Friday, March 19, 2004
The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective)
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com
______________________________________________________________________
The Case of Hebrew as the U.S.’s National Language, part I
Question: Dear Literary Dick (as in Private Detective),
i heard that the founding fathers almost chose hebrew
to be the national language for america, and
furthermore, they were to write all the official
government documents (bill of rights, constitution,
etc) in hebrew too. i asked the heritage foundation,
but they say no. i know that george washington was a
mason, and they have been known to use the hebrew
letters...but this is as close as i can figure.
thanks
maynard
Answer: Most of the time, when I am conducting an investigation, I stay away from the internet; the library has been good to me, so I stick to it. And during this case I did get some good information from a book (which I’ll share in a moment), but because I wasn’t getting the break I was hoping for, I decided to turn to, as my friend Tom calls it, The Interwebby.
What I found on The Interwebby, is that over ten years ago, someone named Terrence Levine (of Mount Royal, Quebec) asked an on-line columnist named Cecil Adams the exact question that Maynard asked me. (If you go to
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_026.html you will find all of that very interesting article.) I will now quote Levine’s question, and part of Adam’s answer:
“Dear Cecil:
Some time ago I came upon this little tidbit of info: that during the debates over the United States constitution in the 1780's, disgust for the British was so intense that a proposal was advanced to ditch English and adopt some nice pseudo-dead dialect as the new nation's official language. Is this true? If so, can you confirm that Hebrew was seriously considered as a replacement but came one vote shy of being adopted? --Terrence Levine, Mount Royal, Quebec
Cecil replies:
Hebrew the national language? Oy, such meshugaas you talk. (And yes, Cecil knows the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish.)
There was some discussion just after the Revolution about switching to a language other than English, but it's not known how serious this was--probably not very. Nonetheless there's a 150-year-old legend that English was almost replaced, not by Hebrew but by German. Supposedly it lost by one vote, cast by a German-speaking Lutheran minister named Frederick Muhlenberg. […] The truth is that the U.S. has never had an official language. […]
--CECIL ADAMS”
So, I was obviously happy when I found this. However, there is something about it which troubles me: Adams doesn’t give a concrete source for the Hebrew rumor. I suspect what happened is this: Adams received the question, did some research, could not find anything saying how close the U.S. came to having Hebrew as a national language; then, knowing that Hebrew obviously wasn’t chosen, Adams decided to give the answer he did - moving the discussion towards the interesting information he did find. I, of course, may be totally off in my reasoning; I suspect this only because it is the exact thought process that I had before I found the Adams article.
So, what interesting tidbits did I find, (that don’t give direct information of a Hebrew connection), that I was hoping to share with you? Well, from a book by a genuine Freemason, Mr. Charles Van Cott, I learned the following:
“Weird Inconsistency!
Our nation was founded by defying tyranny – yet we are in the bad position of helping an evil tyrant suppress the liberty-loving people of Spain. Our nation and its Constitution and ideals are almost 100% Masonic – yet we strengthen a dictatorship that imprisons and murders Brother Masons for merely belonging to our fraternity.” (Van Cott, Charles. Freemasonry: A Sleeping Giant. Minneapolis, T.S. Denison & Company, Inc.: 1959. p.50)
And there’s more:
“The Jewish Mason Who Financed the American Revolution
The American Revolution might have fizzled out if it hadn’t been for the financial backing of a courageous Mason!
Solomon Haym was a Polish Jew who came to America in 1740. Haym was imprisioned by the British for his actions supporting freedom. He escaped, set up a brokerage business in Philadelphia.
When the Colonial cause broke, Brother Haym (York Lodge No. 2, now extinct) unhesitatingly advanced $200,00 so Revolutionists could buy vital munitions and supplies.
He gave his fortune and risked his neck . . . a Hebrew immigrant who saw liberty glisten more than his own fortune!” (Ibid., p. 80)
Anyway, the way I figure it, if there was actually any talk of Hebrew being made the national language of the States, than there must be some evidence of this. When I find that I will present part II of The Case of Hebrew as the U.S.’s National Language
Now before I sign off, I thought I’d share some more of Mr. Van Cott’s words. In this case, what Mr. Van Cott says is relevant precisely because his thoughts are antithetical to my own:
“Unfortunately I cannot engage in heavy correspondence and will not reply to letters demanding sources, questioning facts and opinions, or calling me a dream-slayer, iconoclast, et al.
