The Smartest Book in the World
Page 6
The problem is that once you allow one or two in, they tend to multiply, scattering themselves everywhere, expostulating, sounding off, making believe that phrases have a significance beyond what the words themselves are struggling to say.
—Lewis Thomas
Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald
www as a Word
World Wide Web has three syllables; www has nine. I have never understood an abbreviation that is longer than the phrase it is meant to shorten. I know this is not punctuation. It is a supes neg p’graph on abrevs lol.
The Oxford Comma
Also known as the serial comma. That means it lives in a white unmarked van and waylays people and then disposes of their sentences in a mound in the forest. Nitpicky types insist that it clarifies sentences, even though it—the comma, in this case—adds an enormous amount of bloody punctuation. The comma before “and” in a phrase “The koala bear eats, shoots, and leaves,” as opposed to “The koala bear eats, shoots and leaves.” Clear? Me neither. I hate the Oxford comma, okra, and the people who insist one must abide them both.
The Ellipses . . .
Supposed to break up long quotations. Herb Caen, the legendary San Francisco Chronicle columnist, used them in every column. He named it “three-dot journalism,” and for him it worked because he also called San Francisco “Baghdad by the Bay.” But ellipses smack of . . . well . . . they just seem . . . like you have forgotten what it was you . . . never mind. When in the course of human events . . . rabbit train . . . I love pancakes . . . the end . . . hallelujah.
POETRY III
Edgar Allan Poe
(1809–1849)
Poe lived in poverty and agitation, and he perished delirious and raving—the kind of life one thinks of when one thinks of Romanticism and poets. Born in 1809, his parents were slutty actors who died when he was a baby. John Allan, a rich merchant, took him in and gave him the “Allan” but never officially adopted him. While living with the Allan family in Virginia, Poe heard the slaves tell stories of witches and dark magic, which he eagerly absorbed. Poe had a broody nature, was an avid fan of older Women, wore a cape, and affected a dramatic air. He loved drinking and brawling, deliberately washed out of West Point, married his thirteen-year-old cousin (though he was really in love with her mother), begged money, and struggled to be a writer. He cultivated his own dark weirdness throughout his career, and he invented detective fiction. But before all that, Poe wrote poetry.
“The Raven” is his most famous work, and he received nine dollars for it. Widely critiqued, it was a hit, and he spent a good deal of his career reciting it for people who loved it. “The Raven” became his nickname. Though he was an indigent drunk, perpetually broke, a mean critic, and a bitter pill, the power of his writing is irrevocable. . . . Poe has the last laugh from beyond the grave. He might have enjoyed that. We have him to behold in quivering awe and terror.
The Raven
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“ ’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this, and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
“ ’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is, and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore!”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice:
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore.’ ”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking
“Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamplight gloated o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamplight gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe, from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!’
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign in parting, bird or fiend,” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamplight o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted—nevermore!
BASEBALL I
The trouble is not that players have sex the night before a game. It’s that they stay out all night looking for it.
—Casey Stengel
I believe in rules. Sure I do. If there weren’t any rules, how could you break them?
—Leo Durocher
One percent of ballplayers are leaders of men. The other ninety-nine percent are followers of women.
—John J. McGraw
This is the toughest part of any comedian’s job. Making baseball likable and interesting to people who aren’t middle-aged white guys. You mean to say young freckle-faced kids aren’t carrying a floppy glove in their back pocket and a slingshot in the other, chewing a wad of bubble gum and riding bikes with a playing card clothespinned to the spokes down to the playground, with a dog with a black spot on one eye chasing after to play a ragtag game of fly-up? Well, golly, it does happen. Baseball, while certainly a favorite sport around here on Smartest Book acres, is not for everybody. Everybody doesn’t grow up playing catch anymore. Everybody isn’t American, Mexican, Canadian, Caribbean, Venezuelan, Japanese, or Korean. Unlike in my day—after the invention of TV but before the death of creativity and the arrival of the horrid app—kids today, when they can bother to put down their phones, want to play team sports where the action never stops, like soccer, basketball, and volleyball. Baseball is middle-aged get-the-fuck-off-my-lawn stuff. So no one wants to play the one-on-one, slow-pokey, waiting-your-turn-to-fail tedium. The kind baseball embodies. The feeling of standing in right field and losing your focus, then suddenly the ball is screaming toward you, and everybody is shouting and you almost get hit with the ball and your heart is racing . . . that kind of failure. Baseball is usually about failure with breaks for triumph. So it is not like life. More contained with a recordable ending. There are defined winners and losers and eventually it ends. So does this introduction. I guess what it comes down to is that I like baseball because it was something, one thing I could share with my dad. For reals. We bonded over it and I still like it. So maybe I can get you to like it, too. Let’s spend a minute in what I like to call:
