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    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6650",
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 6650,
    "subject": "Bibliomen part 1",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2014-08-28T15:02:55+00:00",
    "last": "2014-08-28T15:02:55+00:00"
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  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<CAF1072xaxRZBUoDskTrnV_zBmjKVv9TD0N6rX6Ye3MAAkWe9-g@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2014-08-28T15:02:55+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Bibliomen part 1",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
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          "text": "*Bibliomen* is a light-hearted collection of twenty-two character sketches\nof people associated with books in one way or another. Seaman (based on\nNeil Gaiman) and Captain Roy C. Mirk, Ba, Ma., PhD. were added in 1995.\nMany of the sketches begin in the past and go forward beyond their original\npublication date of 1984. Many of the names also form puns and allusions\n(which I may or may not catch — Gertrude S. “Spinning Jenny” Deplatta is\nbased on Gertrude Stein, Peter O. Henry more obviously the rather shocking\nlife of O. Henry). The commentary is here mixed with the individual\nsummaries and entries.\n\nIn his forward, Wolfe quotes Emily Dickinson’s infamous, “There is no\nfrigate like a book, to take us lands away.” He then says Emily met few of\nher fellow sailors over the course of her cloistered life, readers and\nbibliophiles Wolfe believes to be universally interesting, though some have\nbeen detestable. He ends his forward with an injunction to get on with\nthings quickly from *The Tempest*: “Now belay all this. Heave on the plot\nline and hoist our paper sail. In the immortal words of William\nShakespeare, ?Fall to?t, yarely, or we run ourselves aground — bestir,\nbestir!'”\n\nThe sea and sailing recurs as a motif throughout; no doubt this is because\nof the opening simile, that of the book as a ship.\n\nKIRK PATTERSON ARTHURS, Ph.D. (April 1 1960 - )\n\nBorn on April Fool’s day, Arthurs fakes through his academic career by\ncomposing academic books about an obscure British writer, John Glaskin. (*Mask\nand Coin: Grub Street in the 30s, Maze of Gray: John Glaskin Revisited, and\nSweet Sword, High Heart: Love and War in the Fiction of John Glaskin*).\nWhen he gets a large inheritance in 1993, he retires from teaching and then\nlater publishes *Fiction in Fancy Dress: John Glaskin et al Exposed* in\nwhich he reveals John Glaskin was entirely fictional. After a brief outcry,\nhis last book is forgotten. He claims his primary motivation in faking\nGlaskin was to see if anyone would notice. He now lives in the South of\nFrance, “reported to be at work on a book on deep-sea fishing,” returning\nto the dominant maritime simile of *Bibliomen*. (The South of France will\nappear in Xavier McRidy's entry and also possibly as the birth place of\n“Adam Poor” in the Island of Sark.)\n\nThe text says that Glaskin was a contemporary of Alroy Kear, which\nunscrambled reads Royal Rake (Edward VII’s nickname). Later, we get\nGlaskin’s fake autobiography, and, indeed, he was born in 1899 and went to\nLondon in 1911 — King Edward ruled from 1901-1910. (An autobiography\nemphasizing his moral character was published on King Edward VII called *Edward\nthe Rake* by John Pearson in 1975, though whether this is at all related to\nthe character of John Glaskin is nebulous. The sensationalism in revising\nor reevaluating history and character for academic trends might be under\nattack , such as the dramatic hyper-sexualized slant on Edward VII's\ncharacter presented by Pearson in real life.)\n\nThe name Kirk means “Church”, Patterson can mean “son of Patrick”, which\nimplies patrician or noble. I suspect Arthurs is simply a pun on authors,\nbut it could imply “king” or ?man? and ?bear?. (St. Patrick’s Church?).\nThere are several Irish Catholic allusions throughout *Bibliomen* as well.\n\nThe obvious criticism of academia involves the artificiality of their\nentire careers. Whether the things they write about are “real” or not is\nconceptually irrelevant, and Dr. Arthurs ironically exposes himself as a\nfraud.