Nor will I retreat, recant, or take back one single word.” (Ibid., p.11)
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com
______________________________________________________________________
The Case of Hebrew as the U.S.’s National Language, part I
Question: Dear Literary Dick (as in Private Detective),
i heard that the founding fathers almost chose hebrew
to be the national language for america, and
furthermore, they were to write all the official
government documents (bill of rights, constitution,
etc) in hebrew too. i asked the heritage foundation,
but they say no. i know that george washington was a
mason, and they have been known to use the hebrew
letters...but this is as close as i can figure.
thanks
maynard
Answer: Most of the time, when I am conducting an investigation, I stay away from the internet; the library has been good to me, so I stick to it. And during this case I did get some good information from a book (which I’ll share in a moment), but because I wasn’t getting the break I was hoping for, I decided to turn to, as my friend Tom calls it, The Interwebby.
What I found on The Interwebby, is that over ten years ago, someone named Terrence Levine (of Mount Royal, Quebec) asked an on-line columnist named Cecil Adams the exact question that Maynard asked me. (If you go to
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_026.html you will find all of that very interesting article.) I will now quote Levine’s question, and part of Adam’s answer:
“Dear Cecil:
Some time ago I came upon this little tidbit of info: that during the debates over the United States constitution in the 1780's, disgust for the British was so intense that a proposal was advanced to ditch English and adopt some nice pseudo-dead dialect as the new nation's official language. Is this true? If so, can you confirm that Hebrew was seriously considered as a replacement but came one vote shy of being adopted? --Terrence Levine, Mount Royal, Quebec
Cecil replies:
Hebrew the national language? Oy, such meshugaas you talk. (And yes, Cecil knows the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish.)
There was some discussion just after the Revolution about switching to a language other than English, but it's not known how serious this was--probably not very. Nonetheless there's a 150-year-old legend that English was almost replaced, not by Hebrew but by German. Supposedly it lost by one vote, cast by a German-speaking Lutheran minister named Frederick Muhlenberg. […] The truth is that the U.S. has never had an official language. […]
--CECIL ADAMS”
So, I was obviously happy when I found this. However, there is something about it which troubles me: Adams doesn’t give a concrete source for the Hebrew rumor. I suspect what happened is this: Adams received the question, did some research, could not find anything saying how close the U.S. came to having Hebrew as a national language; then, knowing that Hebrew obviously wasn’t chosen, Adams decided to give the answer he did - moving the discussion towards the interesting information he did find. I, of course, may be totally off in my reasoning; I suspect this only because it is the exact thought process that I had before I found the Adams article.
So, what interesting tidbits did I find, (that don’t give direct information of a Hebrew connection), that I was hoping to share with you? Well, from a book by a genuine Freemason, Mr. Charles Van Cott, I learned the following:
“Weird Inconsistency!
Our nation was founded by defying tyranny – yet we are in the bad position of helping an evil tyrant suppress the liberty-loving people of Spain. Our nation and its Constitution and ideals are almost 100% Masonic – yet we strengthen a dictatorship that imprisons and murders Brother Masons for merely belonging to our fraternity.” (Van Cott, Charles. Freemasonry: A Sleeping Giant. Minneapolis, T.S. Denison & Company, Inc.: 1959. p.50)
And there’s more:
“The Jewish Mason Who Financed the American Revolution
The American Revolution might have fizzled out if it hadn’t been for the financial backing of a courageous Mason!
Solomon Haym was a Polish Jew who came to America in 1740. Haym was imprisioned by the British for his actions supporting freedom. He escaped, set up a brokerage business in Philadelphia.
When the Colonial cause broke, Brother Haym (York Lodge No. 2, now extinct) unhesitatingly advanced $200,00 so Revolutionists could buy vital munitions and supplies.
He gave his fortune and risked his neck . . . a Hebrew immigrant who saw liberty glisten more than his own fortune!” (Ibid., p. 80)
Anyway, the way I figure it, if there was actually any talk of Hebrew being made the national language of the States, than there must be some evidence of this. When I find that I will present part II of The Case of Hebrew as the U.S.’s National Language
Now before I sign off, I thought I’d share some more of Mr. Van Cott’s words. In this case, what Mr. Van Cott says is relevant precisely because his thoughts are antithetical to my own:
“Unfortunately I cannot engage in heavy correspondence and will not reply to letters demanding sources, questioning facts and opinions, or calling me a dream-slayer, iconoclast, et al.
Nor will I retreat, recant, or take back one single word.” (Ibid., p.11)
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective)
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com
______________________________________________________________________
CAAF on Wharton
(Note: The Literary Dick (as in Private Dectective) will accept and occasionally publish interesting literary commentary, though it should be noted that the opinions expressed in such comentary are not (and should not be seen to reflect) those of Jonathanames.com.)
(Another Note: In the below, CAAF responds to a recent column about the relationship of Henry James and Edith Wharton, as well as Jordan D.’s question about a movie where Elliot Gould punches someone for suggesting that Nick Carraway is gay.)
