obviously doomed socialist revolutionary Split-Nose, professional scapegoat No real punch-line here, other than I'm amazed I'm able to take myself seriously writing about these folk. (Or, possibly, an explanation as to why I really can't.) Sadly, this is my strongest chapter, the one that should be my writing sample and/or job talk, but I'm thinking I should go with something else, like the one in which I prattle on about a fish. Crap. I'm never going to land a job, am I?
That? Was awesome.
Posted by: Ancrene Wiseass | Tuesday, 27 May 2008 at 03:12 PM
That? Was awesome.
Posted by: Ancrene Wiseass | Tuesday, 27 May 2008 at 03:12 PM
Ha! I used that as a teaching aid in both my fall & winter E28A classes. Apparently it was actually produced by England's lake district to promote tourism for the 200th anniversary of Lyrical Ballads. I also showed MC Lars' "Mr. Raven": "Who's that? / Who's that rapping? / Who's that rapping at my kitchen door? / Mister / Mister Raven / All up in my grill like 'Nevermore'!"
Posted by: uncomplicatedly | Tuesday, 27 May 2008 at 03:38 PM
That's not a Cockney accent. Black British, that's what it is.
Interestingly, the rapping squirrel in question appears to be Tufty, the erstwhile road-safety squirrel:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4690166.stm
Did he fall on hard times and turn to tourist-based hiphop to make ends meet?
Posted by: Roderick Glossop | Tuesday, 27 May 2008 at 05:50 PM
What up Wordsworth my dog!?!?!
(thumps chest twice with fist) Respect.
Posted by: Sisyphus | Tuesday, 27 May 2008 at 08:08 PM
Roderick, I have it on good authority, from an actual Londoner, that the accent's East London. Or maybe I'm wrong with associating that accent with Cockney, but I always have ... have I always been wrong!?!
Posted by: SEK | Tuesday, 27 May 2008 at 10:00 PM
There are many types of London accent. The accent of the rapper Dizzee Rascal (who is from east London), for example, is very similar to that of our squirrel friend, but it is not a Cockney accent.
Posted by: Roderick Glossop | Wednesday, 28 May 2008 at 02:45 AM
Here's a quick compare-and-contrast for you.
Ray Winstone has an almost self-parodic Cockney accent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP4f95AK8L4&feature=related
Whereas Mr Rascal, here, speaks with a quite distinct Black British accent. Notice how differently Billy Bragg speaks when he interrupts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFaUBpIpo2c
Posted by: Roderick Glossop | Wednesday, 28 May 2008 at 03:28 AM
Well that was different.
Posted by: Jack | Wednesday, 28 May 2008 at 10:34 AM
That was actually quite skillful, as a parody. Whoever wrote for the squirrel inserted whole lines between lines of original Wordsworth, and added syllables to lines, often to put in a hip-hop style internal rhyme. Add the mood of the poem is changed from passive to active whenever possible. For instance, the squirrel's last two lines:
My heart fills up, until the pleasure is spilled
Yeah, I'm taken back to dancing with the daffodils.
vs. Wordsworth's
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Wordsworth has daffodils dancing, twice, and then waves, and then his heart dances, but the squirrel actually danced with them and thinks back to that memory. Advantage: squirrel. Also the retina / ekcetera rhyme is brilliant.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Wednesday, 28 May 2008 at 03:51 PM
It might be London, but I didn't say it was cockney.
I find the Black British label a little misleading, because if you're in say...Leytonstone, almost everyone has that accent, and it's also prominent amongst British Asians. Although the trend runs vaguely along class and white/non-white boundaries, it's not exclusively so. I've met private school kids who have tried to make themselves "cool" and "hip" by adopting the accent. I, on the other hand, was rejected by my own ethnic group in school for having a "white-man's accent."
Cockney is in decline in London, and you have to go East towards the suburban hell-hole of Essex to find significant numbers of people who speak it.
This is all based on my own anecdotal experience, not any solid quantitative data as such.
Posted by: Naadir Jeewa | Wednesday, 28 May 2008 at 05:47 PM
The Cockney thing is, obviously, my fault. Naadir said "East London Estuary," I thought "Cockney!" Don't know why I have those two connected.
Posted by: SEK | Wednesday, 28 May 2008 at 06:53 PM