\n\nHOPKINS DALHOUSIE\n\nThis entry reads as science fiction — the confession of Hopkins Dalhousie’s\nkiller, 00028956: his car. It begins, “Yes, I killed my owner — because I\nloved him, because I could not bear to give him up. If you conclude that I\nshould be destroyed for that act, I cannot prevent you; but I ask you\nwhether many of you have not done worse, though you are free.” It\nchronicles the success and failure of the writer Dalhousie and the gradual\nloss of all his possessions. Dalhousie works fourteen to sixteen hours a\nday, fruitlessly, and loses his wife and his house, pawning Proust for car\noil, gas, a meal, and some paper. Dalhousie speaks to his car of all the\nthings he has not yet done, and the car shows him all the roads it hasn’t\nyet been on. Eventually they go into the hills overlooking the city to see\nthe lights, though the car has insufficient fuel to return. Dalhousie gets\nout and walks near the drop; the car claims he heard his master’s voice\nsay, “You know what I want.” He runs Dalhousie off the cliff and lands on\ntop of him, knowing that he could continue to drive and get help, but\ninstead the car says “That I remained where I was for over an hour, until\nhe no longer cried out. That I have never backed away from my duty, and\nthat I did not do so then.”\n\nThere is of course the subtext that Dalhousie had mortgaged his car and\nwound up suffering and crying under his tire for an hour — perhaps the car\ncouldn’t stand to be sold, creating a motive.\n\nHopkins implies “son or Hob” or renowned fame, but Dalhousie is primarily a\nplace name. Both are names of prominent Universities.\n\nThis story criticizes the welfare system: “There was Government help enough\na million idlers; but not for Hopkins Dalhousie, who worked night and day\nand had once paid a fortune in taxes.” Lurking in the background must be a\nmetaphor that possessions can come to own us, too, though Wolfe is never\nthat uninteresting and banal in his creation of these situations.\n\nGERTRUDE S. “SPINNING JENNY” DEPLATTA (Aug 20, 1961 - )\n\nThis entry tells the story of Gertrude Susan Smith, who accepts a position\nas a typist in 1981 at WHRL radio station and is asked to fill in for a\nnewscaster. In August of 1982, she subs for a DJ with a strained back.\n“Despite the proverb, it is not greatness, but rather the opportunity for\nit, that is thrust upon unprepared and indeed unconscious subjects.” She\nwas told to speak over the beginning and end of the songs to prevent\nillegal taping, and advised that the back of albums might provide fruitful\nmaterial. Gertrude reads a mishmash of album material, pronouncing her\ncommentary “in a strained monotone and mingling it with non sequiturs\nconcerning ozone alerts, temperature inversions, the health of her cat\n(named Jenny) and what would seem to have been album notes in a\nnever-identified foreign language she pronounced as though it were\nEnglish.”\n\nThe door was jammed by a fumbled record and it took 18 minutes for her to\nbe removed, consequently replaced by an organ recital taped at Wolf Trap (a\nnational park dedicated to the performing arts in Virginia). By the next\nday, she has her own show and she becomes a national sensation, though\npeople think her name is Jenny. She starts calling her cat Trudy. Her\nmarriage to a pizza chef in November lasts only two days. A fan publishes a\nbook of her tapes. When a musical band makes a song of it and Spinning\nJenny attempts to speak over it in her usual style, it is “conjectured that\nshe suffered a form of verbal overload, but this cannot be confirmed; she\nhas refused psychiatric help.”\n\nShe is stricken mute and uses a daisy wheel typewriter to work on her book,\nwhich she refuses to let anyone see, but insists will be done soon.\n\nWhile her name is not truly Gertrude Stein, the nonsensical, kitchen sink\napproach to art that garners attention is a unique and bizarre trademark of\nStein's composition style, and its sing song quality also lends it to the\nmetaphor of a spinning record topped with random nonsense. Stein's voice is\ncompletely unique in literature. Deplatta assuming the name of her cat\nseems to be the inversion of personality and voice Stein used in writing *The\nAutobiography of Alice B. Toklas*.\n\nClearly, the story makes fun of Stein's style to some degree and combines\nit with a rags to riches story in the musical world: random and meteoric\nrise to success, a fast lifestyle with a rapidly dissolved marriage, and a\nregression to practical insanity. In many ways Gertrude Deplatta comes to\nresemble the narrator of Wolfe's “My Book” by the end, with her random and\nmeaningless technique for composition that actually drives her insane.\nDeplatta can mean “made of silver” (even though there is only one T and the\nhusband Anthony is assuredly of Italian rather than Spanish descent —\nperhaps “of the plate” would be a more appropriate translation in light of\nher random fame as a disc jockey).\n\nBERNARD A. FRENCH (September 9, 1933- August 19, 1985)\n\nFrench is a publisher who wants to produce the largest coffee table book\never. He gives another character, photographer Kopman Goldfleas, his final\nassignment. When the giant books are delivered to French's office, his\nsecretary Barbara Ward hears a loud sound “but assumed he had struck an\nauthor and did not investigate”. No trace of him was found until 1986 when\na bored janitor leafed through the book and found French pressed “between\nthe Afterword and the Index. He is reputed to have discolored the paper.”