This silly exercise was inspired by the following poem by Paul Muldoon:
Something Else
When your lobster was lifted out of the tank
to be weighed
I thought of woad,
of madders, of fugitive, indigo inks,
of how Nerval
was given to promenade
a lobster on a gossamer thread,
how, when a decent interval
had passed
(son front rouge encor du baiser de la reine)
and his hope of Adreinne
proved false,
he hanged himself from a lamp-post
with a length of chain, which made me think
of something else, then something else again.
This little piece is made up of the first lines of various novels I was reading at the time, and is just a bit of postmodern fun.
As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a dream of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day; I had just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. Midway through the journey of my life I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost. Here we have reached the remotest region of the earth: a few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green, a wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen; on that first Monday of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, birthplace of the author of the Roman de la Rose, seemed to be in as great a turmoil as if the Hugenots had come to turn it into a second La Rochelle. The sun had not yet risen.
This is a tale of arms and of a man. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap. My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing more explicit than Pip, but call me Ishmael. My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons (happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way). I’ve studied now Philosophy and Jurisprudence, Medicine, and even, alas! Theology. I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. I am living at the Villa Borghese. Except for the Marabar Caves – and they are twenty miles off – the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. The rustic’s proverb says that many a thing is despised that is worth much more than is supposed.
I learned about the other Philip Roth in January 1988, a few days after the New Year, when my cousin Apter telephoned me in New York to say that Israeli radio had reported that I was in Jerusalem attending the trial of John Demjanjuk, the man alleged to be Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. It was Apollo, Son of Zeus and Leto, who started the feud, when he punished the King for his discourtesy to Cryses, his priest, by inflicting a deadly plague on his army and destroying his men. The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well, although it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses – and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oak – there might be seen in the districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. Indeed, as Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. “O gods! grant me release from this long weary watch!” he cried.
“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow, but you’ll have to be up with the lark,” Alice replied. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading. She was about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveller.
Something Else
When your lobster was lifted out of the tank
to be weighed
I thought of woad,
of madders, of fugitive, indigo inks,
of how Nerval
was given to promenade
a lobster on a gossamer thread,
how, when a decent interval
had passed
(son front rouge encor du baiser de la reine)
and his hope of Adreinne
proved false,
he hanged himself from a lamp-post
with a length of chain, which made me think
of something else, then something else again.
This little piece is made up of the first lines of various novels I was reading at the time, and is just a bit of postmodern fun.
As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a dream of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world, and all our woe. There was no possibility of taking a walk that day; I had just returned from a visit to my landlord – the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. Midway through the journey of my life I found myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost. Here we have reached the remotest region of the earth: a few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green, a wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen; on that first Monday of April, 1625, the market town of Meung, birthplace of the author of the Roman de la Rose, seemed to be in as great a turmoil as if the Hugenots had come to turn it into a second La Rochelle. The sun had not yet risen.
This is a tale of arms and of a man. If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap. My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing more explicit than Pip, but call me Ishmael. My father had a small estate in Nottinghamshire; I was the third of five sons (happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way). I’ve studied now Philosophy and Jurisprudence, Medicine, and even, alas! Theology. I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. I am living at the Villa Borghese. Except for the Marabar Caves – and they are twenty miles off – the city of Chandrapore presents nothing extraordinary. The rustic’s proverb says that many a thing is despised that is worth much more than is supposed.
I learned about the other Philip Roth in January 1988, a few days after the New Year, when my cousin Apter telephoned me in New York to say that Israeli radio had reported that I was in Jerusalem attending the trial of John Demjanjuk, the man alleged to be Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. It was Apollo, Son of Zeus and Leto, who started the feud, when he punished the King for his discourtesy to Cryses, his priest, by inflicting a deadly plague on his army and destroying his men. The stranger came early in February, one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station, and carrying a little black portmanteau in his thickly gloved hand. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well, although it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
In the days when the spinning-wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses – and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread-lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oak – there might be seen in the districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain pallid undersized men, who, by the side of the brawny country-folk looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. Indeed, as Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. “O gods! grant me release from this long weary watch!” he cried.
“Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow, but you’ll have to be up with the lark,” Alice replied. Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading. She was about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveller.