“I agree with you about Holbrook being off base and overly Freudian. One interesting point about Wharton, though, is that she was _very_ attached to her father, and had a cool, distant relationship from her mother. As I remember it (and again it's been awhile since I read a biography), her father was literary in a casual bon vivant way, while her mother was immersed in the fashionable society circles of New York and pressured her daughter to follow her example.
How I've always privately interpreted her character was that Edith was born with great sensibility and intellectual precocity, and if you're such a child, who would you prefer? The indulgent father who gives you books? Or the mother who scrutinises you when you walk in the room to see if you're pretty enough? I think Edith the Egghead was an embarrassment to her mother, and Edith the Egghead knew it.
So I don't see her as reacting in fear of her father so much as in reaction to her mother, as much as her mother represented the traditional life of a society lady in NY, which it's pretty easy to see that Edith found smothering and soul-annihilating (sp?). (See "Age of Innocence" and Countess Olenska, even the silly movie version.)
Later, she wrote novels, a book on design, pieces on architecture. She was, according to one biographer, in the early trajectory of her career seen by some in her circle as almost a joke of literary pretension(which again, I read as gawky -- and defiant, desperate -- ambition). And I think she formed tight friendships with men, like James, who shared her ambition and talent, but who were from the same society milieu she was. And if they couldn't/ wouldn't love her back? It hardly seems a unique situation in the annals of men and women.
And looked at another way, she wasn't necessarily looking for someone to love her with James and Walter Berry. She was instead establishing friendships with men who were, like her, societal misfits in some way. She was a woman endowed with (what at the time must have seemed) almost masculine ambition. And they were men who had evaded the traditional role of dull family men (working in the City and hunting on the weekends et al). So she picked the people most likely to understand her for friendship. That hardly seems dysfunctional.
Stupid Holbrook. Wonderful Wharton. Tired of it all Literary Dick.
CAAF
ps- Could that Elliott Gould (?) movie be the Michael Caine movie, "Educating Rita"? I'm not at all sure, though as I haven't seen the movie since 1986. But I thought I remembered a punch-scene. Though that might have been "The Verdict."”
[As this edition of The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) was about to go to presses, I received some urgent emails from CAAF, who now reports that her initial “Educating Rita” theory was off. CAAF writes:
"I actually doubt it's "educating rita" as Michael Caine is a British prof., so
I don't know why he'd harbor passionate feelings about "The Great Gatsby."
In fact, a pretty easy Google search turns up that the movie was "Getting Straight"
(1970) with Elliott Gould and Candice Bergen.
From http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/critics-eng/prigozy-cult.html :
"In a 1970s film, Getting Straight, the protagonist, played by Elliott Gould,
rebels against his questioners at an MA oral examination when they state that
Nick Carraway and Gatsby have a homosexual relationship, that Jordan Baker is
probably a lesbian, and that Fitzgerald, Gould’s favorite author, was driven by
“a terrible need to express homosexual panic through his characters.” The
candidate, outraged yet afraid at first to offend his mentors, finally retorts,
“It’s possible… but it’s gonna be a surprise to Sheilah Graham. Sheilah is not
gonna believe that.” (Sheilah Graham was Fitzgerald’s lover during the last
three years of his life.) He then explodes in fury, throws away his academic
career, salvaging his soul in the process."”]
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com
______________________________________________________________________
CAAF on Wharton
(Note: The Literary Dick (as in Private Dectective) will accept and occasionally publish interesting literary commentary, though it should be noted that the opinions expressed in such comentary are not (and should not be seen to reflect) those of Jonathanames.com.)
(Another Note: In the below, CAAF responds to a recent column about the relationship of Henry James and Edith Wharton, as well as Jordan D.’s question about a movie where Elliot Gould punches someone for suggesting that Nick Carraway is gay.)
“I agree with you about Holbrook being off base and overly Freudian. One interesting point about Wharton, though, is that she was _very_ attached to her father, and had a cool, distant relationship from her mother. As I remember it (and again it's been awhile since I read a biography), her father was literary in a casual bon vivant way, while her mother was immersed in the fashionable society circles of New York and pressured her daughter to follow her example.
How I've always privately interpreted her character was that Edith was born with great sensibility and intellectual precocity, and if you're such a child, who would you prefer? The indulgent father who gives you books? Or the mother who scrutinises you when you walk in the room to see if you're pretty enough? I think Edith the Egghead was an embarrassment to her mother, and Edith the Egghead knew it.
So I don't see her as reacting in fear of her father so much as in reaction to her mother, as much as her mother represented the traditional life of a society lady in NY, which it's pretty easy to see that Edith found smothering and soul-annihilating (sp?). (See "Age of Innocence" and Countess Olenska, even the silly movie version.)
