Blithely, Blithely

WITHOUT HONOR . . . Writer John Broderick’s 12 novels and much journalism went ignored by his relatives. No one "belonging to" him ever spoke of them. You can make more money baking, they said.

No wonder. His father did quite well at baking, and B’s novels "depict Irish sexuality and Catholicism in a series of pungent tableaux and portraits drawn from vivid but entrapped lives," says a short review of a biography in Ireland Book Review Issue 294.

Moreover, "his own bourgeois roots . . . solitary childhood . . . enveloping mother, homosexuality and alcoholism fuelled his fictions . . . [He] became an embittered if astringent commentator on rapidly shifting Irish mores . . . Neglected but powerful . . . his work . . . held up a mirror to an Ireland of the mid-twentieth century like no other novelist of his day."

Now if all that is not a prescription for being ignored by the people he grew up with, what is?

TIME WELL SPENT . . . What I did on a recent vacation included watching "Popeye" and "Superman" with Madeline and Johnny, 4 1/2 and almost 2 respectively; watching but not chasing ducks in the Lititz PA park; and walking the Brooklyn Bridge in steady wind and rain on the way to a radio station on Centre Street in downtown Manhattan.

A GROWTH INDUSTRY . . . When you read of "cultural studies" including "dominant discourses about penises in Western culture," do you wonder sometimes whether academics have run out of things the rest of us are interested in or whether they have tastes once regarded as kinky? And you do read of them: Google "penises in Western culture" and you get 96,900 references, so take your time. However, there’s only one if you put the whole phrase in quotes, but still 910 if you put only "Western Culture" in quotes.

On the other hand, if this is something you do not care about, skip it.

WAY TO GO, PRINCE . . . Gambling accounted for 45% of Monaco income when Prince Rainier, who died last April at 81, took over in 1949. At his death it was less than 4%, what with pharmaceuticals, plastics, banking, and tourism.

THEY’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES! . . . Historian Paul Johnson – Claremont Review, Winter ‘04 – says new generation of art history teachers, knowing little, substitute "varieties of polysyllabic waffling . . . for hard detailed knowledge."

NOT OFTEN MET . . . "This is philosophy. I have heard of it, but never saw it before," says the worldly-wise George Staunton of Rev. Reuben Butler, who was passing up emolument for sake of principle, in Scott’s Heart of Midlothian.

JEWS ALLOWED . . . Movie director John Ford and his drinking buddies belonged to a club of their own making, with "Jews but not dues" that neatly sent up anti-semitic exclusivity. Groucho Marx, of course, set too high a mark to match with his claim of unwillingness to belong to any club that would have him as a member.

A WAY WITH WORDS . . . "Love is the fart/ Of every heart," wrote Sir John Suckling in 1646. "It pains a man when ‘tis kept close/ And others doth offend [it doth offend others] when ‘tis let loose."

STEADY . . . Barber Joe shaved customers closely and cleanly with a straight razor late in his long life, when he had an unsteady hand in other matters, as in his wobbly handwriting, his daughter-in-law told me at a wake.

MISUNDERSTOOD . . . Scoville Park passerby on way to work, seeing a man reading on a bench, asks in friendly fashion, "How's the paper today?" She thinks it's the daily paper with news of a hit man whose price was a city job or of something else of note.

But it was a learned literate journal, and he was reading about the philosopher Michel Foucault and how psychiatry declares all crime the result of illness: Look to the perp's childhood, say psychiatrists, and see how he failed to grow up or at least reverted temporarily to childhood.

IT SUITED ME . . . I got a suit at Field’s on State Street for under $250, with a 15% discount for getting a Field’s card on the spot. Tisha the saleswoman had spotted me, said hello, guided me around suits once I gave an idea what I wanted. We zeroed in on possibilities, I chose, tried on pants, got them and sleeves measured, and she gave me a pickup date 10 days away.

It was painless for one who has got into the Internet shopping habit because it’s so much trouble (a) getting to a store and (b) dealing with dumb personnel or being unable to find any personnel, dumb or not. Field’s on State is very good, especially in early afternoon of a week day. (This announcement is brought you by a satisfied customer.)

GOLDEN AGE . . . The time comes, if you live long enough, when a night's sleep becomes a work of art, no longer an act of nature.

IT FIGURES . . . "Flavor fanatic" is seen on the back of a T-shirt worn by a young woman of beaucoups d’avoir du pois.

CONFUSING . . . A woman has "bad hair," defined as "fine and straight." But we want to be and feel fine, do we not? And go straight and be a straight shooter? And we want to get things straight, right?

Yes, but it’s not easy.