You got to be a pot head
If you want to be a song and dance man

hey, I smiled more when I was young(er). ignorance truly is bliss.

gail. :

gcaduff(Gail) wrote:

Thanks again for your thoughts, Gail.

Yes, I have read "Letters From the Earth." That was great, but I'm never positive that it's fiction. When I drove out to CA from New England, I ended up in a little boarding house in San Jose called "Mother Olson's Inn." One of the fellow inmates, Jose, from Costa Rica, would walk up and down the hall reading The Invalid's Story with tears streaming from his eyes. My personal favorites are My Late Senitorial Secretariatship (I think that 's the title) and, from his autobiography, the story of why Bret Harte left Yreka. In short (and as best I can remember), he (Harte) was a proofreader for the local paper. Somebody had written in a eulogy, "even in Yreka, her chastity was exceptional." Harte could have just crossed out the "st" and put an "r" above it to switch "chastity" to "charity" for the typesetter, but instead, he put in a bunch of obscure proofreader's symbols (to display his superiority, I suppose) that were misinterpreted. In the final edition, the word "chastity" appeared in bold print, making it seem like a cruel bit of ill-timed irony. Certain that the bereaved widower would make sure that he was sent out of town in a box on the next train, Harte decided to buy himself a passenger seat ticket on it, instead.

Twain and Dylan must have had similar effects on their respective ages, the audacity and all. They both seem to share Twain's understanding that "The difference between the almost right word & the right word is really a large matter--it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

I'd test out your "pretend it's somebody else's house" theory while cleaning the garage this weekend, but I can't think of anyone I dislike enough to wish my house on.


Thanks again and take care.


Mark

Last nite when I was at my folks house I picked up on tv a show where an animated figure of Bob Dylan was boxing an animated figure of Kramer from Seinfeld. It was kinda funny but I changed channels when some other characters came on instead...

yeah, that cartoon was pretty witty. came out a few years back.

Mark, i never took that book to be fiction. well, exactly. i was more interested in how he wrote such an anti-religion book and wasn't hanged for it. the way things are now, writing this stuff would still be a "hangin' offense". even in Dylan's youth, or Arlo's, speaking out against religion was not something you did if you wanted to sell records.

hey, you can pretend the garage is mine. i'll pretend my house is yours today. sorry. not that i have anything against you.

btw, does anyone in this forum listen to Christine Lavin? she's another hero of mine. she does one-woman shows, is listed generally as a folk singer satirist. she's on the road more often than not. probably coming your way soon. she's wonderful.

an afterword: i was a proofreader once. can't stop doing it now. but i like typing without using capital letters these days.