Later, she wrote novels, a book on design, pieces on architecture. She was, according to one biographer, in the early trajectory of her career seen by some in her circle as almost a joke of literary pretension(which again, I read as gawky -- and defiant, desperate -- ambition). And I think she formed tight friendships with men, like James, who shared her ambition and talent, but who were from the same society milieu she was. And if they couldn't/ wouldn't love her back? It hardly seems a unique situation in the annals of men and women.
And looked at another way, she wasn't necessarily looking for someone to love her with James and Walter Berry. She was instead establishing friendships with men who were, like her, societal misfits in some way. She was a woman endowed with (what at the time must have seemed) almost masculine ambition. And they were men who had evaded the traditional role of dull family men (working in the City and hunting on the weekends et al). So she picked the people most likely to understand her for friendship. That hardly seems dysfunctional.
Stupid Holbrook. Wonderful Wharton. Tired of it all Literary Dick.
CAAF
ps- Could that Elliott Gould (?) movie be the Michael Caine movie, "Educating Rita"? I'm not at all sure, though as I haven't seen the movie since 1986. But I thought I remembered a punch-scene. Though that might have been "The Verdict."”
[As this edition of The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) was about to go to presses, I received some urgent emails from CAAF, who now reports that her initial “Educating Rita” theory was off. CAAF writes:
"I actually doubt it's "educating rita" as Michael Caine is a British prof., so
I don't know why he'd harbor passionate feelings about "The Great Gatsby."
In fact, a pretty easy Google search turns up that the movie was "Getting Straight"
(1970) with Elliott Gould and Candice Bergen.
From http://fitzgerald.narod.ru/critics-eng/prigozy-cult.html :
"In a 1970s film, Getting Straight, the protagonist, played by Elliott Gould,
rebels against his questioners at an MA oral examination when they state that
Nick Carraway and Gatsby have a homosexual relationship, that Jordan Baker is
probably a lesbian, and that Fitzgerald, Gould’s favorite author, was driven by
“a terrible need to express homosexual panic through his characters.” The
candidate, outraged yet afraid at first to offend his mentors, finally retorts,
“It’s possible… but it’s gonna be a surprise to Sheilah Graham. Sheilah is not
gonna believe that.” (Sheilah Graham was Fitzgerald’s lover during the last
three years of his life.) He then explodes in fury, throws away his academic
career, salvaging his soul in the process."”]
Monday, March 15, 2004
The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective)
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com
______________________________________________________________________
(Note: Before I present my solution to The Case of Mary McCarthy and an oddly shaped penis, I’d like to let you know that the technical arm of The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is currently hard at work developing an archival system to handle our extensive and ever expanding array of case files.)
The Case of Mary McCarthy and an oddly shaped penis
Question: Dear Literary Dick (as in private detective),
Someone told me that Mary McCarthy once slept with a man whose member was the exact shape and size of a sharpened lead pencil. This seems physiologically impossible to me, and I have never heard of any evidence one way or the other. Any thoughts on this? In the course of my "research," I did find out that the words "penis" and "pencil" come from the same Latin word. Wild, huh?
Sincerely,
Heather G.
Answer: The first step I took towards cracking this case (which I could tell immediately was going to be a challenge of the first order) was in trying to ascertain whether or not it was even possible for a man to have a penis shaped like a lead pencil. To this end, I asked some friends of mine who are doctors whether or not that had seen or heard of such a thing. Most of these doctors ignored my email, but I did hear back from two:
“Dear Michael, I spoke with a literary friend and […] she said she once had a boyfriend with a pencil penis but she wishes to remain anonymous on the subject” – [Name Withheld]
And from my friend Dr. R.:
“hi mike,
don't know much about pencil shaped penises really but sounds fairly unfeasible to me. anyhow, i've got some leave to take and had a half idea about visiting new york. you gonna be around next week?
don't get your hopes up too much or crea* your pants or anything but i may come, flights permitting, tuesday.
cheers
rob”
So with the medical community divided, I decided to ask Heather where she had heard the rumor, in the hopes that this would shed some light on the veracity of the allegation. Heather responded:
“As for the source of the McCarthy rumor, it came from a stranger in a coffee shop who noticed that I was reading The Company She Keeps. He asked if I knew it was autobiographical, and this somehow led to a lengthy exposition on his part of the sexual proclivities of the highball-drinking Partisan Review crowd. It was a strange encounter. Anyway, the pencil guy is the only thing I remember. Looking back, I wish I had asked the coffee shop stranger about his sources, but he kind of freaked me out.”