\nThe boxed book become his coffin, and his epitaph reads “A Page at the\nCourt of God”.\n\nThe pun on “Page” will appear again in the story, and this is perhaps an\noriginal story of a man killed by his oversize book - it is difficult to\ndetermine if French is based on anyone in real life, though his aggressive\npublishing strategies might resonate with Bernard Geis, who brought\nsensationalism to the publishing world in recruiting celebrities to write\nand in promoting unknowns like Jacqueline Susan. There seems to be no\nrelationship to Anatole France as far as I can tell. Indeed, Bernard\nFrench, entombed in a book in the most memorable image from *Bibliomen*,\nmight be an entirely original creation, as are all the plot lines\nconcerning his giant book and his publishing company, Cobb, Neil, and Sons.\n\nBernard means “brave as a bear”, which gives it a vague etymological\nrelationship to the name Arthurs.\n\nMARY BEATRICE SMOOT FRIARLY, SPV (April 12, 1925- )\n\nBeatrice Smoot Friarly is born Easter Sunday by the effort of her mother\nMartha to hold in the baby, but she was expecting a boy. Her mother raises\nher “like nothing on earth.” At the age of 15 she appeara weeping to Father\nJohn O'Murphy begging to be accepted as a postulant to a religious order.\n“Muttering that it would at least get her out of her mother's house, Father\nO'Murphy promsied to see what he could do.” A year later she joins the\nSisters of Perpetual Vigilance, “an order of nuns intent upon saving their\noil for the coming of the bridegroom.”\n\nTaking the name Mary, she teaches Fourth Grade at Saint Apollos the\nPersuasive (A real Catholic saint - despite the pagan name, mentioned in 1\nCorinthians 3:16 as Paul's assistant). A mother gives her an eighty year\nold cookbook and her collection begins. One night she hears a knocking at\nher door, and she knows that the knocking will not wake her roommates,\nSisters Bruno and Evangellica. A short dark man says “Shalom” at the door,\nand she replies in kind, at which point he steps across the threshold. He\nsays he has come in part as an answer to her prayers, to be visited by “the\nleast of Your messengers, Lord.” He asks if he can smoke and begins to do\nso from his entire body, saying he has come because she has the greatest\ncookbook collection in the world, and that he needs help. [She also notes\nthat he is Jewish from his circumcised state]. Sister Mary boasts that\nthanks to her collection she knows how manna was baked, and which broth\nsimmered in the Cauldron of Cerridwen.\n\nHe whisks her to hell, where she finds herself looking eighteen and nude.\nShe comments that she didn't know hell was so crowded, to which the Devil\nresponds, “For people who don't like crowds, it's crowded. For people that\ndo, lonely.” They come across an expressionless man with red skin, who does\nnot respond to any of the Devil's punishments.\n\nWhen the devil asks if he should try Sulfuric Acid on the red man, “As if\non cue, a dickens appeared. 'From Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Chairman\nsays so where is he?' the dickens announced. 'It's line seven. I should\ntell him out to lunch?” [God is calling Lucifer here on phone line 7, and\nhis assistant is asking if he should say he is out to lunch — in this\n“Jewish” stereotyped reality, God operates as a corporation or large\npartnership firm].\n\nThe devil says he has to go (to take God's call) and leaves in a puff of\nsmoke, and Sister Mary tells the expressionless man, “He knows what I'm\ngoing to do, you know. He knows exactly what I'm going to do. I find that\nencouraging, exciting, and disturbing. The universe is not as we thought. —\nOr perhaps this is not the universe at all — Just a corner of a bad dream.”\nShe grabs his hand despite his concern that it will burn her, and crosses\nherself.\n\nWhen she awakens, a tall and swarthy man appears in New Canaan “whom the\npeople have decided is a Micmac Indian.” He does neither work nor harm, and\nwhistles when he sees Sister Mary. On summer nights “when lightning flashes\nin the west and black clouds gather over the Hoosac Hills, she joins\nMan-on-Fire, the Micman Indian — and talks with him in tones too low to be\noverheard.” She says she is preparing a volume of Indian recipes.