The Field of Proop Dreams
It is 1967 and Young Greg is at the game with his dad, Big Steve. After driving up from the stifling suburb of San Carlos, they can smell the vicarious ghetto excitement and unfamiliar poverty of the neighborhood where Candlestick Park lies, near Hunter’s Point and the shipyards. Giant cranes working in the near distance just over the right-field parking lot. A blind man plays accordion on the hill in front of the park. They buy Cokes and peanuts and see the gods Willie Mays and Willie McCovey joking in the gray San Francisco afternoon. The grass is verdant and flat as a putting green. The Giants’ uniform is white with black stockings and the orange insignia on the cap. The ball is a white aspirin whizzing through the air. The public address announcer Jeff Carter gives the lineups and then sings the anthem in a jaunty baritone. Young Greg is captivated by how fast and brisk and snappy the fielding practice is. How cool the players act while taking turns swinging and slapping each other in the batting cage. No high fives. That was invented by a gay Dodger named Glenn Burke. In those days people gave each other five and ten skin, dig? The first drunk of the season is carried up the stairs. Kids crowd down to the crappy cyclone fence in right field in front of the wooden bleachers when Willie “Stretch” McCovey bats ’cause he is a lefty and often crashes one over there. Willie Mays throws a ball into the stands between every inning, and the youngsters go wild. Dirt and peanut shells blow into the waxed cups of Coke. The hot dog vendor yells down the aisle, banging his tongs on the side of a metal tank of lukewarm hot dog water the franks are bobbing in. Steve orders two and the vendor asks the only question they seem to know: “With or without?” Always with. The vendor takes his leathery hand and grabs a tongue depressor stick that lives in the crusty box of Gulden’s brownish yellow mustard and whaps it on two dogs. Big Steve tips him a quarter. The buns are semi-damp, the hot dogs divine. The same crazy old Chinese man in a Giants cap and plaid sport coat three sizes too large roams the first-base seats and screams, “Goddammit get a hit” at every player. Big Steve smokes menthols and yells at hippies for not standing up for the anthem. Young Greg asks a million questions. Big Steve makes up answers. Young Greg must go back. They do, hundreds of times. Till Big Steve passed, they never got along like they did at the ballpark or like they did talking about baseball. Field of dreams, more like field of common ground and understanding. Even for those divided by the gulf of family.
The dinky suburb of San Carlos, California, had twenty thousand people in the ’60s and about a zillion baseball teams. Instructional league, Little League, PONY League, Babe Ruth League; the place was baseball mad. On opening day a parade was held down the main drag, and thousands of kids in uniform would ride and march down to Burton Park with Barry Bonds, the famous and controversial Future Star, amongst them. The town was white as could be. The Bondses were the black neighborhood. Barry’s dad, Bobby, was a star with the Giants and our hero. Call it sentiment, environment, the thrill of the grass, Pavlovian conditioning, call it whatever the hell you want. Baseball was all around, and we absorbed it.
Growing up, every ballplayer chewed and everybody wore a crew cut and it was awesome. Let’s have more chaw and fewer incessant, revolving video ads behind the batter during the game.
Baseball Gets Born
Bas
eball was devised by clerks and bank types who had played cricket and town ball and one o’cat, whatever the devil that is, and rounders, the English kiddie game. It was organized by lower-middle-class guys in New York. When their jobs let out in the early afternoon, they would go play. Then followed rules and betting and drinking and pay. Blacks were excluded around the 1880s and only Women of bad rep would attend games. The Civil War spread the game because of the idle time in prison camps North and South. The soldiers learned the game and brought it home like venereal disease.
The purported inventor of baseball, Abner Doubleday, did fire the first shot of the Civil War as a captain at Fort Sumter. He also excitingly rode with Lincoln a few years later on the train to Gettysburg to give the address. He moved to San Francisco and started up the cable cars. He also commanded an all-black unit in Texas after the war and was a raging Theosophist. An interesting person and, oddly, a spiritual seeker. He had nothing whatsoever to do with baseball. That is all made-up stuff. He was a hero, and it felt right.
The supposed father of baseball, Alexander Joy Cartwright, did play in New York with the Knickerbockers and did move to Hawaii, where he was buddies with King Kamehameha III, but he did not concoct the rules that we still use today and all that nonsense. He was just there and had all that pinned on him later. We so don’t play the game our forebears did, and thank goodness. That game was slower and more violent. No gloves, no helmets, no overhand pitching.
In the 1860s, baseball joined boxing and horse racing as the only professional sports in America. The first admitted pro team was the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings. They wore sexy red socks under knickers, which was super hot in the 1860s. Sporting groovy mustaches and beards, the Sox traveled from coast to coast on the just-completed Transcontinental Railroad. They won sixty-five games in a row and were a sensation all over the country. Then they lost and game attendance fell off and baseball morphed into a proto league. Fickle country.