Clearly then, this case was entering murky waters; it was only after I took a look at Carol Brightman’s 1992 biography of McCarthy, that things began to clear up. Brightman writes:
“In the fall of 1936, after divorcing Johnsrud, Mary McCarthy took a tiny studio at 18 Gay Street in the Village, around the corner from Elizabeth Bishop, who lived on Charles Street.[…] The time she lived in the one-room apartment, with its “teetery bookcase” and “bath suited to a bird” – the site of a succession of one-night stands that allowed her to compare the sexual equipment of an astonishing variety of men, and discover “amazing differences, both in length and massiveness” (this recalled in her seventy-sixth year) – enliven The Company She Keeps, the essays in On The Contrary (1961), and The Group. […] When one day she realized that in twenty-four hours she had slept with three different men, she was “slightly scared,” but she “did not feel promiscuous,” she writes; a contention borne out in a backhanded way by the dissection of her lovers’ “sexual equipment.” “One handsome married man, who used to arrive with two Danishes from a very good bakery,” she observes, “had a penis about the size and shape of a lead pencil; he shall remain nameless.” Pondering the relation between a man’s height and the size of his organ, she muses: “There may be dwarfish men with monstrously large organs, but I have never known one.” (Brightman, Carol. Writing Dangerously. New York, Clarkson Potter Publishers: 1992. p.127)
It should be noted that while Heather had heard that the penis in question was the, “exact shape and size of a sharpened lead pencil”, by McCarthy’s account the penis is “about the size and shape of a lead pencil” [italics mine]. I take the exaggerated exactitude of likeness (as well as “sharpened” element) to be a product of the strange man at the coffee shop’s inexact memory.
So, it is the opinion of the Literary Dick that Mary McCarthy did sleep with a man whose penis bore a more than passing resemblance to a lead pencil.
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com
______________________________________________________________________
(Note: Before I present my solution to The Case of Mary McCarthy and an oddly shaped penis, I’d like to let you know that the technical arm of The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is currently hard at work developing an archival system to handle our extensive and ever expanding array of case files.)
The Case of Mary McCarthy and an oddly shaped penis
Question: Dear Literary Dick (as in private detective),
Someone told me that Mary McCarthy once slept with a man whose member was the exact shape and size of a sharpened lead pencil. This seems physiologically impossible to me, and I have never heard of any evidence one way or the other. Any thoughts on this? In the course of my "research," I did find out that the words "penis" and "pencil" come from the same Latin word. Wild, huh?
Sincerely,
Heather G.
Answer: The first step I took towards cracking this case (which I could tell immediately was going to be a challenge of the first order) was in trying to ascertain whether or not it was even possible for a man to have a penis shaped like a lead pencil. To this end, I asked some friends of mine who are doctors whether or not that had seen or heard of such a thing. Most of these doctors ignored my email, but I did hear back from two:
“Dear Michael, I spoke with a literary friend and […] she said she once had a boyfriend with a pencil penis but she wishes to remain anonymous on the subject” – [Name Withheld]
And from my friend Dr. R.:
“hi mike,
don't know much about pencil shaped penises really but sounds fairly unfeasible to me. anyhow, i've got some leave to take and had a half idea about visiting new york. you gonna be around next week?
don't get your hopes up too much or crea* your pants or anything but i may come, flights permitting, tuesday.
cheers
rob”
So with the medical community divided, I decided to ask Heather where she had heard the rumor, in the hopes that this would shed some light on the veracity of the allegation. Heather responded:
“As for the source of the McCarthy rumor, it came from a stranger in a coffee shop who noticed that I was reading The Company She Keeps. He asked if I knew it was autobiographical, and this somehow led to a lengthy exposition on his part of the sexual proclivities of the highball-drinking Partisan Review crowd. It was a strange encounter. Anyway, the pencil guy is the only thing I remember. Looking back, I wish I had asked the coffee shop stranger about his sources, but he kind of freaked me out.”
Clearly then, this case was entering murky waters; it was only after I took a look at Carol Brightman’s 1992 biography of McCarthy, that things began to clear up. Brightman writes:
“In the fall of 1936, after divorcing Johnsrud, Mary McCarthy took a tiny studio at 18 Gay Street in the Village, around the corner from Elizabeth Bishop, who lived on Charles Street.[…] The time she lived in the one-room apartment, with its “teetery bookcase” and “bath suited to a bird” – the site of a succession of one-night stands that allowed her to compare the sexual equipment of an astonishing variety of men, and discover “amazing differences, both in length and massiveness” (this recalled in her seventy-sixth year) – enliven The Company She Keeps, the essays in On The Contrary (1961), and The Group. […] When one day she realized that in twenty-four hours she had slept with three different men, she was “slightly scared,” but she “did not feel promiscuous,” she writes; a contention borne out in a backhanded way by the dissection of her lovers’ “sexual equipment.” “One handsome married man, who used to arrive with two Danishes from a very good bakery,” she observes, “had a penis about the size and shape of a lead pencil; he shall remain nameless.” Pondering the relation between a man’s height and the size of his organ, she muses: “There may be dwarfish men with monstrously large organs, but I have never known one.” (Brightman, Carol. Writing Dangerously. New York, Clarkson Potter Publishers: 1992. p.127)
It should be noted that while Heather had heard that the penis in question was the, “exact shape and size of a sharpened lead pencil”, by McCarthy’s account the penis is “about the size and shape of a lead pencil” [italics mine]. I take the exaggerated exactitude of likeness (as well as “sharpened” element) to be a product of the strange man at the coffee shop’s inexact memory.