\n\nThis one blends the classic horror idea of temptation of the devout with\ncook books. Martha and Mary, the mother and daughter in this story, of\ncourse echo the biblical story of the sisters found in the Gospel of Luke\nin which Martha prepared food and Mary sat and listened to Jesus. Here,\nMary is preparing the recipes and collecting cook books without doing any\ncooking. The devil here quotes Jesus from Luke 10 and calls him a “loose\nliver” - someone who lives a rather dissolute life - when he says “I\nwatched Satan fall from the sky like lightning.” When the dickens (another\nword for devil) appears in the most confusing part of the story, the\nscripture referenced is either Exodus 3:6 or Acts 3:13. If it is the later\nreference, this is where Jesus asserts that Jehovah is a God of the dead,\nwhich would make sense in light of Man-on-Fire's presence in hell.\n\nWhile there is a Hoosac Hill in New Hampshire, there is a rather famous\nreputedly haunted tunnel in the Hoosac Mountain Range in Massachusetts\n(Sister Mary is born in New Canaan Massachusetts) called “The Bloody Pit”\nin which 193 workers were killed and at least one foreman strangled to\ndeath. Many of the deaths involved the use of nitroglycerin and other\nexplosives in its construction.\n\nSince her name is Sister Mary and her mother is Martha, of the Magdalene\nfamily, I feel perhaps there is a faint reference to Sister Magdalena of\nthe Cross, who ascribed most of her powers to the intercession of demons\nrather than angelic forces before repenting. This story is more innocuous —\nbut it does show how the demons work with God, almost under his\nsupervision.\n\nMary can mean “bitter”, “rebellion”, or even a “wished for child.” Beatrice\nmeans “voyager”, Smoot is a name for someone who could afford rich foods or\nsold fat or lard. It seems that her last name implies “like a Friar”. These\nseem to relate to the story.\n\nWho is Man-on-Fire? Is he related to the historical explosive deaths in the\nHoosac Tunnel? While the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration are a real order,\nthe Sisters of Perpetual Vigilance seem to be fictional.\n\nSIR GABRIEL (503 -February 2, 1987)\n\nBorn at Carcassone,, Sir Gabriel grows up to serve Kng Arthur and lived a\nheroic life before Arthur's defeat and death at Camlan. He wandered\naimlessly until he picked up a book in a ruined castle near Gastonbury, and\nbecame so absorbed that he forgot all about his life and entered a\n“nepenthean” state until a sour faced woman touched him on the shoulder.\nShe tells him he is her husband, Harry Appledorf. His golden aura\ndisappears and he finds himself living in a small apartment in St. Louis.\nHe knows that he was once Sir Gabriel, “and now and again he returns to the\nbook he found himself holding at the time his wife tapped his shoulder. It\nwas this one.” He dies as Harry Appledorf.\n\nCertainly here is an inversion of* Don Quixote* — a knight picks up a book\nin Glastonberry and becomes Harry Appledorf. While this plays with the\nability of a book to serve as a kind of wish fulfillment, it has been\ninverted — in the midst of despair Sir Gabriel escapes to an ordinary life\nfar removed from the world of King Arthur. Which is real doesn't truly\nmatter, as the artificiality and metatextual nature of *Bibliomen *is\ndirectly invoked.\n\nHarry means “ruler” and Appledorf probably means “cottage or village of\napples” or something close to it. Gabriel means “strong man of God.”\n\nUsually, the character of low mimesis dreams of having some power and\ngrasping towards a reality where mythic or high mimesis is possible — here,\nthe character of mythic proportions in his depression transforms into an\nordinary, hen-pecked man.\n\nJOHN GLASKIN (1899- )\n\nHere we receive the fictional biography of the writer John Glaskin. He was\nborn at Saltburn-by-the-Sea in the North Riding in 1899. He moved to London\nand published in *The Boys Own Weekly, The Yellow Book* (which would have\nbeen out of print after 1897) and *New Witness* (which was edited by GK\nChesterton).\n\nHe is friends with Virginia and Leonard Woolf until a year after her\nsuicide, “when Leonard offered to 'dig up a girl for him, too.” [Virginia\nWoolf was cremated, as was Leonard, and their ashes buried under an elm\ntree — shades of *Peace*?]\n\nShaw hated him as a “regular Don Juan” [referencing the third act of *Man\nand Superman*, often called “Don Juan in Hell”, where the Devil and Don\nJuan have a philosophical debate]. The story states Gissing treasured him\nfor counseling him not to marry, but it is unclear if this refers to George\nGissing (who died in 1903 and had turbulent relationships with women) or\nhis son (who did not seem to have marital problems? though both were\nwriters.) In the chronology of* Bibliomen* it must be the son, but there\nare several indications that dates are being tampered with in *Bibliomen*\nas jokes by Gold (such as *The Yellow Book* being out of print by the time\nGlaskin went to London). The textual jokes that Glaskin was always trying\nto match H.G. Wells up with girls is of course unnecessary: in real life\nWells seemed to have many affairs with his wife's consent in a fairly\nnon-traditional lifestyle.