tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post1896591682203457599..comments2024-03-28T19:56:32.848-05:00Comments on Anecdotal Evidence: `The Nostalgic Present, as Grammarians Might Call It'Patrick Kurphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08436175583386298032noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-31919584070249147232014-10-14T21:15:13.673-05:002014-10-14T21:15:13.673-05:00I meant "technically" rather than "...I meant "technically" rather than "tactically" above (mysterious are the ways of brainfarts), and intended a close quote after <i>Enoch Soames</i>. Sigh.Rand Careagahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04993454654652802173noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21999805.post-80650210584773579432014-10-14T12:13:14.101-05:002014-10-14T12:13:14.101-05:00Since you ask, forty-two years ago (well, closer t...Since you ask, forty-two years ago (well, closer to forty, but from here that's tactically a rounding error) I was enjoying...Max Beerbohm, whom up to that point I'd known only as a caricaturist. For a college course in late Victorian lit I contrived as my term paper a scholarly monograph on an obscure poet manqué of the "Yellow Nineties," including an analysis of my subject's only novel, an inept retelling of the Faust legend.<br /><br />My professor liked it quite a bit, but told me "Of course, Beerbohm did this better with <i>Enoch Soames</i>. I blinked, uncomprehending. He lent me his copy of <i>Seven Men and Two Others</i>, which I read entranced. As to nostalgia, remember that this was a man who published <i>The Works of Max Beerbohm</i> when he was a wizened twenty-four.<br /><br />Early in his career, John Updike cited an annotation in Beerbohm's own copy of <i>The Works</i>. On the copyright page the following boilerplate appears:<br /><br />London: John Lane, The Bodley Head<br />New York: Charles Scribner's Sons<br /><br />Added, in Beerbohm's own hand:<br /><br />This plain announcement, nicely read,<br />Iambically runs.<br /><br />Updike adds: "Indeed, were I a high priest of literature, I would have this quatrain made into an amulet, and wear it around my neck, for luck."<br /><br />And of course, over a century later "The Happy Hypocrite" remains the nonpareil "fairy tale for tired men."Rand Careagahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04993454654652802173noreply@blogger.com