So, it is the opinion of the Literary Dick that Mary McCarthy did sleep with a man whose penis bore a more than passing resemblance to a lead pencil.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective)
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com
______________________________________________________________________
Before we get to the main part of this edition of The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective), I would like to share this email I recently received:
Dear Literary Dick (as in Private Detective),
It is generally regarded by Hemingway biographers that in his final years his failing health and EST treatments caused him to have paranoid delusions of various sorts, most notably that the FBI were following him. According to a recent historical thriller (Dan Simmons's THE CROOK FACTORY), though, these weren't delusions at all -- Hemingway *was* being persecuted by the Feds.
Could you clear this issue up?
thanks,
Doug B.
______________________________________________________________________
The Hemmingway Fitzgerald Enigma
(Note: The Literary Dick (as in Private Dectective) will accept and occasionally publish interesting literary commentary, though it should be noted that the opinions expressed in such comentary are not (and should not be seen to reflect) those of Jonathanames.com.)
(Another Note: The below was sent in by Mr. S. Michael Mannix (mrmannix@hotmail.com), whose work has been previously showcased here at The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective). As before, Mr. Mannix makes reference to an essay I wrote, which is primarily about a mysterious injury to Henry James's testicles, but also includes a discussion of the speculation that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were gay lovers. That essay can be still found at www.Jonathanames.com and also on The Konundrum Engine Literary Review (http://lit.konundrum.com/).)
"Mike,
Now, about the Hemmingway Fitzgerald enigma, I am of mixed minds. The basic question is, of course, did they or did they not have a sexual relationship; but since both have carried the answer to that ponderance to their graves, it becomes a question of how does the possibility impact the way the authors will be regarded by posterity.
Certainly, because so much of Hemmingway's writing focuses on gender issues, he has become a pop-psych case study in repressed homosexual feeling. I once recall hearing a crass wit remark that Hemmingway was "what happens in a world where men are not allowed to love other men." As I read Hemmingway (and I must confess I find his work disquietingly misogynistic and have come to avoid it) he represented to a male identity that has become near to extinct since the Gay coming out movement took off over the past two decades.
Before the sexual revolution of the 1960's Americans were much more secretive about their sexual lives. This is not to suggest that their sexual practices were all that different than they are today, only that it was normal for everyone to be in the closet, even heterosexuals. I've found that the art collector Richard Merkin has written some fascinating books and essays on the pornography of Jazz Age America, Taschen has also published several artistic histories of early modern porn, and so has the Smithsonian press. I would recommend checking out the original sources if you are interested.
From what I have read, moderate bisexuality was regarded by many as kinky but not abnormal among common people. Untamable virility was part of the macho male ideal, so an element of homosexual magnetism could be discreetly overlooked. Outrage against homosexuality seems to have come mostly from the descendants of the Puritans who took it upon themselves to be outraged by all immorality. There also seemed to be a distinct disconnect between homosexual activity and homosexual identity. Homosexual activity could be dismissed as a drunken indiscression and omitted from the public record, while the decision to live openly as a homosexual carried the obvious stigma. Of course, I would like to repeat that these are simply my interpretations of what I have read, and I would highly advise looking over the sources yourself. (I can provide a barebones bibliography, but some of the editions I would be referencing are not in my possession, so I would have to guess about publishers, dates &c.)
I believe it is safe to say that Ernest Hemmingway was not Gay, as we understand the meaning of that word today. I would say that Hemmingway was quite emphatic about not being Gay. I do not think that Hemmingway was in any way comfortable enough with his sexuality or his emotions to be called Gay. His discomfort may have been the product of homosexual feelings, but he kept the truth about that very much to himself. So, for me this suggests that the possiblity that the homosexual undertones between Hemmingway and Fitzgerald may never have been openly acknowleged between them. Certainly, world class alcholics such as those two could have had some wild times when they were in their cups. It is not impossible that they did things when they were drunk that they would never have done sober, but their emphatic mutual denials should not be tossed lightly aside.
F. Scot Fitzgerald, is a horse of a different color. As of this date I have not been able to make up my mind about Fitzgerald. He may have been bisexual, the famous elevator scene in Gatsby being the outstanding exsample. I would like to contribute a point on that much discussed scene that I have never before seen addressed, that being, the elevator operator.