\n\nHemingway likes Glaskin, “believing he had thrown their fight.” In Africa,\nGlaskin lurks in a leopard skin on Mt. Kilimanjaro and Hemingway fires on\nhim. His best known books are *Sixpence for Buns*, *Brideshead*, and *You\nCan't Go Home at All.*\n\n“Having gained literary immortality, Glaskin can never die. He presently\nlives in Kent under the name of Saunders, where he keeps bees and vice\nversa.” [Edward Saunders, an English entomologist, wrote, among other\nbooks, *Wild Bees, Wasps and Ants and Other Stinging Insects*, though he\ndied in 1910.]\n\nThe magazines Glaskin supposedly published in were ridiculously diverse — a\nboy's magazine, a conservative religious one, and an avant-garde one\nreputed to be fairly amoral. His biography is sensationally eclectic and\nobviously fabricated, and this entry pokes fun at the sensationalist\nbiography of the famous.\n\nWhy is Glaskin equated with Saunders?\n\nKOPMAN GOLDFLEAS ( May 1, 1940 — January 7, 1987)\n\nKopman Goldfleas works as a retail clerk in a camera store before becoming\na self-trained photographer. After 1967, he supported himself with\nfree-lance photography. In 1980, Bernard A. French commissioned him to\nphotograph Michelangelo's *Aphrodite Preparing to Seduce Paris* in San\nBenito, Italy. He finds that the village priest had painted over it in\nwhite because it was obscene.\n\nGoldfleas says he needs to take a photo as proof, but takes three days to\nshoot. When he returns, he locks himself in his darkroom to develop the\nphotographs because “he believed Michelangelo's painting could be ?brought\nup” by optical methods, much as palimpsestic writing is made to appear on\nthe parchment from which it has been removed. Eventually he stops eating\nthe vitamins and Necco wafers his family shoves under the door, and his son\nfinds him dead. His son Claude believes he fell for the image of Aphrodite\nand would not leave her or surrender the image to his publisher. Claude\ndestroyed the negatives, feeling that Aphrodite was “overdeveloped.”\n\nBesides dealing with photography as an obsessive art, we see the\nsubjectivity of taste: obscene and worthy of suppression to one, ideal and\nworthy of obsession to a second, and too voluptuous to the final observer?\nthree different reactions to one image. The painting is fictional, though\nit harkens back to some of Gold's talk of the Venus de Milo in *Peace, *and\njust as he posits an apple in hand, Aphrodite is here seducing Paris for\nthe gift of an apple of discord.\n\nKopman is a name for a clever person, “head man”. Claude means “lame”.\n\nPETER O. HENRY (January 22, 1965 — November 2, 1987)\n\nHis mother tells stories of how at four years old Peter was entertaining\ncrowds of older children. Some of his crayon efforts “are at least good\nenough to earn the condemnation of most college writing workshops.”\n\nHe left school at fourteen and worked for a time at an automobile\ndealership, writing “Two Cigarettes” and “A Black Goy”. He was arrested for\nburglary in 1981 and maintained his innocence, jailed for three years. He\nmoved to New Jersey where he composed his stories on the word processor at\nthe public library. Working in textiles, he lost all four fingers of his\nright hand in 1986 and drew workman's compensation. His only published work\nwas “Dustywings” in *The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction* before\nbeing admitted to a hospital for pneumonia, of which he died. One of his\nstories supposedly served as the basis for Lothar Schmidt's opera “The\nShort Nosed Doll.” (Lothar Schmid was a famous chess player in real life\nwho was reputed to own the largest collection of books on chess in the\nworld — he was the arbiter between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972).\n\nThis entry ties together some of the biographical facts from the life of O.\nHenry, though some sound like the stories of Jesus as a child amazing the\nwise men at the temple and his peers. The author O. Henry was at one point\naccused of embezzlement by a bank at which he worked and was eventually\narrested. He fled to New Orleans and then Honduras by changing trains right\nbefore his trial. He served only three years (just as Peter O. Henry did).\n\nWhile Peter O. Henry has to type at the library, I am unsure which author\nthis references — Bradbury famously wrote many of his most enduring works\non just such a public typewriter.\n\nHere we have the exploration of the artist only recognized long after his\ndeath. Of course the name Peter means “rock or stone”."
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