Elevator operators, lift boys in the UK, were something of a Queer icon during the early 20th century. The inclusion of a elevator operator (why not a door man, or a cab driver?) does add another layer of suggested homosexuality to the encounter. Off the top of my head, I would point out the Saki (H.H. Munro)'s reference to lift boys in "Reginald on Christmas Presant" as an egsample of the role they played in the Gay subculture at that time. Fitzgerald's decision to include the "keep your hand off the lever" business seems, to me, to deliberatly suggest homosexuality, or bisexual inuendo at the very least.
I'm not so sure that writing stories that contain homoerotic inuendos is enough to make a man a homosexual. After all, he didn't give his readers a juicey description of the goings on. He only created a situation, from which his readers could launch their own fantasies. All of Fitzgerald's sex scenes follow that formula, it is a good formula, many readers like it. Sex sells, the more diverse the sexual appetites your work is accessable to, the more people will buy it. I hate to break a great author down to that level, but Fitzgerald spent most of his career writing for booze and rent money, so in his case it seems apt. I believe part of his brilliance as an artist was his ability to write books that people wanted to read, and incorporate his artistic endeavors into comerically successful enterprises.
So, when considering them together, I can't think that Hemmingway and Fitzgerald were ever homosexuals in the way thatCole Porter and Noel Coward were. I suspect that "fey" homosexuals gossiping about the possiblity that they were, may have just made Hemingway uncomfortable enough to cause their friendship to disintergrate. (Certainly if they were having drunken bisexual romps with Mrs Hemmingway, that would have made it even uglier.) Hemmingway was full of selfloathing, Fitzgerald was a narcissist; there is a distinct possibility that they were lovers, but it would be taking it a step too far to assign a Postmodern concept of sexual identity to the lives of two of our greatest Modern writers.
As far as the connection to James, perhaps they did cook up a scheme to spread a rumor that he was a eunuch. They could have easily has sparked off the game of telephone that ended with popular images of Henry James cauterizing his testes with a hot iron. The evidence you unearthed seems to indicate that there was some castrating experience in James' youth. I stand by my theory that his impotence could have been the result of a hernia. The fire museum of Canada has some images on their website (www.firemuseumcanada.com) has some pictures that might help you imagine the engine that James would have been working; I was unable to find an really exact diagram.
I hope you have found this interesting, and thank you for you time,
SMM”
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Finally, I’d like to end this edition of the Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) with an email I received which is somewhat relevant to The Hemingway Fitzgerald Enigma:
Dear Literary Dick (as in Private Detective),
There's a movie with Elliot Gould (I think) where he plays an English professor and someone suggests Nick Caraway is gay and he punches the dude out. Seen it? Know what I'm talking about? – Jordan D.
welcomes questions about literary mysteries and scandals, which should be sent to: woodyswoody@hotmail.com. The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) is published by Jonathanames.com
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Before we get to the main part of this edition of The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective), I would like to share this email I recently received:
Dear Literary Dick (as in Private Detective),
It is generally regarded by Hemingway biographers that in his final years his failing health and EST treatments caused him to have paranoid delusions of various sorts, most notably that the FBI were following him. According to a recent historical thriller (Dan Simmons's THE CROOK FACTORY), though, these weren't delusions at all -- Hemingway *was* being persecuted by the Feds.
Could you clear this issue up?
thanks,
Doug B.
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The Hemmingway Fitzgerald Enigma
(Note: The Literary Dick (as in Private Dectective) will accept and occasionally publish interesting literary commentary, though it should be noted that the opinions expressed in such comentary are not (and should not be seen to reflect) those of Jonathanames.com.)
(Another Note: The below was sent in by Mr. S. Michael Mannix (mrmannix@hotmail.com), whose work has been previously showcased here at The Literary Dick (as in Private Detective). As before, Mr. Mannix makes reference to an essay I wrote, which is primarily about a mysterious injury to Henry James's testicles, but also includes a discussion of the speculation that F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were gay lovers. That essay can be still found at www.Jonathanames.com and also on The Konundrum Engine Literary Review (http://lit.konundrum.com/).)
"Mike,
Now, about the Hemmingway Fitzgerald enigma, I am of mixed minds. The basic question is, of course, did they or did they not have a sexual relationship; but since both have carried the answer to that ponderance to their graves, it becomes a question of how does the possibility impact the way the authors will be regarded by posterity.
Certainly, because so much of Hemmingway's writing focuses on gender issues, he has become a pop-psych case study in repressed homosexual feeling. I once recall hearing a crass wit remark that Hemmingway was "what happens in a world where men are not allowed to love other men." As I read Hemmingway (and I must confess I find his work disquietingly misogynistic and have come to avoid it) he represented to a male identity that has become near to extinct since the Gay coming out movement took off over the past two decades.
Before the sexual revolution of the 1960's Americans were much more secretive about their sexual lives. This is not to suggest that their sexual practices were all that different than they are today, only that it was normal for everyone to be in the closet, even heterosexuals. I've found that the art collector Richard Merkin has written some fascinating books and essays on the pornography of Jazz Age America, Taschen has also published several artistic histories of early modern porn, and so has the Smithsonian press. I would recommend checking out the original sources if you are interested.
From what I have read, moderate bisexuality was regarded by many as kinky but not abnormal among common people. Untamable virility was part of the macho male ideal, so an element of homosexual magnetism could be discreetly overlooked. Outrage against homosexuality seems to have come mostly from the descendants of the Puritans who took it upon themselves to be outraged by all immorality. There also seemed to be a distinct disconnect between homosexual activity and homosexual identity. Homosexual activity could be dismissed as a drunken indiscression and omitted from the public record, while the decision to live openly as a homosexual carried the obvious stigma. Of course, I would like to repeat that these are simply my interpretations of what I have read, and I would highly advise looking over the sources yourself. (I can provide a barebones bibliography, but some of the editions I would be referencing are not in my possession, so I would have to guess about publishers, dates &c.)
I believe it is safe to say that Ernest Hemmingway was not Gay, as we understand the meaning of that word today. I would say that Hemmingway was quite emphatic about not being Gay. I do not think that Hemmingway was in any way comfortable enough with his sexuality or his emotions to be called Gay. His discomfort may have been the product of homosexual feelings, but he kept the truth about that very much to himself. So, for me this suggests that the possiblity that the homosexual undertones between Hemmingway and Fitzgerald may never have been openly acknowleged between them. Certainly, world class alcholics such as those two could have had some wild times when they were in their cups. It is not impossible that they did things when they were drunk that they would never have done sober, but their emphatic mutual denials should not be tossed lightly aside.
F. Scot Fitzgerald, is a horse of a different color. As of this date I have not been able to make up my mind about Fitzgerald. He may have been bisexual, the famous elevator scene in Gatsby being the outstanding exsample. I would like to contribute a point on that much discussed scene that I have never before seen addressed, that being, the elevator operator.
Elevator operators, lift boys in the UK, were something of a Queer icon during the early 20th century. The inclusion of a elevator operator (why not a door man, or a cab driver?) does add another layer of suggested homosexuality to the encounter. Off the top of my head, I would point out the Saki (H.H. Munro)'s reference to lift boys in "Reginald on Christmas Presant" as an egsample of the role they played in the Gay subculture at that time. Fitzgerald's decision to include the "keep your hand off the lever" business seems, to me, to deliberatly suggest homosexuality, or bisexual inuendo at the very least.
I'm not so sure that writing stories that contain homoerotic inuendos is enough to make a man a homosexual. After all, he didn't give his readers a juicey description of the goings on. He only created a situation, from which his readers could launch their own fantasies. All of Fitzgerald's sex scenes follow that formula, it is a good formula, many readers like it. Sex sells, the more diverse the sexual appetites your work is accessable to, the more people will buy it. I hate to break a great author down to that level, but Fitzgerald spent most of his career writing for booze and rent money, so in his case it seems apt. I believe part of his brilliance as an artist was his ability to write books that people wanted to read, and incorporate his artistic endeavors into comerically successful enterprises.
So, when considering them together, I can't think that Hemmingway and Fitzgerald were ever homosexuals in the way thatCole Porter and Noel Coward were. I suspect that "fey" homosexuals gossiping about the possiblity that they were, may have just made Hemingway uncomfortable enough to cause their friendship to disintergrate. (Certainly if they were having drunken bisexual romps with Mrs Hemmingway, that would have made it even uglier.) Hemmingway was full of selfloathing, Fitzgerald was a narcissist; there is a distinct possibility that they were lovers, but it would be taking it a step too far to assign a Postmodern concept of sexual identity to the lives of two of our greatest Modern writers.
As far as the connection to James, perhaps they did cook up a scheme to spread a rumor that he was a eunuch. They could have easily has sparked off the game of telephone that ended with popular images of Henry James cauterizing his testes with a hot iron. The evidence you unearthed seems to indicate that there was some castrating experience in James' youth. I stand by my theory that his impotence could have been the result of a hernia. The fire museum of Canada has some images on their website (www.firemuseumcanada.com) has some pictures that might help you imagine the engine that James would have been working; I was unable to find an really exact diagram.
I hope you have found this interesting, and thank you for you time,
SMM”
______________________________________________________________________
Finally, I’d like to end this edition of the Literary Dick (as in Private Detective) with an email I received which is somewhat relevant to The Hemingway Fitzgerald Enigma:
Dear Literary Dick (as in Private Detective),
There's a movie with Elliot Gould (I think) where he plays an English professor and someone suggests Nick Caraway is gay and he punches the dude out. Seen it? Know what I'm talking about? – Jordan D.
